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Barracuda Email Protection vs Proofpoint Email Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
15th
Ranking in Office 365 Protection
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (2nd)
Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
2nd
Ranking in Office 365 Protection
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Security Awareness Training (2nd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 8.4%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

LeeMiles - PeerSpot reviewer
Very good threat protection, spam filtering, and cloud backups
Considering it integrates with Azure, I would like to be able to effectively set up policies where people are by default included in certain settings. For instance, for email quarantine, I can't set up a global setting. Users must go through an induction session where I guide them in configuring quarantine alerts rather than having default settings based on group membership. This seems like an oversight since they already use Active Directory details. They should assign policies based on group membership, which configures these settings by default.
AhmedRamadan - PeerSpot reviewer
Optimize email security with effective sandboxing and auto Pull for quarantine
Proofpoint is used as an email security gateway for big enterprises, primarily for their on-premises servers. Many customers also use it alongside Office 365 Proofpoint offers a complete solution for email security with features like DLP, email archiving, and encryption. The most valuable…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Essentials are it's a trusted name and is rated very high on review sites. It blocks high percentages of spam and junk email and it's in the cloud. They have hardware appliances, but this is in the cloud. The solution is very effective at blocking malware and blocking spam and this is what we are looking for. There's not a whole lot of complexity, you want a solution that is very good at blocking out all of the unwanted emails."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft. If someone deletes something in Office 365, we can get it back within Office 365, but it's difficult. Barracuda is much easier. There is a lot less management needed using Barracuda. The management becomes much easier for Office 365 and it's no longer on-prem, so there are fewer hours managing on-prem devices, servers, and things of that nature. We don't have network appliances anymore for the backup of our information."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"The most valuable features are the business email compromise protection and targeted attack prevention."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the TAP Dashboard. It provides more detailed information that can be used for forensic analysis. This is an advantage that other email security providers, such as Cisco, IronPort, or Microsoft do not offer in their dashboards."
"The solution blocks malicious emails containing viruses and malware and reduces them out of spam."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's advantage is that, when it's working properly, it tends to catch more threats as compared to other products."
"The solution has very strong detection for most of the phishing and malicious emails received from the outside."
"I like all the features with Proofpoint, such as how it filters the spam and marketing mail, lost reality mail, blocks phishing attacks, blocks malicious attachments, and stops phishing links. Also it can defend against the business email compromise impersonation technique. It is a complete solution for all email attacks. It filters for the bad, malicious attachments. If there is any executable file, it can be deleted. It is a good, complete solution."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"A one-stop shop for email protection"
 

Cons

"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"The Secure Mail aspect should have an Outlook add-in, instead of an external dashboard that outside users have to access."
"The accessibility of Proofpoint Email Protection, particularly access to product trials, could be improved. It's hard to get a trial for Proofpoint Email Protection, and many customers prefer not just to do the POC or demo but try the product out."
"The reporting section could be enhanced. I like some reports but if they could allow us to create custom reports with more flexibility it would enhance the reports more."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve on the training. Every organization is different and to fine-tune it to block everything properly there needs to be better training. Sometimes it can block some of the information it shouldn't."
"The largest complaint that we hear from our customers is that there is no local support."
"Proofpoint has a lot of false alarms."
"I want Security Awareness Training in there as a package deal. A lot of companies are starting to value email security a little bit more and take it a little bit more seriously, and the great product that we link together with a lot of these sales is a training product called Security Awareness Training. It is an upsell that we do with Proofpoint, and it is definitely something that I recommend everybody with email security to look into. It would be great if Security Awareness Training is included with the email security."
"Unfortunately, the whole product is going downhill right now, ever since they were sold to Thoma Bravo. We're constantly having problems with stability and the product in general."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"We pay annually. They never charged us for anything else. And they were quite a bit under that $20,000 mark. It was $19,074. And they've been pretty good about not skyrocketing the price or anything like that. It has gone up. It's gone up to $24,000 in 2020."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"The product is expensive."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has comparable pricing."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"The price is reasonable."
"The licensing model for Proofpoint Email Protection is simple. It's based on the number of users. Price-wise, Proofpoint Email Protection is a five out of ten because it's a pretty expensive solution."
"It is on a yearly basis. Their floor for SMB doesn't matter. The user count is 100 users and below at $2,500 a year. Its cost is higher than other solutions. It is probably about 20% to 30% higher than what you would get with Microsoft. There are no additional costs. All costs are factored in. It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Email Protection?
Barracuda Email Protection is easy to deploy and maintain. It doesn't require a specialized resource to manage this tool.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Email Protection?
Their list price is too high, but in India, the selling price is affordable at around $10 per user per year. Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers t...
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Protection?
Considering it integrates with Azure, I would like to be able to effectively set up policies where people are by default included in certain settings. For instance, for email quarantine, I can't se...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
In terms of pricing, it is okay compared to others. I would say it is normal. Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
It became very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances, and I may advise Proofpoint to adjust marketing solutions based on each country.
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Cofense PhishMe, Proofpoint Digital Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Proofpoint Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.