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Barracuda Email Protection vs SonicWall Email Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
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Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Office 365 Protection (4th)
SonicWall Email Security
Ranking in Email Security
32nd
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 15.9%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.6%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Email Security is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Luis-Brown - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for easy reporting of problems, valuable anti-phishing, and anti-malware support
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 lacks proactivity in assisting us with preparing for potential threats before they occur. While they employ a substantial amount of threat intelligence to preemptively prevent incidents, their effectiveness diminishes when it comes to delivering proactive threat intelligence alerts from Microsoft. Their focus primarily revolves around managing the internal environment. On the other hand, my other vendor, Check Point, along with my membership in MS-ISAC, supplements me with this type of information. The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement. It is adequate, but it doesn't match the quality of Proofpoint or Mimecast. However, it comes close in effectiveness. Plus, if we're obtaining it for free, investing in the other products seems impractical.
Alex Clerici - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient and easier to manage than other products, especially Microsoft products
Regarding Barracuda Email Protection specifically, I'm quite satisfied. I think there's room for improvement in their other products, especially their cloud firewall protection and ZTNA offerings. Moreover, prices could be more granular, especially for the small business area. Typically, in Italy, the majority of our customers are small businesses. It would be better if the prices could be adjusted for small businesses.
Jasmit Singh Juneja - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy-to-deploy platform with efficient cyber security features
According to our customers, the product's most valuable feature is the ability to detect spam and reduce phishing emails. A lot of unproductive emails are blocked at the gateway, improving their work productivity for them. The customers feel secure as malicious content, such as viruses, gets blocked before reaching them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"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."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"The anti-spam aspect of the solution is its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is that it protects from spam."
"Setup was easy. It took about 30 minutes."
"The most valuable feature of SonicWall Email Security is the blocking of emails using keywords. If there are any particular keywords in the subject, that we want to block from receiving from a particular person we can do it. Additionally, the blocking of emails is easy. we can release that one and we can block some of the keywords also like that."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"Beside a few issues with specificity in the email protection controls, this product is very good at handling email security."
"According to our customers, the product's most valuable feature is the ability to detect spam and reduce phishing emails."
"The product is easy to manage in terms of configurations."
 

Cons

"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities."
"In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement."
"Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically."
"Microsoft sometimes has downtime, and we'll get several incidents coming in back to back. We have a huge backlog of notifications, many of which may be false positives. However, there might be serious alerts, so we can't risk dismissing all of them at once."
"There is room for improvement with the UI."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"They need well-trained partners in Nigeria."
"The reporting needs improvement."
"The platform's control panel needs enhancement."
"Updates could be released more frequently."
"There could be definition updates included in the subscription."
"The technical support from the company is not always very good at solving issues, but they offer access to a good community of users where problems are easily solved."
"We would like to see more information on a dashboard about what is happening when it comes to spamming and malware."
"A lot of spoofed emails are still coming to the end-user, so the configuration for this option needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"Our customers purchase the solution's yearly license."
"The platform offers a yearly license."
"I rate the application’s pricing a five out of ten."
"The overall price of SonicWall Email Security should be reduced and there should be an option to purchase one or two licenses more instead of their current policy of bulk increases only. There should be more flexibility in the licensing model. Each license cost approximately $33 annually."
"The cost is cheaper than Sophos. I would rate it as five out of ten."
"When compared with Cisco, it is very well priced. Cisco is very expensive."
"We have a two-year license subscription and the price is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
The pricing is reasonable since it comes integrated with our Office 365 license.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detec...
What do you like most about Barracuda Email Protection?
I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Email Protection?
We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume. We would h...
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Protection?
Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed.
What do you like most about SonicWall Email Security?
According to our customers, the product's most valuable feature is the ability to detect spam and reduce phishing ema...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall Email Security?
The platform offers a yearly license. I charge additionally for deployment services. I rate the pricing a six out of ...
What needs improvement with SonicWall Email Security?
The platform's control panel needs enhancement. At present, many control options are allotted to individual users. It...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Barracuda Essentials
Dell SonicWALL Email Security Platform, SonicWall Hosted Email Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Star Kay White, Locala Community Partnerships
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. SonicWall Email Security and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.