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Barracuda Email Protection vs TitanHQ SpamTitan comparison

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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

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
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Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
15th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (2nd), Office 365 Protection (4th)
TitanHQ SpamTitan
Ranking in Email Security
13th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (9th), Office 365 Protection (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 12.9%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TitanHQ SpamTitan is 1.2%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
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.
George Kajaia - PeerSpot reviewer
Work hours are not lost searching through spam emails to determine which emails are legitimate
In history on the reporting graph, when you are trying to search for sender by address, it won't search by domain. I could send an email from SendGrid with my domain, but with SpamTitan, if you search by that domain then it wouldn't search it. It only searches from the field, not in the envelope field. Unfortunately, mass mailing companies, like SendGrid, send email with the form address and that completely differs from the domain envelope form address. There is no way to search for the envelope form. So, I gave them an idea to improve this filtering. For example, if I have to search an email sent by SendGrid, then I am forced to search by the recipient, then find the emails marked as spam. This is quite a huge hassle. They told me that they are aware of this and will try to add it, but they haven't added it yet. I would like to implement a secondary delivery pool for mass mailings, having an alternate pool for mass mailing lists since there is only a single mail queue with SpamTitan. For example, if 10,000 emails are being sent, then the queue will be large. Unfortunately, without a secondary delivery pool, legitimate emails will wait in the queue to be delivered to my email. Therefore, I would like to have two queues: one for everyday emails and another for mass mailings. Now, I have to decide whether to buy a second SpamTitan license just for this reason because I am very satisfied with the functionality of SpamTitan overall and don't want to use another sender's appliance for this. From 2020 to 2021, there was a huge switch in the types of spam coming in. SpamTitan's anti-spam should be enabled to catch this spam. The spam catching rate went down over the last three to four years. I think this is because spammers are evolving and using different methods to send spam emails. The phishing rate of SpamTitan is not great, even Exchange Online Protection catches phishing better than SpamTitan. The most worrying are the phishing emails. I would like SpamTitan to upgrade and improve the phishing catch rate. The sandbox of the Bitdefender engine is not working correctly. They sent me an email that they pulled it because it was not working as it was intended to work. So, they are working on this as well, and maybe the sandbox will be fixed. The sandbox is for viruses. If something goes through then it is sent to the sandbox for analysis. However, I am not using the sandbox right now. I am just quarantining this type of attachment right away.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is data backups that we can provide through ticket requests."
"The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"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 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."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"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."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"The fact that it does exactly what it says on the box is what I find most valuable about SpamTitan. They've reduced our spam by about 99 percent."
"Among the features that led us to choose SpamTitan are the ability to lock down, the multiple layers of security they have built into it, the ability to scrub inbound and outbound, as well as higher-level SPF and DMARC capabilities that were not really built into our previous product."
"We're now using SpamTitan Plus. It has an extra feature so that if you receive an email with a link, it goes to the TitanHQ server and that link is also checked. That is probably the best feature."
"They also let you customize it to match your organization's feel, so it looks like a product from your organization. I like when companies do that. Our city logo is on it when you log in to this system."
"It filters some of the spam."
"The standout features include the anti-phishing feature, which is particularly advantageous as far as our clients are concerned; it was a very welcome addition for many of them."
"Their superior service comes at a very cost-effective price. This is the biggest part that really allows us to remain competitive. Their pricing for us has just been great. They have helped us to be where we need to be. They really do partner with us in that way so we can get more business. They provide the right pricing, which lets us remain competitive."
"We are satisfied with the performance and spam filtering provided by TitanHQ SpamTitan. The reporting feature and customizations as per our requirements are also good."
 

Cons

"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better."
"We are always looking for others tools to increase automation on tasks. There can be better integration with other solutions, such as PowerPoint and email."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"There is a different console for different things; I just want one consolidated console."
"There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"The customer service and support could be improved if the support were available directly in Europe. Currently, the support is often managed from India, so we sometimes need to wait due to the time zone difference. It would be quicker and better if the support were provided by European staff."
"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"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."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"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."
"The user interface is good, but it could use some improvement. There's a little bit of an issue where a certain feature is not in an intuitive spot and coexisting with another feature that has similar functionality... The UI is a little dated-looking as well."
"It works when it wants to, it doesn't want, it doesn't work."
"Its GUI can definitely be improved. As the administrator of the product, the GUI isn't very logically built. If you need something, you don't have one menu where you can say, "Well, this relates to our customers," and manage everything for your customers in that interface. The naming and placement of some of the menus need improvement. For example, if I'm looking for a log to take a look at what has passed through the filter of a specific customer, I get these ZIP-packed files that I can't use for anything. I have to look under history instead. The naming of some of the features is off by a lot."
"One of the things that I have been asking them to do is add the ability to scan a domain's age. It seems like the majority of spam right now have been registered with brand new domains. They are utilizing and abusing them for two weeks until they make it onto all the blacklists, then they pick a new one. They just move on. So, if we could scan a domain's age, and just say, "Outright block domains that are less than two weeks old," then it would make SpamTitan even better. They absolutely should be doing that. I would love it if they would do that."
"They could improve on the color of the interface."
"I would also like to see SpamTitan improve on its antivirus software. I believe they're using Bitdefender and ClamAV. A problem with them is that they sometimes miss Trojans and malicious sites. We have internal antivirus software as well, and when we receive emails we see that our local antivirus software has found Trojans in them."
"The user interface of SpamTitan is fair, at best. They're coming out with a new one. The current one is a bit hard to navigate, and that was the biggest part of what made it a steep learning curve. It took three to six months to learn how to find stuff in there."
"We have submitted requests for a feature which would be a total control panel… Our previous spam filter had that and it saved us from having to log in to the panel online, search for an email, pull it up, and figure out where it came from originally and why it got the spam score it did. That would be a huge improvement and time-saver because then we wouldn't have to be in the webpage for that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"The product is very expensive."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"The product is expensive."
"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"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."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"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."
"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."
"It's not extremely expensive. Other solutions get really pricey, really fast."
"Pricing is on par with other products, and it's reasonable."
"The cluster was an additional cost. We had to get some more licenses to get to that level. It's well worth it because it means peace of mind for everyone."
"I pay $650 per year for 50 licenses."
"Its pricing is good. We've been happy with the pricing. I know that they did some extensive research, and the pricing was quite favorable with everything else that they looked at. My budget hasn't changed a whole lot over the last three to five years. It's nice to see that it has remained pretty steady. So, I am happy with the pricing. It provides good value for money."
"The pricing is very reasonable. I know the cloud version costs more because of active 24/7 monitoring, but we take care of that as our setup is on-prem. SpamTitan is in line with what we were paying for GFI MailEssentials but works much better."
"I don't deal with pricing. In terms of licensing, the last I heard was that the licensing for users in SpamTitan isn't fully functioning because of some integration issues with Microsoft. I know we have more than 20% on our licensing at the moment, but the way the licensing is supposed to run makes a lot of sense for us. We are looking forward to that part getting implemented correctly."
"We are on a per-user or per-mailbox monthly subscription. We are happy with the price of the solution. When comparing it to other solutions it is much cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

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?
Money-wise, it is a part of the Office 365 ( /products/office-365-reviews ) suite, making it slightly more expensive ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
The main area for improvement is simplifying the implementation and rollout process. There are many conditions to be ...
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 t...
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 ...
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 defa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TitanHQ SpamTitan?
The pricing model is reasonable money for the product. It is rated highly because of its affordability and its great ...
What needs improvement with TitanHQ SpamTitan?
If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said the user interface needed improvement, but we've just updated ...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Barracuda Essentials
No data available
 

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
De Montfort University, Scope Services, Park County School District, NRC, Quality Smith, Toyota, CarTrawler, Videotron
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. TitanHQ SpamTitan and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.