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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...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Office 365 Protection (4th)
TitanHQ SpamTitan
Ranking in Email Security
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (10th), Office 365 Protection (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 15.4%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.4%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TitanHQ SpamTitan is 1.4%, down from 1.6% 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

"The product's scalability is good."
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"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 good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the individuals within our organization who are affected."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"The most valuable aspect includes attempts to spoof or compromise domains from external sources."
"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"The granularity of the setup is most valuable. It has all the features we need from global settings to per-user settings. We are pretty happy with it."
"It has reduced the risk of getting viruses from emails by almost a hundred percent. We are giving services to hundreds of companies, and it makes our work a lot easier when SpamTitan is filtering threats."
"SpamTitan is extremely easy to learn and use."
"It works as it should. It allows users to manage emails that they receive, meaning they can set up whitelists and blacklists."
"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."
"It's catching things that might otherwise have gotten through in the past. That was when we were working with a site that didn't put emails through two antiviruses before they got to our system."
"The most valuable feature is the Link Lock, which prevents our users from clicking on links that haven't been verified."
"It gives our users the chance to interact with the program. They can decide if there are things that are junk mail that they don't want to be messing with, on an individual basis. Of course, I can always override that or control it from a company standpoint."
 

Cons

"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"Microsoft needs to broaden its global support presence by establishing teams of subject-matter experts in all regions."
"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."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could improve by giving customers information on techniques to prevent threats. For example, information about best practices on how to protect their own devices against hackers and scammers, such as educational information or training. This would help others have a better understanding of cyber security. Additionally, there can be more security features added."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"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."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"Some of the menus on the dashboard could be easier to navigate. It takes a little while to find things."
"Sometimes, things can get caught back in spam that you had previously released. Without going in, releasing the whole domain, and opening it up, since you don't want to do that often because the company can get infected as well, I have a couple of things that I previously released show back up again. I don't understand why this is happening, but I would like to know why it happened, e.g., did an algorithm change? It is important to know if I released an email last week why it was caught in spam the following week."
"As a Danish company, it would be great to see a Danish translation for the UI."
"I'm not 100% sure how well they scan certain attachments."
"What would be helpful to me is an alert if there were an increase in the number of threats that have been picked up. In that case, an alert could be sent to the admin in our company, to inform us. It could say something like, "Generally, about 20 percent of your incoming emails have been threats. Now it has jumped up to 30 or 40 percent." Something like that would be beneficial."
"The big issue that I've had is that the length of time that an email is kept in quarantine is only seven days and, in some cases, it is not even seven days... if I had a 20-day or 30-day repository, if someone came to me and said, "Hey, I can't get this back," I could end up getting it to them from the archive."
"Initially, I had some issues where we were getting emails coming in that appeared to come in from our own internal domain. My company is called M2 Systems, so our domain name is M2-corp.com. I had to get on with support twice to get them to help me mitigate or block that from happening."
"I would like to see a filter for searching inside the message content when it is quarantined."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"The solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."
"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"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."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"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 pricing is ideal. A lot of other anti-spams are integrated in Exchange, counting technical mailboxes that are not sending any emails outside. So, they are not scanned and only for internal communication. SpamTitan only counts the emails that it scans. This is one of the best licensing models that I saw for anti-spam solutions because it is counting dynamically the number of emails that senders are sending. It counts these uniquely by week. It provides a very realistic picture. This is very useful because we are not counting the emails doing inbound or outbound notifications from our company."
"I have been really happy with them. For the price, I don't want to change."
"The reason that they can be so reasonable with their cost is that they don't have to spend a lot on support. It's such a stable product that you're not needing to contact them that much. If their customers don't need to call support every other day, they can give them a solution that is cost-effective."
"Everything has really been great with the pricing and licensing. In fact, we just implemented ArcTitan because everything was going so well with SpamTitan."
"One user is the same price as 50 users and there isn't a discount until you get to about 500 users. From a small business point of view—we're 30 people—there should be a price break before you have 500 people. Small businesses don't have a lot of money."
"Our pricing has pretty much stayed somewhat the same. Sure, there has been an increase or two that keeps up with inflation, but that is everybody. When we switched from AppRiver to SpamTitan, we saved about 20%. That is $1,000 to $2,000 a month. We went to SpamTitan and WebTitan. It was $1,000 savings a month for SpamTitan and another $1,500 a month savings for WebTitan."
"We pay for licenses and the price structure is very clean. You don't have to pay for on-premises equipment and perhaps a monthly service fee for hardware."
"The pricing was a little bit below the average of what we were looking at."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
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?
I don't have detailed specifics on pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost.
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?
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?
Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platfo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TitanHQ SpamTitan?
Pricing is affordable. We renewed for three years, and the cost is reasonable.
What needs improvement with TitanHQ SpamTitan?
The GUI is problematic. It's a mess and absolute rubbish now. We also face issues with the settings that are not yet ...
 

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: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.