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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
49
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
13th
Average Rating
8.8
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
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (17th), Office 365 Protection (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 13.1%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.5%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TitanHQ SpamTitan is 1.2%, 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 most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is data backups that we can provide through ticket requests."
"The initial setup was easy."
"Scalability-wise, I do not think there are any issues so far."
"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."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"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 most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"The archiving and search features are very good."
"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 product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"It works as it should. It allows users to manage emails that they receive, meaning they can set up whitelists and blacklists."
"I have found the feature that creates seamless categorization of emails valuable. This is most likely done by having a large database to compare and to identify what are the domains that are currently spammers."
"I've been pretty pleased with technical support. They're pretty responsive. They answer quickly. They come up with solutions really quickly as well."
"The safelist and blocklist are the best parts. If I've got a new contact coming in, I can safelist that domain or email address. Alternatively, I can block the domain or the email address if I'm getting harassed by someone. I like the ability to get down to that granular level if I need to block or allow an entire"
"The overall intuitiveness is really good. We have been able to run reports, set up quarantine emails, and integrate with our Exchange server. That has all been extremely straightforward."
"We have a lot less spam going through. Because of this, work hours are not lost searching through all the spam emails to determine which ones are legitimate. This saves our bank clients' time since they are not forced to search their inbox for legitimate emails between spams. Not a lot of spam is going through. I think time is essential and we are gaining a lot of it with this solution since a lot of emails are automatically filtered out."
"Another feature of SpamTitan that I like is the reporting. We are able to identify the users or accounts that have been attacked most. We can see information that shows us the sites that the user goes to, and that helps in launching an investigation of that user and how they use our resources."
"The AI technology is improving email security by enhancing spam detection capabilities."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should improve the troubleshooting tools. It's unclear whether the device is blocked at the firewall level or at the device itself. The granularity needed for troubleshooting is currently lacking. From my perspective, Microsoft should address this issue to benefit many users who likely share the same sentiment."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"The visibility into threats is not up to the mark, as I do not have control. I rate my experience with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 as six out of ten due to troubleshooting and pricing concerns."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"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 visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"The product must enable bulk user management."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"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."
"The SpamTitan user interface is not amazing, but I don't mind it. I know they are releasing a new one soon. I have seen it and it looks a lot better. That has been an area that needs improvement."
"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."
"The stability of SpamTitan is equivalent to other email security solutions that I have previously used. Some of them have more bells and whistles that you can add. For example, inside the email subject line, you can put in the words encrypt secret, or secure. Then, it will automatically secure that email and send an email to the person who is supposed to receive it. They can identify it for themselves in a series of different Q&A questions. That is sometimes a deciding factor for clients."
"False positives may be an area for improvement. It's very rare that we see false negatives, but false positives might be an area where I, myself, could put some more effort into looking at the settings... Perhaps that's something in the user interface that isn't hugely clear."
"The inter mailbox email flow needs improvement. If you are in the same domain, it does not have the capability to transfer one email to the same domain through SpamTitan. They need an API for Office 365 which is currently being developed"
"SpamTitan is not particularly configurable. I basically have to accept their parameters for a lot of things."
"It could be improved a little bit on the speed side. When I am trying to troubleshoot a mail message that somebody is looking for in SpamTitan, sometimes setting up the filters for the quarantine is a little bit pokey."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"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."
"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."
"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 is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"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."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"Pricing is on par with other products, and it's reasonable."
"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."
"I pay $650 per year for 50 licenses."
"But the most critical factor was cost-effectiveness. SpamTitan was much cheaper than Barracuda and offered the same value."
"Its pricing is good. It's probably one of the most competitive anti-spam and anti-malware appliances out there for email. I was doing some looking around for pricing before I came to SpamTitan, and for the feature set, the price is very reasonable and competitive."
"I have been really happy with them. For the price, I don't want to change."
"The pricing and licensing are acceptable. The licensing is somewhat different; TitanHQ gives us a peak cap of simultaneous users, which they calculate as the number of email addresses viewed through so many days or weeks. That's considered our number of users, but it isn't always a one-to-one relationship, making it harder to resell. We can't say precisely that the solution costs X per month per user, but that's how we present the price to potential customers, and we just ensure we receive more than we pay to TitanHQ. The licensing hasn't caused us any problems, but it would be better if the pricing were per-user. I know that's not easy to achieve on a technical level."
"It's not extremely expensive. Other solutions get really pricey, really fast."
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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
18%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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?
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: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.