Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs Fortinet FortiMail comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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 Security Ga...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
DMARC Authentication Software (2nd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (3rd)
Fortinet FortiMail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Barracuda Email Security Gateway is designed for Secure Email Gateway (SEG) and holds a mindshare of 10.5%, down 16.6% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiMail, on the other hand, focuses on Email Security, holds 5.2% mindshare, down 5.8% since last year.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Shah Newaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Instantly blocked and reduced our spam emails
The solution has to improve in a very specific way. When we allow our customers to send or scan email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, we are permitting their email server IP address, but not any domain. One of our customers has an email server where they are hosting five domains within their server. They are sending and receiving email through that server by using Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Therefore, we allow their IP address to send email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, then we declare MX for receiving email on behalf of our customers. After receiving the email, we deliver it to the specific IP address of the customer. Since we are only allowing the IP address, if an incident happens within a customer's email server or an email server gets compromised, then it starts sending spam. That creates a huge problem for the solution as it allows all emails because the customer's IP address is allowed to relay email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Barracuda should add an option where it can add multiple domains, such as abc.com, bbc.com, and cbc.com. Therefore, this domains' emails will be allowed and other domains' emails will not be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Whereas, if you allow the IP address, then any of the domain's emails will be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. That is the drawback that I have observed. So, Barracuda should work on this.
Andras Solt - PeerSpot reviewer
Reasonable pricing and good spam filtering but does not offer robust gatekeeping
It's mainly suited for mid-size companies, not for bigger companies like us. We are more than 1,000 people. In fact, we're over 2000 users, so that's why we investigated some other products, and Clearswift, for example. We likely won't increase usage. We're looking at GFI in a year or so.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The anti-spamming, anti-fishing features are great."
"The spam filtering, in particular, is very important for us. We have a large volume of emails each month, something like 200,000, and Barracuda filters about 85 percent of the spam, malware, and phishing that comes in. It prevents our users from receiving this content on their computers."
"Customer support is the solution's strongest point."
"All features it provides on the cloud environment are very, very useful, including the antivirus that is enabled on it."
"The performance is good."
"The most valuable feature of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is that it blocks almost 99 percent of threats from users' email inboxes."
"The solution's anti-spam features are its most valuable aspect."
"It is very simple to whitelist addresses."
"The most valuable features of this solution are anti-spam, sender reputation, and antivirus."
"After implementing FortiMail, the spam, and malicious emails we receive have significantly reduced, making it much simpler to manage."
"One major benefit of the Fortinet FortiMail product is its ease of management."
"It can block a lot of fake emails."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiMail are its virus outbreak prevention and FortiSandbox integration."
"The deployment is simple and once up and running it is easy to manage."
"I love the integration between Fortinet products."
"The product helps users handle security challenges as it offers prefiltering options and does relatively good incident reporting."
 

Cons

"The UI could be a little cleaner and require less clicking around in different modules. They give the illusion of a single pane of glass, but as you click around to different products, you're actually being transferred into a different system."
"Barracuda should add an option where it can add multiple domains, such as abc.com, bbc.com, and cbc.com. Therefore, this domains' emails will be allowed and other domains' emails will not be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Whereas, if you allow the IP address, then any of the domain's emails will be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. That is the drawback that I have observed. So, Barracuda should work on this."
"The pricing is a little bit high, and it is causing the company to rethink renewal. If they could lower the pricing, that would be ideal."
"We still have critical threats coming into our environment and delivered to our users. When we compare it with other solutions, these other solutions can already detect those threats."
"Barracuda has shown difficulty in providing us with the solutions we sought."
"Spam is not always detected, and it should be more automated. We have seen that some emails are allowed by these emails, which are then stopped by Microsoft."
"We are using the tool’s 400 model which does not offer accurate spam detection. We have also had performance issues with the tool."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway should add auto-remediation to improve the solution. Additionally, there are times when we have false positives and our general emails get locked, we have mentioned this to Barracuda."
"I would like the integration to be easier."
"Online support sometimes takes up to a week to get back to you."
"The biggest room for improvement would be the deployment. It will be hard for someone who doesn't understand the interface to deploy. If you understand it, you can find your way around the problems."
"It's difficult for me to talk about areas for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail because I'm the general manager of the company and I'm an engineer with knowledge about the solution, but I'm not deeply involved in its implementation. As I mentioned previously, Fortinet FortiMail is also being used within the company, and I'm happy with its functionality, but sometimes, attacks pass and avoid the Fortinet FortiMail filters, but those could be very sophisticated attacks. There could still be an improvement in the filtering feature of the solution, though the security of Fortinet FortiMail is okay for me because I believe you can't implement one hundred percent security in any solution. The initial setup for the solution also needs improvement. The setup is supposed to be simple, but then the customer starts to complain that some of the false positive emails are reaching quarantine, so my team has to configure it again. There have been instances when Fortinet FortiMail rejects valid emails because some of the service partners of the customer have not been configured accurately, so the system considered valid mails as attacks to be quarantined, so aside from improving the filters, there should also be an improvement in the categorization of emails in the server. My team has to modify the configuration so that valid emails could pass and for Fortinet FortiMail to correctly filter the SPAM traffic. A feature that could be added to Fortinet FortiMail in its next release is advanced AI, so it can analyze and decide accurately on which mail is valid and which mail is SPAM."
"I would like it if the solution could be more affordable."
"The sandboxing features are not well done in Fortinet FortiMail, making it an area of improvement."
"They should add a lot of threat-intelligence feeds from different sources - not only from one source (FortiGuard)."
"The solution could improve by making the UI more user-friendly and increasing spam and threat detection capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The regular pricing was initially very reasonable, but three years ago, Barracuda revised their price list and SKUs, resulting in a significant doubling of the standard prices."
"This is one of the major points for integrating this solution in any organization. Barracuda Email Security Gateway needs to make it a bit more tolerable for customers because it is increasing every year. They should create a plan for reducing the cost."
"It is a cost-effective and relatively cheap solution as compared to others. Our customers have a yearly subscription. We do have a few customers with monthly subscriptions, but they have cloud-based Email protection, which is a different type of solution. Both solutions are very good."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is an affordable solution that caters to small, midsize, and high-end businesses with great revenue."
"The pricing for the product is fine."
"There is an annual license required for this solution."
"We typically purchase a one or three-year license for Barracuda Email Security Gateway."
"The price of this solution is very high, but it's working fine."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"The product's licensing part depends on the number of mailboxes and the hard disk needed by customers. The cost of the license depends on the number of mailboxes and the number of emails."
"In the future I would like it if there's a possibility to lower the price of the bandwidth and UTM. It is quite expensive."
"I have no information on pricing for the competition because right now, my company is working only with Fortinet, but I can say that in general, the price for Fortinet FortiMail was accepted by the customers easily. The POC is also important when a customer is buying a solution. The customer wants to see how the product runs, and as Fortinet FortiMail is a stable product that runs without big issues, it has a bigger chance of getting chosen by customers over its competitors, even if its price may be a little higher. Pricing for the solution is competitive. Sometimes it's less, sometimes it's a little bit higher, but it isn't far from what other solutions charge."
"Compared to its competitors, Fortinet's products are available at a higher price range."
"9,000 Euro per annum for Fortinet Mail and sandbox."
"It is a fairly priced product, considering what it does. The product offers good value for the money users spend on it."
"The licensing model for this solution is better because it is based on the box and not the number of users."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Email Gateway (SEG) solutions are best for your needs.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
53%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Educational Organization
49%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway is very simple to use.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway should include ATP in the next release.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail?
The pricing of Fortinet FortiMail is cheaper compared to Cisco, which was quite expensive.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
The area that could use some improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is the integration process. I would like the integration to be easier.
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall, Barracuda Sentinel
FortiMail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Evolution Recruitment Solutions, Evans Delivery Company, Osoyoos Credit Union, Synovis Life Technologies, Camden County Technical Schools, DEK, Evans Delivery Company, Colgate Rochester Crozer, Hemmera, South Carolina Heart Center, Ferma Corporation, Major League Baseball (MLB), Healy Brothers Automotive Group
Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs. Fortinet FortiMail and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.