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Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs Proofpoint Email Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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...
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
DMARC Authentication Software (4th)
Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (2nd), Security Awareness Training (2nd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is 6.2%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 21.6%, up from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

RobertSmith15 - PeerSpot reviewer
Email security offers superior protection with good personalization
I have experienced the Barracuda team as very cooperative, and they are readily available for calls with technical support via email. I have had no issues with ongoing support throughout the product's lifecycle. Assistance was provided to me when transferring archived information from a legacy email service. They also recommended an additional service to streamline the process, making it as easy as possible.
AhmedRamadan - PeerSpot reviewer
Optimize email security with effective sandboxing and auto Pull for quarantine
Proofpoint is used as an email security gateway for big enterprises, primarily for their on-premises servers. Many customers also use it alongside Office 365 Proofpoint offers a complete solution for email security with features like DLP, email archiving, and encryption. The most valuable…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We find the product to be scalable."
"It is lightweight, and we can filter all of our inbound and outbound emails. We have controls for rate control, quarantine, and tagging. We can see whether an email is a spam email or a phishing email."
"The solution is scalable."
"Eliminating inbox clutter creates an opportunity to be more productive instead of wasting time manually sorting through spam."
"The protection from Barracuda Email Security Gateway is essentially a sandboxing solution."
"It can scale."
"I appreciate that the product provides account takeover protection."
"Barracuda is good at keeping the garbage from reaching your inbox."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"It's a mature product. It does a good job in detection."
"I would recommend Proofpoint Email Protection to others because it is useful, simple to use, and provides whatever is required."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The solution offers very good flexibility. You can blacklist or whitelist with ease."
"They have customized security rules, mature rules, anti-virus protection, as well as email authentication similar to SPF, DKIM, and DMARC."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is stable enough and does its job of virus, malware, and email scam detection. Setting it up is not too complicated."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to remove bad messages that were delivered, prior to being classified as unwanted."
 

Cons

"Its integration with other solutions can be improved. There should be integration for telemetry information, system information, and other types of information with other solutions. Barracuda currently doesn't have that. Barracuda has its own platform. Its integration with firewalls is quite good, and it communicates really well with firewalls, but I have not seen any other integration. Based on what I know, it does have an API at the backend, but I have not used it."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway can improve email detection. We have some emails that are bypassing the threat scanning. There are some impersonation emails passing through."
"Barracuda isn't catching everything. We're still getting quite a few phishing emails, so we're looking for something else."
"The downsides of the solution stem from the fact that it is an expensive product, and one may see too many false positives when using it, making them both areas where improvements are required."
"We are using the tool’s 400 model which does not offer accurate spam detection. We have also had performance issues with the tool."
"The reports are standard, and it would be nice to be able to customize them."
"There are limited administration controls that should be improved."
"Solution requires regular checking to ensure it's 'keeping up' with spam."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is an expensive solution."
"The price could be improved."
"The solution should add post-sales training."
"Proofpoint should have better integration with complex environments that need more than one instance of Proofpoint, as there are issues with nested instances."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The flexibility of the solution can be improved."
"It became very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances, and I may advise Proofpoint to adjust marketing solutions based on each country."
"Unfortunately, the whole product is going downhill right now, ever since they were sold to Thoma Bravo. We're constantly having problems with stability and the product in general."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay between $8 and $10 USD per user per month."
"The pricing for the product is fine."
"The solution requires a license and we pay annually."
"Compared to other products, this solution is quite affordable."
"The licensing cost is competitive, it's not too high and not too low."
"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."
"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."
"As far as advanced email security systems, this product is mid-range on the pricing scale."
"It is on a yearly basis. Their floor for SMB doesn't matter. The user count is 100 users and below at $2,500 a year. Its cost is higher than other solutions. It is probably about 20% to 30% higher than what you would get with Microsoft. There are no additional costs. All costs are factored in. It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market."
"We sell annual licenses for this solution."
"The licensing model for Proofpoint Email Protection is simple. It's based on the number of users. Price-wise, Proofpoint Email Protection is a five out of ten because it's a pretty expensive solution."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees."
"They are competitively priced, but I have been forced to get quotes for other solutions now because they haven't been responding to requests to do the work that we would like them to do."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

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 Proofpoint Email Protection?
In terms of pricing, it is okay compared to others. I would say it is normal. Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
It became very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances, and I may advise Proofpoint to adjust marketing solutions based on each country.
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall, Barracuda Sentinel
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Cofense PhishMe, Proofpoint Digital Protection
 

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
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs. Proofpoint Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.