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Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs Symantec Messaging Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 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

Barracuda Email Security Ga...
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
DMARC Authentication Software (2nd)
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
Girish Vijay - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and reasonably priced solution that performs well and has a very good malware database
Since Symantec merged with Broadcom, they might have lost some good technical engineers. Maybe that’s the reason why the product is performing poorly. When we have a good marketing and sales team, even though our product cannot perform, we will sell it at a high price because of the buzzwords. However, at the end of the day, the product should perform. Most of the products might not perform. Symantec is a very good product, but the services are basic. I rate the technical features of the product a nine out of ten. However, I would rate the services provided by the solution a six out of ten. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is very simple to use."
"The performance is good."
"The most valuable feature of the Barracuda Email Security Gateway is the cloud ATP functionality not available on the on-premise version. Most of the zero-day attacks can be mitigated with ATP. Additionally, the reporting functionality is good."
"We have found some of the valuable features to be how easy the solution is to configure, the graphic support, and the intuitive dashboard."
"With the cloud service, one of the nice things about Barracuda is the quarantine service. It gives the ability for our users to go in and check what has been quarantined, and then connect with our IT staff to release anything that should be fine so that we can test it before we release."
"Before this solution, we didn't have any separate feature for protecting our emails. We used to only have a firewall but now we have email security. It has a graphical interface and we can see the log every time. We can see that the performance is fine."
"The product safeguards user mail for gateway defense, data protection, business continuity, AI-based inbox defense, and automated threat detection and incident response."
"The most valuable feature of the Barracuda Email Security Gateway is the ATP."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the content filtering policies because the solution offers huge options for configuration, such as hardware manipulation, et cetera, and the dictionaries make the work easier."
"Symantec is a secure product."
"The anti-malware and spam features are valuable."
"It has very good capabilities for managing malware."
"The solution is highly customizable. You can make rules for domains and configure policies for spam or malware. Messaging Gateway is an on-prem solution, so it's useful for companies without a cloud presence."
"It is a solid and stable product."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
 

Cons

"We had an incident where we didn't want to receive any emails or spam from a certain site and email address. We selected the mail ID, and we send it to Barracuda for analysis to see if it's spam or something like that. As of now, we haven't gotten any update or notification as to what happened with it."
"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."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"Artificial intelligence improvement could be used to help block spam and phishing mail that is directly delivered to users."
"My customers were sending OPT bulk emails and Barracuda Email Security Gateway was not able to handle it. We have to go with another different solution, such FortiMail for the task. We are implementing these combinations of the Barracuda and FortiGate, for email security. The FortiGate FortiMail security gateway we use to send only the bulk email, not for receiving emails."
"There's a bit of configuration work that's needed with the DNS service provider, but other than that, everything else should be very smooth."
"Barracuda isn't catching everything. We're still getting quite a few phishing emails, so we're looking for something else."
"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."
"Messaging Gateway's advanced malware detection could be improved."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway can improve detection because most of them are false negatives or false positives that we are trying to troubleshoot. Additionally, we are having routing problems and they are somehow connected to DNS issues."
"The biggest problem is it's an on-prem product and we're trying to get out of having equipment in data centers."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
"The documentation could have more detailed examples of how to use the product in various situations. As more companies shift to the cloud, they could better integrate the on-prem and cloud versions through an on-prem client."
"In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature."
"What's lacking when you compare it with Proofpoint and other threat protection solutions is that it does the basic stuff, but we need more advanced threat handling."
"This product would benefit from better integration with Symantec Endpoint Protection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing fees are approximately $4,000 per year, and this includes updates for the antivirus and spam signatures."
"The licensing fees are part of a bundled support package that we pay for."
"The licensing cost is competitive, it's not too high and not too low."
"It is an expensive solution and I would rate it 5 out of 10."
"We paid for an annual license."
"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."
"The price of this solution is very high, but it's working fine."
"The price of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is approximately $17 per user annually."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"The cost of Symantec Messaging Gateway is too expensive in general. However, the appliance also includes the price of the license in the same bundle."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
52%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Government
3%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 needs improvement with Symantec Messaging Gateway?
The solution takes up a lot of memory. The system becomes slow. The performance must be improved.
What is your primary use case for Symantec Messaging Gateway?
We use the solution to secure our data and emails.
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall, Barracuda Sentinel
Symantec.cloud, Symantec Email Security.cloud
 

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
Doric, Joblink Plus, Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta, PPB Advisory, Slater & Gordon Lawyers, Sydney Adventist Hospital Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs. Symantec Messaging Gateway and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.