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Darktrace vs IRONSCALES comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (22nd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (12th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (13th), Access Management (12th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (8th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (2nd)
Darktrace
Ranking in Email Security
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (2nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (1st), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (1st), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (9th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th), AI Observability (7th)
IRONSCALES
Ranking in Email Security
13th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (19th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 1.8%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IRONSCALES is 2.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Darktrace1.8%
IRONSCALES2.0%
Cloudflare One1.7%
Other94.5%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
Pasan Jayarathna - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Cyberwell Solution
Monitoring has improved data loss detection and now spots abnormal internal file transfers quickly
In my understanding, the best feature Darktrace offers is the identification of copying files, which acts as a DLP, and it is a main concern for companies because users sometimes copy data outside without knowing, especially those without a technical background. When I mention the DLP-like feature and file copying detection, the alerts have been very timely, as we get an alert within a couple of minutes, which is excellent. Even if some developers are working after hours and copying files, our SOC team detects this, and most of the time they call us so we can identify the users. The alerts are quite accurate and proactive.
reviewer2770017 - PeerSpot reviewer
Email Security Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Has improved threat analysis by providing clear email correspondence history and reporting tools
The best features IRONSCALES offers are the investigation tabs, headers, and correspondence history, which stand out the most for me. The investigation tabs are valuable for my work because reporting goes a long way in terms of playbooks and having a full investigation. The investigation tab knows exactly how to put the information in a way that makes it very easy for reports to get done fast. Security awareness training is a big part of IRONSCALES. The platform offers a broad spectrum in terms of what campaigns can be run for security awareness for users as well as reporting back on how users interact with their mails and understanding where the vulnerabilities lie. IRONSCALES has positively impacted my organization by making email security simple in terms of controlling mails, understanding where the threats are, and protecting the organization itself.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable solution."
"The simplicity of the solution is its valuable features as almost no effort was needed to learn the configurations. It is also one of the cheapest firewalls available in this category."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform removes the risk of exposing the applications to the public."
"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."
"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."
"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."
"For Cloudflare Access, I am using the free plan...The most valuable feature is their protection."
"Cloudflare Access is a stable solution."
"It is a very simple product to use."
"Darktrace has helped our organization be secure from network spam and attacks."
"I am impressed with the product's ability to give insights into network traffic."
"You can have a one-person IT team and with Darktrace, you can get notification of potential threats that are incoming or are already happening on the network."
"The most valuable feature is the alerts. The alerts are meaningful. The event rolls up into meaningful and actionable alerts rather than just being noise."
"The most valuable features of Darktrace are its full capabilities, as you have visibility of everything happening on your network, emails, and SaaS applications."
"The solution is stable. We've never had any problems with it."
"I find the complete portfolio to be excellent."
"By having an integrated approach of combining email security and employee awareness training, they've hit the nail on the head."
"The best features of IRONSCALES are that most alerts are validated through AI, which reduces the fatigue of alerts that need to be worked on by the team handling the alerts investigation part."
"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to set it up, install, and manage the product."
"The report function through Gmail is probably the most valuable feature. The next most valuable features are simulation and training."
"There is buzz around phishing awareness training. When I make a campaign, all of a sudden people in our organization are talking, thinking, and wondering about it. Therefore, it keeps people on their toes. That is perfect because it does exactly what we want it to do."
"IRONSCALES offers a sense of security and confidence from being well protected."
"I couldn't believe that it could filter out 35% of the email."
"Their anti-phishing platform is absolutely fantastic. The automated AI piece is amazing, and their technical support is fantastic."
 

Cons

"They don't have a person to provide support for customers using the solution under their free plan."
"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
"Automation could be improved where you can easily add a TLS and SSL certificate to an application or web app if the developer did not include it."
"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."
"The response time for support must be reduced."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"Darktrace needs significant improvement in its notification capabilities."
"The technical support is not very good."
"One thing that I would like to look at going forward is to have a fully automated network infrastructure that is monitored automatically real-time, and that gives me this kind of capability where I would be able to look at my network at any given time and see the state of my network. With Darktrace, at the moment, I have to almost put in a date and tell them that want you to give me data from this date to this date. I don't want that. I want a fast solution in which it doesn't matter when I log into the application. Whenever I log in, I must be able to see my network and run a report. In other words, if I go in now and I say, "Give me a full report of what happened today, it must be able to give me that. It mustn't just be limited to a seven-day period, for argument's sake. It must be able to give me real-time and day-to-day tracking of what has happened within my network."
"The interface is too mathematical and it should be simplified."
"The Darktrace Mobile app needs improvement as it's currently limited in functionality, and the learning AI takes a while to adapt to new devices, flagging new users as threats for up to a month before recognizing them as regular network users."
"I believe their network monitoring device licensing module could use some improvement."
"I'd love them to see maybe covering the cloud a bit more."
"There is no dedicated salesperson in Egypt, and having one would help to improve focus on this market."
"I would really prefer to drill down more on correspondence history. It provides detailed background information to actually understand what's going on."
"There is a feature called Account Takeover, which isn't what I want it to be able to do."
"The user interface could be more attractive to users. The UI is not brightened or appealing."
"The tool supports 15 to 16 languages, but the content it uses in the training in Spanish has certain limitations."
"There's room for improvement in the campaign management. IRONSCALES has many built-in templates that I use, but you can also build templates from scratch. However, the interface for creating custom templates needs to be updated."
"In addition to integrated training, they should also have personalized training that you don't have to do as part of a phishing campaign or a simulation."
"IRONSCALES should bundle more features together instead of separating them and charging additional licensing fees."
"Even though they have been continuously improving it, it is not 100% there. We have had a few incidents where legitimate emails were getting blocked, and we had to manually remove those emails from quarantine. It is 90% effective or accurate because, on rare occasions, some emails from customers were not getting delivered. In one or two instances, their emails got blocked by IRONSCALES, and we had to manually remove the emails from quarantine. I would like them to improve their algorithm to avoid flagging genuine emails as malicious. I would also like to be able to whitelist certain email addresses. I'd love to be able to whitelist a particular customer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The price of the solution is not cheap. It is not a one-time purchase, there is a subscription that needs to be paid every one to five years depending on your choice. It is expensive but you can reduce the price by only using the services that you want."
"It is expensive. I don't have the price for other competitors."
"When it comes to large installations, it can be expensive, but for small accounts it's fine."
"Darktrace is expensive. You can pay for the license yearly."
"There is an annual license to use Darktrace."
"Prior to negotiating, Darktrace offered their appliance and service for $80,000 per year."
"They are too expensive compared with other vendors."
"The cost of the solution can be reduced to make it more appealing to customers."
"As compared to everything else we looked at, it was good. It was the best value for the dollars."
"There is an installation cost. Since we have this as a managed service, we pay for licensing and the managed service itself. Other than that, there are no additional costs."
"Considering the value it provides, it is definitely worth the cost. We don't have to do manual analysis and remediation of phishing emails, which saves us a lot of hours. Its licensing is based on the number of users being supported and the number of email addresses being protected. I'm not aware of any additional costs."
"IRONSCALES is an expensive solution."
"We pay $3000 plus a little more a year for the number of employees we have, and we're not even that big. The solution is at the higher end in terms of cost. It's not the most expensive product, but I would say it's worth the price if you have a high volume of email traffic. In our case, the solution has inspected over 162,000 emails between three and four months. It saved us a lot of time and money. It's a worthwhile investment because a bad actor only has to succeed once; we must defend against everything in our business. IRONSCALES offers a sense of security and confidence from being well protected."
"The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution."
"They are pretty much the same as all the other competitors in the market."
"I don't know about its pricing because I don't run the budget or pay the bills, but if it was extortionate, we probably would be looking to scrap it, and because we are not, I assume its price is okay."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing u...
Which is better - SentinelOne or Darktrace?
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Darktrace?
Concerning pricing for the product, I would say it is somewhat expensive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IRONSCALES?
While I don't specifically oversee the pricing details, I understand that IRONSCALES is in the range of similar solut...
What needs improvement with IRONSCALES?
I would really prefer to drill down more on correspondence history. It provides detailed background information to ac...
What is your primary use case for IRONSCALES?
My main use case for IRONSCALES is the UI and the convenience of having detailed information available to me. A speci...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Irwin Mitchell, Open Energi, Wellcome Trust, FirstGroup plc, Virgin Trains, Drax, QUI! Group, DNK, CreaCard, Macrosynergy, Sisley, William Hill plc, Toyota Canada, Royal British Legion, Vitol, Allianz, KKR, AIRBUS, dpd, Billabong, Mclaren Group.
Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Darktrace vs. IRONSCALES and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,344 professionals have used our research since 2012.