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Fortinet FortiMail vs Fortinet FortiMail Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
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Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Fortinet FortiMail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (4th)
Fortinet FortiMail Cloud
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Email (7th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Email Security
Cloud Email
 

Featured Reviews

Luis-Brown - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 8, 2023
Allows for easy reporting of problems, valuable anti-phishing, and anti-malware support
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 lacks proactivity in assisting us with preparing for potential threats before they occur. While they employ a substantial amount of threat intelligence to preemptively prevent incidents, their effectiveness diminishes when it comes to delivering proactive threat intelligence alerts from Microsoft. Their focus primarily revolves around managing the internal environment. On the other hand, my other vendor, Check Point, along with my membership in MS-ISAC, supplements me with this type of information. The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement. It is adequate, but it doesn't match the quality of Proofpoint or Mimecast. However, it comes close in effectiveness. Plus, if we're obtaining it for free, investing in the other products seems impractical.
Andras Solt - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 12, 2022
Reasonable pricing and good spam filtering but does not offer robust gatekeeping
The solution is primarily for mail security. We use it primarily for incoming and outgoing emails. We also use other products which are quite new for us. We just invested in GFI, and we use it also for the incoming email traffic to check with more antivirus monitoring The spam filtering is great.…
AbdulHannan - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 29, 2023
A reliable email security solution with deep integration capabilities and exceptionally strong support
During our deployment and in our day-to-day operations, we've encountered certain challenges with our email security setup. When a user or administrator needs to locate a specific email, it can be a time-sensitive issue. If an email administrator receives a query from a recipient or end user about undelivered or suspicious emails, the ability to quickly and easily locate the email in question, along with details about why it wasn't sent, is crucial. We've faced difficulties in ensuring that our reporting system is efficient and delivers this information promptly for administrators to address the issue promptly. Another challenge we've experienced is complexity. The email security solution should ideally be user-friendly and intuitive and it should offer straightforward access to settings and features. We encountered situations where our users have found the tool overly complex and difficult to learn quickly. This ease of use and user-friendliness is something we believe could be improved in FortiMail.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"The solution is very easy to use. All you have to do is to assign the license to the end-user and it's done. The customer will only have the feature activated, and the solution will monitor the emails to determine if they are a threat or not."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"Defender for 365 is a comprehensive cloud-based solution. The value of the cloud is that you aren't alone. Threat intelligence and analytics are shared in the cloud. We don't have to find the solution alone. If you face an unknown threat with traditional solutions like Trend Micro and Symantec, you need to open a case and send your information to them to analyze forensically and identify the source of the attack."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications."
"Fortinet’s support services are good."
"This excellent email gateway minimizes spam, inspects suspicious emails and isolates infected attachments with little administrative effort."
"It is a scalable solution."
"It can block a lot of fake emails."
"I think the spamming feature is very valuable."
"A full-featured email gateway solution that contains security threats reliably."
"The number of false positives is minimal."
"The solution is very, very stable."
"The encryption features are most valuable to us."
"FortiMail Cloud is very fast."
"The deployment is simple."
"I am impressed with the tool's ability to setup rules and destinations. It also helps to monitor suspicious items."
"The most valuable feature is the advanced threat protection."
"Content disarming and analysis are essential features in our email security setup"
"This is a solid email monitoring and security system that learns and maintains a two-way dialog with email system administrators."
"If there is a problem somewhere Fortinet can act on it immediately. That is very important."
 

Cons

"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's Mac functionality requires improvement to deliver the same level of protection found on Windows devices."
"The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"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 logging information is sometimes not clear or easy to understand."
"Limited ability to upgrade hardware may lead to some performance issues that might otherwise be improved."
"The web console management interface could be improved."
"The only drawback to this solution is that the firmware is frequently updated, and each update results in downtime."
"A room for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is that it only has a hardware version. I also didn't find the solution scalable, so that's another area for improvement."
"In the Latin America market, some spam messages use Portuguese language. Some clearly spam messages would be better identified by the anti-spam if not for the language."
"Maybe FortiMail's integration could be better."
"The solution lacks to provide more visibility when there is a problem, and it needs to be tracked."
"This solution is slow and it should be made faster."
"Its GUI needs improvement."
"The URL filtering and handling should be enhanced because it doesn't support all languages. I believe that this would be easy to enhance in the future."
"The downside of this solution is that it is difficult to implement policies on FortiMail."
"It is slightly difficult to configure FortiMail in the cloud with Exchange on-premise, especially the quarantine mailbox access for end-users."
"This ease of use and user-friendliness is something we believe could be improved in FortiMail."
"Networking should be simplified."
"The tool's UI can be simple since it's cluttered now and you can't understand where you are going. It's not obvious to find out the menus or things that you are looking to find."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."
"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 know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"The product is expensive."
"This is a good solution and value for the money."
"In terms of licensing, we are using a virtual machine license for the single virtual server which it runs on. Doing it this way enables us to cut costs by only licensing FortiMail for our exact use case. If you need to expand in future, you can later buy extra licenses per virtual machine."
"We paid approximately $30,000 for the solution. It is less expensive than some other solutions. We have one license that carries all the features that we wanted."
"Pricing is based on initial license purchase and use volume."
"FortiMail has extra charges for installation, configuration, and project management."
"The solution is reasonably priced compared to one of its competitors."
"Fortinet FortiMail has an annual license agreement."
"The tool is very expensive."
"The price of this solution could be more competitive."
"When we're talking about pricing, other products have about the same price. That is normal."
"It's on a subscribed basis."
"It should cost around $60,000. We bought it as a bundle, so everything comes together in the license. That is standard."
"A license for our company using FortiMail and FortiCare (filtering and support) was $4000."
"The product's price is reasonable."
"You only have to purchase one license for multiple participants."
"The licensing is for three years. In the beginning, we did not pay monthly, it was paid once for three years."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
49%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Hospitality Company
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?
The pricing is reasonable since it comes integrated with our Office 365 license.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detec...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail?
Compared to its competitors, Fortinet's products are available at a higher price range. The free or open source in th...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
The tool does what it is supposed to do, so there is nothing I want in the tool. The product's price is an area with ...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiMail Cloud?
Content disarming and analysis are essential features in our email security setup
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail Cloud?
The pricing depends on various factors, including the type of licenses and subscriptions you have procured. The cost ...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail Cloud?
During our deployment and in our day-to-day operations, we've encountered certain challenges with our email security ...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
FortiMail
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiMail vs. Fortinet FortiMail Cloud and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.