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Fortinet FortiMail vs SonicWall Email Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
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Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Fortinet FortiMail
Ranking in Email Security
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonicWall Email Security
Ranking in Email Security
32nd
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 15.9%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiMail is 7.2%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Email Security is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Luis-Brown - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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.
Jasmit Singh Juneja - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy-to-deploy platform with efficient cyber security features
According to our customers, the product's most valuable feature is the ability to detect spam and reduce phishing emails. A lot of unproductive emails are blocked at the gateway, improving their work productivity for them. The customers feel secure as malicious content, such as viruses, gets blocked before reaching them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency."
"Our customers are satisfied with Defender for 365 because Microsoft products are easy to use and customize to meet the client's needs. Everything is in one place, so we can adjust policies as needed for phishing, DLP, ATP, or any other security features that our clients want to apply."
"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."
"The number of false positives is minimal."
"When combining this solution with other Fortinet products, such as FortiGate, it integrates well and provides a comprehensive protection package."
"Clean user interface and good sandbox."
"The most valuable features of this solution are anti-spam, sender reputation, and antivirus."
"Its performance is very good and it is stable."
"Fortinet FortiMail has a lot of valuable features. It works great. It also has an antivirus feature. Support for Fortinet FortiMail was also great when my team wanted to block some geographic IPs, but couldn't figure out how to do it. The support team provided clear communication on how to resolve that issue. Another valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is SPAM filtering which tells you how many spammy emails you've received. Based on my current use cases, I'm happy with Fortinet FortiMail."
"After implementing FortiMail, the spam, and malicious emails we receive have significantly reduced, making it much simpler to manage."
"The spam filtering is great."
"Beside a few issues with specificity in the email protection controls, this product is very good at handling email security."
"The most valuable feature of SonicWall Email Security is the blocking of emails using keywords. If there are any particular keywords in the subject, that we want to block from receiving from a particular person we can do it. Additionally, the blocking of emails is easy. we can release that one and we can block some of the keywords also like that."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"This solution provides very good email security that protects us against spamming and malware."
"The most valuable feature is that it protects from spam."
"According to our customers, the product's most valuable feature is the ability to detect spam and reduce phishing emails."
"The product is easy to manage in terms of configurations."
"The most valuable features are the anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-virus, and anti-spoofing."
 

Cons

"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get a lot of information on integrations with such apps for security and authentication."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"There is room for improvement in terms of reporting."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"I need a stable update in the product that stays for a long time instead of having to deal with frequent updates."
"Such kinds of things, raised from the point from the objective actually, we are using Fortinet FortiMail. We don't find any kinds of challenge or difficulties, but Fortinet FortiMail is more efficient and more effective for us. I don't know for other client, but for us, Fortinet FortiMail is very effective Like, for instance, if it is possible, let's say some kind of high threat is actually encountered if it could be possible to SMBs in our smartphone, or mobile apps, kinds of thing, if Fortinet FortiMail is available to monitor the thing using from our mobile phone from our smartphone. If such kinds of things are truly included, it will be more or good for us."
"Sometimes, authentic emails get blocked by the solution's firewall."
"Limited ability to upgrade hardware may lead to some performance issues that might otherwise be improved."
"The logging information is sometimes not clear or easy to understand."
"What's missing in Fortinet FortiMail is some sandbox information for some of the emails. It's probably configuration-based, where it could be configured on some emails. For example, there was malware in some emails that weren't detected in some of the Fortinet FortiMail sessions, but it should have been configured from my company's end to better catch scam emails, but overall, the solution is okay. At the moment, my company is okay with the current Fortinet FortiMail offerings, but in the past, because of a lack of understanding, my team wasn't able to quickly implement the geographical IP blocking feature. It was time-consuming to implement that feature, but that wasn't a fault of Fortinet FortiMail. The issue was from my team's end, but just by emailing the support team, that issue was resolved, so right now, there isn't any additional feature I'd like added to Fortinet FortiMail."
"The security products stop their operations once the subscription period expires. It is a wrong policy. If I trust a product, it has to continue working even after expiry. It should have a grace period of 30, 40, or 60 days. We can extend the subscription during those days. In some places, subscription extensions can take up to six weeks. During the renewal process, the support offered by the company is very poor. It also reduces security. We pay for the expired period but do not get protection during those times. The user of Fortinet FortiMail should have a feature to see spam names."
"ortiMail has some latency issues and sometimes takes time to receive emails."
"The platform's control panel needs enhancement."
"We would like to see more information on a dashboard about what is happening when it comes to spamming and malware."
"The protection level for email security isn't 100%. I'm still getting some spam and junk mail."
"The reporting needs improvement."
"The technical support from the company is not always very good at solving issues, but they offer access to a good community of users where problems are easily solved."
"SonicWall Email Security could improve by making the file blocking and the release feature easier to use"
"A lot of spoofed emails are still coming to the end-user, so the configuration for this option needs to be improved."
"They need well-trained partners in Nigeria."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution saves money so we have seen a return on investment."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"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."
"9,000 Euro per annum for Fortinet Mail and sandbox."
"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."
"The fees for Fortinet FortiMail can be complicated. However, overall the pricing is fair."
"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."
"FortiMail has extra charges for installation, configuration, and project management."
"The solution is quite pricey compared to other competitors in the market."
"Price-wise, the solution is not far from Microsoft ATP. So, it is affordable."
"Fortinet FortiMail is inexpensive."
"I rate the application’s pricing a five out of ten."
"The overall price of SonicWall Email Security should be reduced and there should be an option to purchase one or two licenses more instead of their current policy of bulk increases only. There should be more flexibility in the licensing model. Each license cost approximately $33 annually."
"The cost is cheaper than Sophos. I would rate it as five out of ten."
"We have a two-year license subscription and the price is very high."
"The platform offers a yearly license."
"When compared with Cisco, it is very well priced. Cisco is very expensive."
"Our customers purchase the solution's yearly license."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

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?
Barracuda is less expensive compared to FortiMail. FortiMail is mid-range, and Cisco is priced higher.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
There are multiple areas for improvement, such as user visibility, which is less compared to Cisco's secure appliance...
What do you like most about SonicWall Email Security?
According to our customers, the product's most valuable feature is the ability to detect spam and reduce phishing ema...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall Email Security?
The platform offers a yearly license. I charge additionally for deployment services. I rate the pricing a six out of ...
What needs improvement with SonicWall Email Security?
The platform's control panel needs enhancement. At present, many control options are allotted to individual users. It...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
FortiMail
Dell SonicWALL Email Security Platform, SonicWall Hosted Email Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Star Kay White, Locala Community Partnerships
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiMail vs. SonicWall Email Security and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.