Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Fortinet FortiMail vs Sophos Email comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
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
Sophos Email
Ranking in Email Security
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Office 365 Protection (3rd)
 

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 Sophos Email is 3.1%, down from 3.8% 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.
NaveedAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good identity proxy features, but sandboxing and spam control features could be improved
Sophos gives you a feature set to manage your on-premises firewall on the cloud. I just integrated my on-premises firewall into the cloud, and I can manage the tool through the cloud as well if needed. I recommend using Sophos Email as a proxy. For email gateways, I advise choosing mature products with rich feature sets, like Trend Micro or CrowdStrike. The solution's integration with other tools is very simple. I easily integrated Sophos Email with my Active Directory. My organization needs a WAF with a limited feature set, which we use through Sophos. Purchasing additional WAF will be costly, but I get sandboxing and WAF features free of cost with Sophos, which is included in the license. Overall, I rate the solution a seven 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

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"The risk level notifications are most valuable. We get to know what kind of intrusion or attack is there, and we can fix a problem on time."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"We use Microsoft Defender for its ability to integrate with existing business technologies, which is beneficial for protecting business areas."
"The product helps users handle security challenges as it offers prefiltering options and does relatively good incident reporting."
"This solution is good for small and medium enterprise companies."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiMail are its virus outbreak prevention and FortiSandbox integration."
"The important feature is the application control, which makes administration much easier. It also has an intrusion prevention feature. There's also the wireless functionality, which works well with Huawei devices."
"The anti-spam features are valuable."
"Clean user interface and good sandbox."
"The solution is very reliable and very stable."
"A full-featured email gateway solution that contains security threats reliably."
"The feature of Sophos Email that we find most effective for detecting suspicious emails is primarily based on their signatures."
"Good VIP protection, time of click protection and the Sandstorm feature."
"When you say email security, it's about everything, incoming email, outgoing email, spam, phishing emails, unwanted marketing emails. You can set rules, but the main feature of Sophos Email is to make sure you don't get hacked. 95% of people who are hacked do not get hacked by typing the router password. They are hacked from the inside out, which means they send you a document that is a zero-day attack, you open it, nothing happens, but technically the attack is running in the background of your computer. This is how they gain access to your PC."
"It has enhanced our approach to tackling malware and spam. It is a reliable product with a good user interface."
"I have found Sophos Email to be scalable."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the anti-spam detection filter. Its threat email intelligence features help to identify email data."
"The speed and stability were fine."
"There are many features that are important, but among those, the spam protection feature is very valuable. It help us to safeguard the email against phishing and ensures that there is maximum security enabled for our communication processes. It has a huge role in protecting our emails from potential threats."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could improve by giving customers information on techniques to prevent threats. For example, information about best practices on how to protect their own devices against hackers and scammers, such as educational information or training. This would help others have a better understanding of cyber security. Additionally, there can be more security features added."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"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."
"Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities."
"Configuring the default strategies and policies in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps generates a lot of noise and false positives."
"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 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data."
"Fortinet FortiMail could improve general user management. There are no password policies for users."
"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."
"I don't know if it is possible, but I would like to see Artificial Intelligence and machine learning introduced."
"The web console management interface could be improved."
"Fortinet FortiMail should allow more flexibility with the content rules."
"Sometimes it takes a little bit too long to determine if an email is good or not. If they could shorten that time span, it'd be so much better. It does delay our email, which does not make users happy. That said, I would have to say we have not been blacklisted for quite a while now."
"They should add a lot of threat-intelligence feeds from different sources - not only from one source (FortiGuard)."
"The product could incorporate even more artificial intelligence to enhance the functionality, but it is a competetive and intelligent product as it."
"The product could include all the essential features and capabilities, similar to the on-premise, server-based version."
"However, the setup was tricky, particularly with the DNS routing between Microsoft Exchange Online and Sophos cloud services. It took me about four attempts to get it working correctly. Despite that, Sophos Email does everything we need, so we don't require any additional capabilities now."
"The solution has not found a way to block certain kinds of phishing emails."
"The solution's sandboxing and spam control features could be improved."
"Enhancing rule creation and customization features would provide users with greater control over their email security settings."
"The solution's technical support is slow and unresponsive. You need to book time in order to get support."
"The tool has some performance issues and bugs, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Sophos Email could better detect fake emails, especially when the domain names are similar. It needs to improve spotting spoofed domains, like when one letter differs in a domain name. It also needs to incorporate AI detection. Barracuda detects suspicious emails better. However, malware scanning is better in Sophos Email."
 

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."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"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 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."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"The product is very expensive."
"Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
"The annual cost is $55,000."
"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."
"There is either an annual or six-month charge to use this solution. Fortinet FortiMail is cheaper than Proofpoint or Cisco Security, or other email security appliances."
"The product's licensing part depends on the number of mailboxes and the hard disk needed by customers. The cost of the license depends on the number of mailboxes and the number of emails."
"The pricing is good."
"FortiMail has extra charges for installation, configuration, and project management."
"My company has a three-year license for Fortinet FortiMail, including the support, but I'm not so sure of how much the solution costs because I'm not part of the procurement team. What's more important to me is the functionality and stability of Fortinet FortiMail. In terms of Fortinet FortiMail licensing, the cost is calculated based on company requirements. For example, it's based on the features you need for your environment, on capacity, how many CPUs you have, etc."
"You need to pay additional fees for premium support."
"Licensing is paid on a yearly basis."
"The product is cheaper compared to other solutions."
"Sophos Email is neither cheap nor expensive."
"I rate the product's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The platform is inexpensive. It offers a cost-effective licensing model. We purchase its yearly license."
"Sophos Email is a little expensive for us, but it's necessary. We have a subscription and renew it every three years."
"There is an additional fee for their central managed console."
"Sophos Email is priced lower than its competitors."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
7%
Government
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?
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 Sophos Email?
The solution's identity proxy feature is very good and reliable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos Email?
The pricing is affordable, so I’d rate it around a four out of ten on the pricing scale. We pay about fifty pounds a ...
What needs improvement with Sophos Email?
However, the setup was tricky, particularly with the DNS routing between Microsoft Exchange Online and Sophos cloud s...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
FortiMail
Sophos Email Security
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Del Monte Foods, Terra Verde, spicerhaart, RIVERLITE, Dataprise, SureBridge, Reed's School, Sayfol International School
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiMail vs. Sophos Email and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.