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Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway vs Proofpoint Email Protection comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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

Fortra's Clearswift Secure ...
Ranking in Email Security
31st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Digital Risk Protection (5th), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 5.9%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection5.9%
Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway1.4%
Other92.7%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

PC
Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Stable, but malware needs improvement and customer support is poor
They need to improve the malware in the product. I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support. The support is poor, the supplier takes a lot of time and it's expensive. We have some issues here when I contact the supplier, it takes a lot of time for them to get back to us but there's no solution. I am now looking at Symantec as a possible alternative.
Siva_Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Email defenses have reduced phishing incidents and protect sensitive data across our enterprise
As things are evolving and threats develop in unpredictable ways, Proofpoint must adopt AI solutions and agentic solutions more aggressively and provide them to customers as part of service offerings. Inbuilt AI solutions would add more value and make Proofpoint a more premium choice for customers. With the help of AI solutions, agentic AI, and generative AI capabilities, the product would be more efficient than it currently is. Filtering false positives is highly challenging because it is impossible for humans to identify which emails are genuine and which are spam. Proofpoint should focus more on this area with back-end agents or other tools. Proofpoint should decide which emails are genuine and which are spam so it is not a challenge for end users. When receiving an email, end users should not have to determine whether to respond or not. Proofpoint should not release such spam emails and should strictly block such spam and spoof emails based on connection IPs. Currently, false positives occur in the product, and while this occurs in every product, it is an area where Proofpoint can focus on improving and reducing false positives. One email is enough for an end user to be deceived and lose money, so addressing this area is critical.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Go for it! I think it's an excellent product with great technical support."
"Ability to create your own content-filtering policies with relative ease."
"We use a few features for web proxy, and another feature is the email content filter and malware for our internal policy in the email content."
"A stable solution."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted our organization as it has been deployed for more than five years, serving as a good SEG that protects our staff members before email hits their inboxes and filters out junk or spam, allowing users to spend significantly more time on real work rather than going through unnecessary emails."
"Provides better control over emails, especially those sent via Office 365 on the cloud."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by definitely lowering the amount of phishing or scam-type emails that our users were receiving, helping them focus more on their work rather than dealing with these types of fraudulent emails."
"Using Proofpoint Email Protection has successfully reduced the volume of emails that we need to review."
"There is no downtime."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a strong and reliable solution for defending against advanced email threats, especially phishing and targeted attacks."
"The targeted attack protection that we use has been great, as has the email filtering and the rules that we have set for Proofpoint."
"Proofpoint Email Protection provides visibility into people-based risk within my organization, and I am able to see which users have a higher risk rate."
 

Cons

"Malware needs improvement."
"FTP server and TRUST Manager functionality."
"I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The Secure Mail aspect should have an Outlook add-in, instead of an external dashboard that outside users have to access."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's interface is confusing and could be improved."
"I feel Proofpoint Email Protection can be improved by providing a better user experience."
"The largest complaint that we hear from our customers is that there is no local support."
"To improve Proofpoint Email Protection, I suggest improving the UI from the pod to align with the new admin.proofpoint.com interface, as the pod is still existing for a reason, but the interface is definitely outdated."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has a new approach to email security with its API feature. Currently, it only works with Office 365. In the future, it would be beneficial if it also works with Gmail, as Check Point is currently the only brand that has API email security for Gmail. It would be beneficial if Proofpoint Email Protection could add this integration, they would be more competitive with other vendors."
"The email DLP portion could be a bit easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Retailer
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise62
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
To improve Proofpoint Email Protection, I suggest breaking down the URL into one versus three different GUIs. Regarding Proofpoint Email Protection's AI capabilities, I think its governance and sec...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
My main use case for Proofpoint Email Protection includes phishing emails, spam, URL isolation, and training. I utilize the email protect portal to ensure that none of our employees in any of the b...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway vs. Proofpoint Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.