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

 

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
30th
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
111
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (2nd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 6.3%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection6.3%
Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway1.2%
Other92.5%
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
Principal Consultant at Infosys
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

"A stable solution."
"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."
"Go for it! I think it's an excellent product with great technical support."
"It's a mature product. It does a good job in detection."
"A lot of automation is present, and the quarantining of malicious emails and these processes are good and really help us in the investigation as well as the remediation part."
"At this point in time, there's nothing that needs to be changed or improved in the tool."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by reducing the number of cyber email attacks we are receiving compared to the past."
"The most valuable features of Proofpoint Email Protection are the performance from being on the cloud."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the blocking capabilities, it blocks a lot of potential threats."
"It's one of the top products out there."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization because it has done its job; the company we support does not have any sort of vulnerability attacks by having it in place."
 

Cons

"FTP server and TRUST Manager functionality."
"Malware needs improvement."
"I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has a lot of false positives, and the infrastructure is a bit complex."
"While Proofpoint Email Protection has good AI capabilities, there is room for improvement as the AI forensics preview tab doesn't always summarize things correctly."
"I have noticed some lagging and issues with the Proofpoint Protection Server, which is not the cloud solution or the Admin Portal solution. It seems to lag quite a lot when we try to work with folders, quarantine folders, or configure anything in there."
"Some of the old portal features of Proofpoint Email Protection are missing in the new portal, so some of the settings could be modernized."
"However, for low-size or mid-level organizations, it can be challenging in terms of cost, management, and resource utilization, which could be a problem for low-level enterprises."
"Filtering false positives is highly challenging because it is impossible for humans to identify which emails are genuine and which are spam."
"Phishing detection could improve further to match some of the capabilities offered by competitors."
"I chose 9 out of 10 because it is based on the customization of exporting logs, and the user experience of the rule-based alerting and the portal is slightly lacking, which is why I deducted that one point."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
"Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees."
"It is expensive."
"Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"They are competitively priced, but I have been forced to get quotes for other solutions now because they haven't been responding to requests to do the work that we would like them to do."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
"The licensing model for Proofpoint Email Protection is simple. It's based on the number of users. Price-wise, Proofpoint Email Protection is a five out of ten because it's a pretty expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Retailer
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise62
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
The downside is I feel the vendor support is a little lacking and should be more responsive. The technical support is not up to the mark.
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
I am leading this security domain, and my L1 and L2s have been using Proofpoint Email Protection and other modules of Proofpoint Email Protection for more than three years.We are currently working ...
 

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: August 2026.
910,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.