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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
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 October 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway is 1.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 5.9%, down from 7.5% 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 Gateway1.3%
Other92.8%
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

"A stable solution."
"Ability to create your own content-filtering policies with relative ease."
"Go for it! I think it's an excellent product with great technical support."
"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."
"There is no downtime."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is stable enough and does its job of virus, malware, and email scam detection. Setting it up is not too complicated."
"The pricing is great, it has a nice interface, the features are very good, the stability is very good, and the solution is scalable."
"On a day-to-day basis, Proofpoint Email Protection has saved me about 50% of my workload, which has been a real godsend."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a good product, and its most beneficial feature is the Threat Response Auto-Pull. I also like that it's an integrated email security solution."
"The most valuable feature is the option to edit the inbound security."
"In terms of detection of spam, malware, and virus, the detection is 99.9% accurate."
"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."
 

Cons

"I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support."
"Malware needs improvement."
"FTP server and TRUST Manager functionality."
"The setup requires expertise. It needs someone with experience on managing it, and I would rate the implementation as needing someone experienced."
"It has too many screens. It is kind of a conglomeration of products. In other words, they built product A, product B, and product C, and they are yet to integrate them into a single administrative console. I would certainly like to see a more seamless administrative interface. I would also like to see them include more bang for the buck, by including features like email fraud protection, rather than making their product so piecemeal, where you are buying little pieces. I agree with the idea of having multiple tiers or layers, but maybe as small, medium, and large, as opposed to an a la carte menu."
"The incident reporting on offer needs to be improved. It's lacking right now. It should be on the platform somewhere."
"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."
"Regarding improvements or enhancements in Proofpoint Email Protection, I find the platform somewhat chaotic. It has too many different sections that perform the same function, which is very confusing."
"The reporting section could be enhanced. I like some reports but if they could allow us to create custom reports with more flexibility it would enhance the reports more."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has a limitation regarding third-party tool integration and SIEM integration."
"There are user interface complexities that require integration with a SOC team, which needs time and training."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"The tool's pricing depends on the customer's preference, offering options for an annual license or a monthly subscription. The cost varies based on factors such as the number of users and specific requirements. Overall, the pricing is competitive."
"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
"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."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Retailer
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
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 Enterprise24
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: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.