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IRONSCALES vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security 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

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
IRONSCALES
Ranking in Email Security
18th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (18th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (8th)
Perception Point Advanced E...
Ranking in Email Security
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 13.5%, down from 19.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IRONSCALES is 2.0%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perception Point Advanced Email Security is 2.3%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
Orion Trist - PeerSpot reviewer
Saved us a big deal by catching malicious links and attachments sent directly to our staff and has also been helpful for educating our staff
It has helped immensely because it has gotten rid of malicious links and malicious attachments that have been targeted at our different staff members. It has definitely protected us on more than one occasion. Their integrated approach of combining email security and employee awareness training is excellent because the training is a reminder for staff to continually be on their feet and look out for the ever-changing landscape. It also lets us know who has been trained, who hasn't been trained, and what they're like. It integrates a risk ratio for all our employees. Its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities are very important because I don't want to have to manage 24/7. Having the AI to do a lot of the work for me is invaluable. Its automated detection and response capabilities are excellent. It does a wonderful job. They provide all the stats on what it has done. It gives you information about how much time is saved and all that kind of good information. Its automated detection and response capabilities have massively decreased the time we spend manually reviewing email events. Since May, it has taken care of 170 hours. So, it has saved 88 hours per analyst. It is very good in terms of the customization of the automated detection and response capabilities. It is granular, and you can adjust it however you want. If it is too high, you can turn it down. If it is too low, you can turn it up.
Jijin Joseph - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives in-depth analysis reports to end users for any malicious content found in emails
Our users would like the solution to scan outgoing emails. So, if my system is compromised, and I have malicious content in my system, then there is a possibility that I send malicious email to my colleague. There is a dependency on AWS cloud.This means if the cloud service is down, which may impact the perception point's email delivery.So it would be great if there is any HA for the solution. I would like a user-friendly configuration, like APIs. This solution is API-friendly configuration by following the steps provided. It would be great if it could be automate it, like the Avanan.Also, it would be good if Perception Point Advanced Email Security could have an MSP model. During the early stages of working with this solution, there were some constraints and issues.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"It’s easy to handle integrations, and we don't need a lot of people in our IT team."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"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."
"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"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 most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to set it up, install, and manage the product."
"Their anti-phishing platform is absolutely fantastic. The automated AI piece is amazing, and their technical support is fantastic."
"AI-driven phishing detection and incident remediation are valuable. It saves time from having to do manual analysis and investigation, and we also get alerts for phishing emails."
"The report function through Gmail is probably the most valuable feature. The next most valuable features are simulation and training."
"I would say the most valuable feature is what they call Themis. It's like a virtual analyst that uses the decisions that system admins make to generate a score for whether an email is legitimate, spam, or phishing. It gets better based on the decisions that we make over time. The automation piece is great as well. The integrated approach of email security combined with employee awareness training is excellent."
"For what was being offered with IRONSCALES, I feel like we got an incredible deal."
"The biggest benefit is that we get fewer phishing and spam emails, so using IRONSCALES has made our environment much safer."
"The fact that it is set-and-forget is valuable. Once you turn it on, you very rarely have to micromanage it, whereas, with a lot of spam filters, you have to go in very often."
"I see from time to time that Perception Point is being proactive. They approach us, and say, "Can you check this, and this?" So, it does seem that they are an extension of my incident response."
"The most valuable feature is the technical support services."
"We can use it to perform detection and analysis of emails. For any malicious content found in emails, it gives in-depth analysis reports to end users. If you log into the console, you can see in-depth detection and how it happens."
"It has modules to detect malware and that is a strong point. It has a very nice way of showing you, directly in the product, a lot of details about certain pieces of malware. It goes very deep and even shows you the assembly code. It also does detonations on files and shows you the results in different operating systems. That is very useful."
"One is the hardware-assisted platform that provides more insight into the threat scenarios. And the other is their instant response team's availability, 24/7, for identifying and responding to incidents. These are the two main things that everyone likes."
"The solution’s effectiveness when it comes to detection is very good. It is stopping malicious emails and tagging emails noted as spam. So, we are able to disseminate those emails, get what we need, and block clearly malicious emails. It saves us a lot of valuable time. It keeps our users safe, e.g., the majority of emails that they would have gotten in the past don't even make it into their inbox."
"It really works well on SharePoint when you upload a file or save a file. Advanced Email Security scans if it is malicious and identifies issues. It can do some forensics on its console, which is nice."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to identify malicious content and phishing emails and reduce the workload we have to do in terms of security."
 

Cons

"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"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."
"In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"Microsoft needs to broaden its global support presence by establishing teams of subject-matter experts in all regions."
"I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"In addition to integrated training, they should also have personalized training that you don't have to do as part of a phishing campaign or a simulation."
"The integration with Google Suite needs to be better. it's something they can work on."
"IRONSCALES should bundle more features together instead of separating them and charging additional licensing fees."
"There's room for improvement in the campaign management. IRONSCALES has many built-in templates that I use, but you can also build templates from scratch. However, the interface for creating custom templates needs to be updated."
"The only thing that I could say is that some of the reporting features could be better."
"Even though they have been continuously improving it, it is not 100% there. We have had a few incidents where legitimate emails were getting blocked, and we had to manually remove those emails from quarantine. It is 90% effective or accurate because, on rare occasions, some emails from customers were not getting delivered. In one or two instances, their emails got blocked by IRONSCALES, and we had to manually remove the emails from quarantine. I would like them to improve their algorithm to avoid flagging genuine emails as malicious. I would also like to be able to whitelist certain email addresses. I'd love to be able to whitelist a particular customer."
"I would like it if IRONSCALES had some sort of reminder mechanism, meaning IRONSCALES knows if a user completed the training or not. As long as it hasn't been completed, it keeps reminding every so often, alerts the manager, etc. Right now, it is all in the hands of the employee, and not all of them continue the process, which is a shame."
"I think the tool can continue to hone the product to ensure the detections are accurate."
"Our users would like the solution to scan outgoing emails. So, if my system is compromised, and I have malicious content in my system, then there is a possibility that I am sending a colleague that malicious content."
"They can do better on the spam. Today, Perception Point is not our only solution. We have two solutions, and they are the second in line because the spam filtering is not yet the best."
"Email alerts should be available in real-time."
"They could improve their anti-spam engine a little bit, because there are a lot of false positives. Sometimes, emails pass through their system but are spam. In terms of security and engines for malicious emails and antivirus, they're doing a good job. Their other engines can be improved."
"Coming from products in the Microsoft stack, Perception Point doesn't really give you, as an admin, a lot of options to make changes yourself. It's more on their side to make changes in the back end. That's something they could improve on in the future."
"The only thing that can be improved in Perception Point is the in-depth analysis and attribution to cyberattack groups."
"Dashboard is an area of concern in the solution where improvements are required."
"I think the interface could be improved in the next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"IRONSCALES is an expensive solution."
"As compared to everything else we looked at, it was good. It was the best value for the dollars."
"Considering the value it provides, it is definitely worth the cost. We don't have to do manual analysis and remediation of phishing emails, which saves us a lot of hours. Its licensing is based on the number of users being supported and the number of email addresses being protected. I'm not aware of any additional costs."
"They are pretty much the same as all the other competitors in the market."
"The tool is not very cheap, but it is affordable."
"I don't know about its pricing because I don't run the budget or pay the bills, but if it was extortionate, we probably would be looking to scrap it, and because we are not, I assume its price is okay."
"There is an installation cost. Since we have this as a managed service, we pay for licensing and the managed service itself. Other than that, there are no additional costs."
"We pay $3000 plus a little more a year for the number of employees we have, and we're not even that big. The solution is at the higher end in terms of cost. It's not the most expensive product, but I would say it's worth the price if you have a high volume of email traffic. In our case, the solution has inspected over 162,000 emails between three and four months. It saved us a lot of time and money. It's a worthwhile investment because a bad actor only has to succeed once; we must defend against everything in our business. IRONSCALES offers a sense of security and confidence from being well protected."
"They are not the most expensive vendor. There are much more expensive vendors. They are not cheap, but they are not the most expensive. They are somewhere in the middle."
"It has very reasonable pricing. Normally, the end user is paying. Perception Point is already in the Amazon marketplace, so we cannot sell it as a distribution partner. For example, we cannot take more than that margin of what they offer in the marketplace. Whatever the end user is paying, it is definitely worth it and it is not that high."
"There is room for improvement for them with an MSP partner. The pricing is good and fair. Our customers don't complain. The only thing is that it's a little bit old school. They don't have a system that automatically checks the number of users that our customers have so we can just update the licenses ourselves through a website. It is still done manually. They have a person who checks invoicing monthly to determine if there have been any changes. A nice improvement would be if they could get automated licensing counts."
"The price of this solution was within our budget and I think that it will suit most SMBs."
"The pricing compared to the value Perception Point brings is super-competitive. They're not the cheapest in the market, but the value and the quality of the product are superior to anything else in the market, so we don't mind paying more for it."
"When compared to other solutions on the market, it is relatively fair."
"Pricing is lower in comparison to Proofpoint."
"If a user only wants protection for email, then the price of the product is okay, but if they opt for the collaboration options offered by the product, then it becomes a little expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Retailer
5%
 

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?
I don't have detailed specifics on pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost.
What do you like most about IRONSCALES?
The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IRONSCALES?
The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution. There are other solutions ...
What needs improvement with IRONSCALES?
I think maybe on the side of the awareness training, the tool can improve a little more information and have some oth...
What do you like most about Perception Point Advanced Email Security?
The most valuable feature is the technical support services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Perception Point Advanced Email Security?
In Brazil, the dollar price affects the cost. Perception Point Advanced Email Security is about 50 percent less expen...
What needs improvement with Perception Point Advanced Email Security?
To improve the solution, maybe a portal for end users to consult their emails would be helpful. The end user could ac...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
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Find out what your peers are saying about IRONSCALES vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.