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

IRONSCALES vs TitanHQ SpamTitan comparison

Sponsored
 

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)
TitanHQ SpamTitan
Ranking in Email Security
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (18th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
 

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 TitanHQ SpamTitan is 1.2%, down from 1.6% 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.
George Kajaia - PeerSpot reviewer
Work hours are not lost searching through spam emails to determine which emails are legitimate
In history on the reporting graph, when you are trying to search for sender by address, it won't search by domain. I could send an email from SendGrid with my domain, but with SpamTitan, if you search by that domain then it wouldn't search it. It only searches from the field, not in the envelope field. Unfortunately, mass mailing companies, like SendGrid, send email with the form address and that completely differs from the domain envelope form address. There is no way to search for the envelope form. So, I gave them an idea to improve this filtering. For example, if I have to search an email sent by SendGrid, then I am forced to search by the recipient, then find the emails marked as spam. This is quite a huge hassle. They told me that they are aware of this and will try to add it, but they haven't added it yet. I would like to implement a secondary delivery pool for mass mailings, having an alternate pool for mass mailing lists since there is only a single mail queue with SpamTitan. For example, if 10,000 emails are being sent, then the queue will be large. Unfortunately, without a secondary delivery pool, legitimate emails will wait in the queue to be delivered to my email. Therefore, I would like to have two queues: one for everyday emails and another for mass mailings. Now, I have to decide whether to buy a second SpamTitan license just for this reason because I am very satisfied with the functionality of SpamTitan overall and don't want to use another sender's appliance for this. From 2020 to 2021, there was a huge switch in the types of spam coming in. SpamTitan's anti-spam should be enabled to catch this spam. The spam catching rate went down over the last three to four years. I think this is because spammers are evolving and using different methods to send spam emails. The phishing rate of SpamTitan is not great, even Exchange Online Protection catches phishing better than SpamTitan. The most worrying are the phishing emails. I would like SpamTitan to upgrade and improve the phishing catch rate. The sandbox of the Bitdefender engine is not working correctly. They sent me an email that they pulled it because it was not working as it was intended to work. So, they are working on this as well, and maybe the sandbox will be fixed. The sandbox is for viruses. If something goes through then it is sent to the sandbox for analysis. However, I am not using the sandbox right now. I am just quarantining this type of attachment right away.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"Defender enables us to secure all 365-related activity from a single place. It gives us visibility into everything happening in Outlook, protecting us against phishing and other email-based threats. Defender helps us detect any suspicious behaviors."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"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 has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"The benefit that stands out to me is the ability for multiple individuals to collaborate simultaneously within the same document. Additionally, there is the option to save the document directly in the integrated OneDrive or SharePoint."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"There is buzz around phishing awareness training. When I make a campaign, all of a sudden people in our organization are talking, thinking, and wondering about it. Therefore, it keeps people on their toes. That is perfect because it does exactly what we want it to do."
"The biggest benefit is that we get fewer phishing and spam emails, so using IRONSCALES has made our environment much safer."
"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."
"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."
"The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through."
"For me, the mobile app is most valuable. All other features are also very useful, but the mobile app makes it really easy for me to manage on the go. I don't have to be at my desk. I could be at the shops, or it could be in the evening when I am out, and I can get a notification on my phone that there is an incident that has been raised. I can sort it out very quickly without having to be at my work PC."
"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to set it up, install, and manage the product."
"For what was being offered with IRONSCALES, I feel like we got an incredible deal."
"If all you have is a solution that looks at every piece of email and applies the same types of rules, you don't get a very smart solution. Whereas, if you can do it per mailbox or per domain, like you can with SpamTitan, that means you are effectively able to configure it almost per-user, which is great."
"The safelist and blocklist are the best parts. If I've got a new contact coming in, I can safelist that domain or email address. Alternatively, I can block the domain or the email address if I'm getting harassed by someone. I like the ability to get down to that granular level if I need to block or allow an entire"
"I like the fact that SpamTitan filters out phishing and spoofing links. They call it AI-driven threat protection. Though I'm a highly educated, advanced computer user, I still like not having to pay attention to where the link is going. I can trust that SpamTitan will filter it out nine times out of 10."
"Among the features that led us to choose SpamTitan are the ability to lock down, the multiple layers of security they have built into it, the ability to scrub inbound and outbound, as well as higher-level SPF and DMARC capabilities that were not really built into our previous product."
"The new SpamTitan Plus with the Link Lock feature is great. We implemented it and use it as well."
"It gives our users the chance to interact with the program. They can decide if there are things that are junk mail that they don't want to be messing with, on an individual basis. Of course, I can always override that or control it from a company standpoint."
"The digest and the quarantine are the most valuable features. I can go into the quarantine and see everything that was quarantined. On an individual basis, you can easily whitelist an email or address coming in, if needed."
"I like the notifications SpamTitan sends. Other products require the user to log into the system to see if something was blocked. SpamTitan sends users an email showing them any potential spam that was blocked and they can click on it to release it. It's much easier for the end-user."
 

Cons

"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"The XDR dashboard has room for improvement."
"Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically."
"Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab."
"We noticed that from time to time, Microsoft's stability does have problems. Sometimes the service goes up and down. Sometimes they change without prior notice."
"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."
"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."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"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."
"The integration with Google Suite needs to be better. it's something they can work on."
"The only thing that I could say is that some of the reporting features could be better."
"IRONSCALES should bundle more features together instead of separating them and charging additional licensing fees."
"Its UI could be improved. My pet peeve with a lot of these cloud-based systems is that a lot of times, the interface for the management is a little clunky. If you live and breathe IRONSCALES all day long, you'll obviously know where everything is just from muscle memory, but the system is not designed for people to be in it all day long. You're only supposed to occasionally look at it. When things get moved around, it is not necessarily that intuitive. I'm an IT guy, and I can pretty much take the worst UI and figure it out, but the menus and the options in the interface could be a little cleaner graphically. If you have a quick problem that you want to resolve, it takes a little bit of digging in the admin console, whereas it should take a few clicks up front."
"I would love to see the indication of compromise and how the solution utilizes open source resources. It would be good to see that included in the paid versions. It would be a small addition but add a lot of value for clients."
"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 tool supports 15 to 16 languages, but the content it uses in the training in Spanish has certain limitations."
"We would like to improve the number of quarantine reports received per day. At the moment, only one is received within 24 hours. So, there are a number of complaints that we get from customers who want to improve the reporting of the quarantined emails since they only get one copy per day. This means they may not receive other emails that have been received after they get the report. So, we would like SpamTitan to improve on the frequency of the quarantine report."
"It would be nice if the reporting feature could be updated. Also, the feel of the web interface is a little dated."
"Specifying your own filtering rules can be somewhat tricky. You can leave it alone or add your own filter rules using regular expressions. It would be nice to get a little more help configuring the regular expressions. That is quite complicated, and it's something I struggled with."
"The support hours are tough for U.S.-based companies like ours, because they're in Europe. They did tell me that they're opening a support office in the U.S. There is, currently, some overlap in support, but it's difficult to get real-time support and, a lot of the time, I just need a quick answer."
"The SpamTitan user interface is not amazing, but I don't mind it. I know they are releasing a new one soon. I have seen it and it looks a lot better. That has been an area that needs improvement."
"The inter mailbox email flow needs improvement. If you are in the same domain, it does not have the capability to transfer one email to the same domain through SpamTitan. They need an API for Office 365 which is currently being developed"
"There needs to be improvement in response time due to the requirement of going through the ticketing system, which can cause delays."
"The big issue that I've had is that the length of time that an email is kept in quarantine is only seven days and, in some cases, it is not even seven days... if I had a 20-day or 30-day repository, if someone came to me and said, "Hey, I can't get this back," I could end up getting it to them from the archive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"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."
"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"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."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution."
"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."
"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."
"IRONSCALES is an expensive solution."
"They are pretty much the same as all the other competitors in the market."
"As compared to everything else we looked at, it was good. It was the best value for the dollars."
"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."
"But the most critical factor was cost-effectiveness. SpamTitan was much cheaper than Barracuda and offered the same value."
"The price is quite advantageous; we were initially surprised at the pricing compared to other solutions, which made us doubt if this was the solution for us. Then, we discovered SpamTitan's features and how cost-effective it is. The sales team does an excellent job making our life easier in terms of pricing, which is another significant advantage of this product."
"Everything has really been great with the pricing and licensing. In fact, we just implemented ArcTitan because everything was going so well with SpamTitan."
"Its pricing is good. We've been happy with the pricing. I know that they did some extensive research, and the pricing was quite favorable with everything else that they looked at. My budget hasn't changed a whole lot over the last three to five years. It's nice to see that it has remained pretty steady. So, I am happy with the pricing. It provides good value for money."
"The pricing for this solution is fair, and comparable with other products."
"The pricing is great, but it has been increasing on a yearly basis. It is now close to that of Microsoft solutions. If it continues to increase, then clients may need to migrate to a different solution."
"Pricing is on par with other products, and it's reasonable."
"As a small business, every penny is counted here... I really thought that something like SpamTitan would be more expensive, but it cost me about $70 (or about £60) a month. I'm more than happy to pay that."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.
842,651 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
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?
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TitanHQ SpamTitan?
Pricing is affordable. We renewed for three years, and the cost is reasonable.
What needs improvement with TitanHQ SpamTitan?
The GUI is problematic. It's a mess and absolute rubbish now. We also face issues with the settings that are not yet ...
 

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
De Montfort University, Scope Services, Park County School District, NRC, Quality Smith, Toyota, CarTrawler, Videotron
Find out what your peers are saying about IRONSCALES vs. TitanHQ SpamTitan and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,651 professionals have used our research since 2012.