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Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs TitanHQ SpamTitan comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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...
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
TitanHQ SpamTitan
Ranking in Email Security
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (10th), Office 365 Protection (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 15.4%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TitanHQ SpamTitan is 1.4%, 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.
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 of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is data backups that we can provide through ticket requests."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"It works as it should. It allows users to manage emails that they receive, meaning they can set up whitelists and blacklists."
"They also let you customize it to match your organization's feel, so it looks like a product from your organization. I like when companies do that. Our city logo is on it when you log in to this system."
"One of the most valuable features is that it's very straightforward. It's a really simple interface. With our previous products, you could spend a week, if not more, training on those products just to figure out the interface. With SpamTitan it took an hour or two or three, tops."
"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"
"What I like the most is the filtering and the granularity with which you can really zoom in on the spam that's coming in and configure it exactly so that what you don't want is blocked."
"We have a lot less spam going through. Because of this, work hours are not lost searching through all the spam emails to determine which ones are legitimate. This saves our bank clients' time since they are not forced to search their inbox for legitimate emails between spams. Not a lot of spam is going through. I think time is essential and we are gaining a lot of it with this solution since a lot of emails are automatically filtered out."
"The discovery work to resolve [issues] has gotten so much easier because we can see what's going on right at the edge of our incoming and our outgoing mail. A regular tech support dude can log in... and get a very practical view of what is going on..."
"It provides security for the communication between the sender and receiver. It does the encryption perfectly. We ensure that emails are sent without any security breaches. The spam catch rate at the moment is almost 100%."
 

Cons

"Configuring the default strategies and policies in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps generates a lot of noise and false positives."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features."
"The product must provide better malware detection."
"There is no plugin for Outlook, which might be of an advantage so that you can just click on a link in Outlook that takes you right to your quarantine list. It doesn't have that at the moment."
"The report comes out every morning. If a valid email gets blocked, I won't know about it until the next morning unless I log into the system to check, but it's quite a bit of work. Some users have requested that they get the report more often than once a day. If someone booked an airline flight or something that's time-sensitive and it gets blocked, they wouldn't find out until the next day. By then, it's probably too late. They would like notifications more often than once daily."
"It could be improved a little bit on the speed side. When I am trying to troubleshoot a mail message that somebody is looking for in SpamTitan, sometimes setting up the filters for the quarantine is a little bit pokey."
"A lot of the other companies that I deal with have a feature that allows you to modify emails and apply signatures automatically based on linking into Azure's servers and database. That feature isn't there in SpamTitan."
"SpamTitan doesn't allow you to customize the frequency of reports. Sometimes our users complain that they cannot control how often SpamTitan's report comes. Users get a daily report, but some would prefer a notification every time an email is quarantined."
"If they had a little more documentation explaining how to use regex, or if they could include that inside of the cloud interface so that it generates regex code based on the parameters you input, that would be a lot more useful for people who aren't familiar with coding languages and HTML."
"SpamTitan doesn't allow you to customize the time reports are sent. Sometimes our users would prefer that it come at a certain time, like 7:00 am so they can make sure they didn't miss anything from the day before. Currently, it can come in the middle of the day and probably depends on the server's restart or the setting change."
"They need to keep up with the latest technology and add new features as they arise, e.g., artificial intelligence, new and improved updated lists, or new ways of tracking spam. They need to just keep up so the product is effective. Because, if all of a sudden viruses or spam starts getting through, then we might have to look at something else. However, so far, it has kept up and done a great job. So, we are happy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"The product is very expensive."
"SpamTitan has competitive pricing and flexible licensing. They allow up to 10% more that you use and then add it to the next tier of licenses."
"It's not extremely expensive. Other solutions get really pricey, really fast."
"When it comes to the scalability of it, it really doesn't matter much because of the way that it is priced. You can put it on somebody who is small or big."
"The pricing is ideal. A lot of other anti-spams are integrated in Exchange, counting technical mailboxes that are not sending any emails outside. So, they are not scanned and only for internal communication. SpamTitan only counts the emails that it scans. This is one of the best licensing models that I saw for anti-spam solutions because it is counting dynamically the number of emails that senders are sending. It counts these uniquely by week. It provides a very realistic picture. This is very useful because we are not counting the emails doing inbound or outbound notifications from our company."
"Compared to all of the others, including the solution we used previously, SpamTitan is cheaper."
"Cloud-based solutions charge per mailbox, which isn't ideal sometimes. A company could have 300 total mailboxes and only 50 in regular use, but they would have to pay the same for all of them. I want a cloud-based solution that gives a price based on the volume of email traffic."
"The cluster was an additional cost. We had to get some more licenses to get to that level. It's well worth it because it means peace of mind for everyone."
"This pricing is absolutely fine and it's never been an issue of it being too 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
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
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 various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the indi...
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 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 developed. I wish for a return to the older GUI which was easier to use.
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
De Montfort University, Scope Services, Park County School District, NRC, Quality Smith, Toyota, CarTrawler, Videotron
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs. TitanHQ SpamTitan and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.