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Perception Point Advanced Email Security vs Proofpoint Email Protection comparison

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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...
Sponsored
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 (11th)
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)
Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Security Awareness Training (2nd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (2nd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
 

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 Perception Point Advanced Email Security is 2.3%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 8.2%, down from 12.9% 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.
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.
AhmedRamadan - PeerSpot reviewer
Optimize email security with effective sandboxing and auto Pull for quarantine
Proofpoint is used as an email security gateway for big enterprises, primarily for their on-premises servers. Many customers also use it alongside Office 365 Proofpoint offers a complete solution for email security with features like DLP, email archiving, and encryption. The most valuable…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the best features of the tool is its capability to aggregate insights from different workloads, basically from the Office 365 and endpoints part."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is its spam filter."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"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."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"The most valuable aspect of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is its ability to protect us from malware."
"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."
"The Perception Point Incident Response team acts as an extension of our SOC team. This is very important for us. This is a benefit provided for their main product of scanning our emails. If Perception Point can give me IR, this is really good versus other products that do not provide this kind of service. Perception Point's service is great. They are very professional. That reduces the time that my internal SOC has to deal with my internal IT person. They just send an email to the IR team at Perception Point, who continues the investigation and blocks any emails, if necessary. This is very good because it can reduce a lot of time and effort from my team. It is like an extension of my SOC, but external."
"The most valuable feature I have found is the speed of scanning emails."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The solution is used to block malicious items hidden inside a document or PDF file."
"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."
"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 hardware-assisted platform module."
"We haven't had a client, who uses their protection, have an email security breach. That is the best thing about what they do. We don't have to think too much. Their product just works and keeps bad emails away."
"Its main defense is to stop malicious emails from coming through. There is a sandbox environment where you can open malicious or suspicious emails to make sure that they're not malicious, instead of taking the risk of having your employees do it. This is definitely something that everybody needs nowadays, especially with the rise in cyber attacks."
"The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"I like all the features with Proofpoint, such as how it filters the spam and marketing mail, lost reality mail, blocks phishing attacks, blocks malicious attachments, and stops phishing links. Also it can defend against the business email compromise impersonation technique. It is a complete solution for all email attacks. It filters for the bad, malicious attachments. If there is any executable file, it can be deleted. It is a good, complete solution."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the dashboards and their visibility, easy configuration, and artificial intelligence. Additionally, the reports are very important and helpful."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The Tap and Trap features. They are the best features."
"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection offers an additional layer of protection compared to other brands like Microsoft, Mimecast, and Barracuda. While these major companies excel at detecting malicious attachments, the solution goes further by analyzing the context of emails, allowing for more nuanced decision-making."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities."
"In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement."
"I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's Mac functionality requires improvement to deliver the same level of protection found on Windows devices."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data."
"I think the interface could be improved in the next release."
"To improve the solution, maybe a portal for end users to consult their emails would be helpful. The end user could access the portal and see their emails or events. They could also refresh the names."
"The only thing that can be improved in Perception Point is the in-depth analysis and attribution to cyberattack groups."
"Perception Point Advanced Email Security should make available more use cases."
"In terms of architecture, and I know that they're going to improve this, the solution needs to be much more redundant. There was an outage a month ago in AWS, and that basically stopped the service for two or three hours. Although in two years, this was the first time that something like that happened, our expectation from a company like Perception Point is that it should work with either a multi-cloud or multi-region architecture, to improve the resilience."
"We have had a few false positives, not that many, but a few... they have a feature where someone from the Incident Response team can look at an email and mark it as 'verified malicious.' You might think that if an engine detects it is malicious, and an IR team member has flagged it as malicious, it will definitely be malicious. But that's not always the case."
"There is room for improvement in terms of adding the DLP (Data Loss Prevention) solution, which would be a good option for Perception Point to look into."
"It would be helpful for Perception Point Advanced Email Security to have more integration with other solutions."
"There is room for improvement in detecting and preventing phishing attacks. While the solution performs well in some aspects, it struggles with phishing threats."
"The incident reporting on offer needs to be improved. It's lacking right now. It should be on the platform somewhere."
"The product's deployment is complex and requires technical knowledge."
"The setup requires expertise. It needs someone with experience on managing it, and I would rate the implementation as needing someone experienced."
"Sometimes it doesn't detect actual spam emails, and sometimes it catches normal emails."
"Phishing detection could improve further to match some of the capabilities offered by competitors."
"Some use cases haven't been dealt with yet."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"The product is very expensive."
"Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"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."
"It fits every budget. It has a low price. I can't go ahead and sell it for any price I want. They are quite strict. They say, "This is the price that you can sell it for and this is the price for you as a reseller." That is it. It is not a lot of money. I will not become rich from it, but I like that they keep a standard for everyone. They are a fair company."
"When compared to other solutions on the market, it is relatively fair."
"The solution is neither cheap nor expensive. There are no additional costs to the standard license."
"The pricing and licensing are very fair compared to competing companies in the same field."
"Pricing is lower in comparison to Proofpoint."
"The price of the solution is high."
"The pricing was fair in comparison with the other solutions. We have received good value for what we paid."
"It is on a yearly basis. Their floor for SMB doesn't matter. The user count is 100 users and below at $2,500 a year. Its cost is higher than other solutions. It is probably about 20% to 30% higher than what you would get with Microsoft. There are no additional costs. All costs are factored in. It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees."
"The solution uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products."
"Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it expensive."
"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."
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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
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Retailer
5%
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
Proofpoint is considered a very expensive solution compared to others like FortiMail, being double in cost. Customers...
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
Phishing detection & Response capabilities could improve further to match some of the capabilities offered by com...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Cofense PhishMe, Proofpoint Digital Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
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 Perception Point Advanced Email Security vs. Proofpoint Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.