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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Symantec Messaging Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 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

Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st)
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 19.5%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Messaging Gateway is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection19.5%
Symantec Messaging Gateway2.6%
Other77.9%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Vivek_Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Senior Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Advanced email defenses have protected healthcare staff and simplified incident response
There are many things that could be improved, but once you are very well-known about this application, you could perform that improvement plan. There are many scenarios where I have worked with Proofpoint Email Protection where a requirement was not fulfilled due to the limitation of the product. For example, we have Report Phish automation. With Proofpoint Email Protection, we can configure Report Phish and forward the email to any email addresses or shared mailboxes that we provide in the configuration. That email is forwarded as is with whatever the user reports as a phishing email. However, some organizations do not want the reported phishing email to go as is into their ticketing tool because it might contain malicious attachments and malicious links that are not required to go into their internal organization. Proofpoint Email Protection has that limitation. They cannot forward or restrict, but could forward only limited information such as some header information, sender subject details, or only limited information. As it is, the email can be forwarded, not as limited information. Proofpoint TRAP solution also has limitations. It cannot create alert notifications for some specific requirements because Proofpoint works the way it is designed, and if you want it to work based on our requirement, that should not be possible. There is a scope of limitations here. There are many improvements that should be made. First, they should work on their false positive minimization. Proofpoint generally takes all emails, investigates them, and classifies them. There are many situations where legit emails are blocked because that domain is found to be under a malicious category somehow, but actually it is not. False positive minimization could be improved, and they could enhance their other applications or solutions. There are many things that they could improve from each application and each portal.
Girish Vijay - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Manager IT at Carl Bechem Lubricants India Pvt. Ltd.
A stable and reasonably priced solution that performs well and has a very good malware database
Since Symantec merged with Broadcom, they might have lost some good technical engineers. Maybe that’s the reason why the product is performing poorly. When we have a good marketing and sales team, even though our product cannot perform, we will sell it at a high price because of the buzzwords. However, at the end of the day, the product should perform. Most of the products might not perform. Symantec is a very good product, but the services are basic. I rate the technical features of the product a nine out of ten. However, I would rate the services provided by the solution a six out of ten. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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 Proofpoint Email Protection is the TAP Dashboard. It provides more detailed information that can be used for forensic analysis. This is an advantage that other email security providers, such as Cisco, IronPort, or Microsoft do not offer in their dashboards."
"Although it is a bit costly compared to Mimecast, Defender, and Cofense Vision, it is efficient and strong in security, so I do not mind the cost because I will not reduce my security risk."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a strong and reliable solution for defending against advanced email threats, especially phishing and targeted attacks."
"It was easy to set up."
"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by ensuring we are not at risk of a breach through email."
"The most valuable features of Proofpoint Email Protection are ease of use, data loss prevention, antivirus, and spam protection."
"At this point in time, there's nothing that needs to be changed or improved in the tool."
"The solution is highly customizable. You can make rules for domains and configure policies for spam or malware. Messaging Gateway is an on-prem solution, so it's useful for companies without a cloud presence."
"It is a solid and stable product."
"The feature that I like the best is the fingerprinting concept."
"The solution is a leader in anti-spam email products and you can block 99% of spam emails, making it very effective with great performance."
"Since Symantec Messaging Gateway is a Linux-based solution it is stable."
"The solution is stable and the performance is good."
"The cloud-based interface is very user-friendly."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway is stable and scalable."
 

Cons

"The scalability can be improved, and the solution can be optimized."
"I would like to see improvements in the transition from Proofpoint Protection Server to Proofpoint on Demand because Proofpoint Protection Server is not very user-friendly and requires logging into two portals for some features."
"There is room for improvement in detecting and preventing phishing attacks. While the solution performs well in some aspects, it struggles with phishing threats."
"It became very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances, and I may advise Proofpoint to adjust marketing solutions based on each country."
"Proofpoint should have better integration with complex environments that need more than one instance of Proofpoint, as there are issues with nested instances."
"The Secure Mail aspect should have an Outlook add-in, instead of an external dashboard that outside users have to access."
"Phishing detection could improve further to match some of the capabilities offered by competitors."
"Integration and filtering out who you want and don't want to have integrated ID could be improved."
"The documentation could have more detailed examples of how to use the product in various situations. As more companies shift to the cloud, they could better integrate the on-prem and cloud versions through an on-prem client."
"The product must improve the user dashboards."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway can improve detection because most of them are false negatives or false positives that we are trying to troubleshoot. Additionally, we are having routing problems and they are somehow connected to DNS issues."
"It is a nice product but is not user friendly in terms of the graphical interface. It is poor and is not rich in terms of the human interface."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
"They really need to create a good package that competes with Microsoft."
"It will provide Excel reports and PDF reports, but it would be great if they supported the concept of Crystal Reports."
"In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"The cost of Symantec Messaging Gateway is too expensive in general. However, the appliance also includes the price of the license in the same bundle."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
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894,668 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
This is not something that I deal with regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
For a beginner level, someone who is very new to email security might find it difficult to manage as an admin. Navigation can be concerning because Proofpoint Email Protection has different console...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
Proofpoint Email Protection serves as our email security solution. The entire SOC team uses Proofpoint Email Protection. The granularity in admin access is different, so each team has their own acc...
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Also Known As

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
Symantec.cloud, Symantec Email Security.cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Doric, Joblink Plus, Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta, PPB Advisory, Slater & Gordon Lawyers, Sydney Adventist Hospital Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint Email Protection vs. Symantec Messaging Gateway and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,668 professionals have used our research since 2012.