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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
99
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 is the ability to remove bad messages that were delivered, prior to being classified as unwanted."
"The targeted attack protection that we use has been great, as has the email filtering and the rules that we have set for Proofpoint."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a strong and reliable solution for defending against advanced email threats, especially phishing and targeted attacks."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is very effective because they are very proactive, always ahead of the attackers, and were already detecting new kinds of attacks before customers thought about them."
"Proofpoint provides an expandable project model, including DLP, email archiving, and encryption, which makes it a complete email security solution."
"When I manage a SOC and Proofpoint Email Protection is integrated with it, it gives me a consolidated alert, so when phishing alerts come in it is slightly easier to manage, even my L1 incident response team from the SOC can easily understand the alerts, perform basic checks on VirusTotal, and create complete SOAR automation from that information."
"The setup was easy."
"The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"The cloud-based interface is very user-friendly."
"The solution is "set and forget". You pay for it and everything is done for you."
"The solution is excellent at blocking spam."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
"It has very good capabilities for managing malware."
"The stability is good; it's not buggy or glitchy, it works well, the performance is good, and they kept up with security patches."
"We use the solution for its advanced virus protection, phishing and other features."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway is stable and scalable. Installation is easy, and the deployment and maintenance can be done by one administrative person."
 

Cons

"I believe they still need to improve by consolidating some portals, as currently, you have to log in separately to a few of them."
"Proofpoint should have better integration with complex environments that need more than one instance of Proofpoint, as there are issues with nested instances."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's interface is confusing and could be improved."
"The solution could be improved with the addition of PLP and email encryption features."
"Proofpoint is a little bit expensive."
"While Proofpoint is better, I find Abnormal to be much more effective because it uses an advanced AI engine to detect email spams and phishing."
"The scalability can be improved, and the solution can be optimized."
"Integration for reporting needs to be improved, it's too complex."
"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."
"What's lacking when you compare it with Proofpoint and other threat protection solutions is that it does the basic stuff, but we need more advanced threat handling."
"Since it was purchased by Broadcomm, we've found there's been a general slide in terms of the local services we have access to and we are considering replacing them."
"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."
"We've had issues in the past where the user finds spam, and Symantec does not recognize it as spam."
"What needs to be improved in Symantec Messaging Gateway is its local partner support, as it's not as technical. The support my company gets from the partner isn't good. Vendor support is good, but local partner support isn't. I'm happy with Symantec Messaging Gateway as a solution, but the problem is with its partner support. To me, Symantec Messaging Gateway is a complete solution, but it can be very difficult to search the web for resolutions to issues or problems you experience from it. If this could be improved or resolved in the next release of Symantec Messaging Gateway, then that would be good."
"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."
"In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Proofpoint Email Protection has comparable pricing."
"Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it expensive."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"They are competitively priced, but I have been forced to get quotes for other solutions now because they haven't been responding to requests to do the work that we would like them to do."
"We sell annual licenses for this solution."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"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."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
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 Business29
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise52
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.
892,776 professionals have used our research since 2012.