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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)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
105
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 June 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 19.0%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Messaging Gateway is 2.7%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection19.0%
Symantec Messaging Gateway2.7%
Other78.3%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Siva_Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Consultant at Infosys
Email defenses have reduced phishing incidents and protect sensitive data across our enterprise
As things are evolving and threats develop in unpredictable ways, Proofpoint must adopt AI solutions and agentic solutions more aggressively and provide them to customers as part of service offerings. Inbuilt AI solutions would add more value and make Proofpoint a more premium choice for customers. With the help of AI solutions, agentic AI, and generative AI capabilities, the product would be more efficient than it currently is. Filtering false positives is highly challenging because it is impossible for humans to identify which emails are genuine and which are spam. Proofpoint should focus more on this area with back-end agents or other tools. Proofpoint should decide which emails are genuine and which are spam so it is not a challenge for end users. When receiving an email, end users should not have to determine whether to respond or not. Proofpoint should not release such spam emails and should strictly block such spam and spoof emails based on connection IPs. Currently, false positives occur in the product, and while this occurs in every product, it is an area where Proofpoint can focus on improving and reducing false positives. One email is enough for an end user to be deceived and lose money, so addressing this area is critical.
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

"Our clients have definitely seen an ROI; their level of breach and reporting of malicious emails from their user base actually went down by over 50% by using this product."
"I recommend all of my customers to migrate and start using Proofpoint as it is secure, minimizes risk, and eliminates phishing attacks."
"Before deploying Proofpoint Email Protection, we were frequently attacked by phishing and DDoS, and after deploying it, attacks have been reduced by up to 80 percent and phishing has been completely eliminated, so it is working very efficiently."
"Using Proofpoint Email Protection significantly reduces the number of threats I need to guard against; within a month, my organization sends and receives over 1 million emails, achieving 99.99% protection against phishing and spam, and handling around 5 to 10 million emails monthly while assigning a project manager for ongoing review."
"The Tap and Trap features. They are the best features."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a great security tool that is not only proactive but also reactive on a case-to-case basis and provides all the mature tools that can be utilized for the first layer and second layer message defense."
"It has been comprehensive and easy to use for both users and administrators."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by blocking significantly more phishing emails, and phishing is the main entry point into getting compromised, so I have more peace of mind knowing that more malicious emails are getting blocked."
"My advice to others who plan to use Symantec Messaging Gateway is that it's a very good product, it's very stable, and it's user-friendly, but the only problem is that it doesn't have good partner support here in Bolivia, where I'm located."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway is stable and scalable."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a good GUI, and it is very powerful in detecting viruses and spam."
"The most valuable features of Symantec Messaging Gateway are advanced content filtering, malware, and antivirus defense."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the content filtering policies because the solution offers huge options for configuration, such as hardware manipulation, et cetera, and the dictionaries make the work easier."
"Since Symantec Messaging Gateway is a Linux-based solution it is stable."
"The solution is stable and the performance is good."
"I like that it's simple and easy to configure, deploy, and manage. The reporting function has all the features we're looking for, and we are fine with that."
 

Cons

"I feel Proofpoint Email Protection can be improved by providing a better user experience."
"I think Proofpoint Email Protection could be improved if the user interface portals could be consolidated into a single portal, as there are currently four, five, or six separate ones."
"I want Security Awareness Training in there as a package deal. A lot of companies are starting to value email security a little bit more and take it a little bit more seriously, and the great product that we link together with a lot of these sales is a training product called Security Awareness Training. It is an upsell that we do with Proofpoint, and it is definitely something that I recommend everybody with email security to look into. It would be great if Security Awareness Training is included with the email security."
"The price could be improved."
"The setup requires expertise. It needs someone with experience on managing it, and I would rate the implementation as needing someone experienced."
"They do not have an on-demand scan for the internal viruses and internal users, and they don't have a scan for the exchange server against viruses and spam as Symantec does."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has a new approach to email security with its API feature. Currently, it only works with Office 365. In the future, it would be beneficial if it also works with Gmail, as Check Point is currently the only brand that has API email security for Gmail. It would be beneficial if Proofpoint Email Protection could add this integration, they would be more competitive with other vendors."
"It's scalable, but the devil's in the details — you have to know your email volumes."
"It will provide Excel reports and PDF reports, but it would be great if they supported the concept of Crystal Reports."
"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 solution interface is from 2003 and is outdated. Symantec Messaging Gateway needs to update the interface."
"It could be more scalable."
"The solution takes up a lot of memory."
"In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature."
"Support could be better. What's also 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."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We sell annual licenses for this solution."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"It is expensive."
"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."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has comparable pricing."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
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 Business28
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise59
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?
I am not informed about the pricing, setup costs, or licensing as it is handled by a different team. I come from a technical perspective.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
For improvement, the dashboard of Proofpoint Email Protection needs some enhancement. Currently, we are using multiple dashboards, and it would be beneficial if everything was integrated. A single ...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
In our environment, we are using Proofpoint Email Protection for inbound email protection as a primary gateway, while Microsoft 365 serves as the secondary gateway. In the primary gateway, it scans...
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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.
899,258 professionals have used our research since 2012.