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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Symantec Messaging Gateway comparison

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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
111
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (2nd), 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 October 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 17.7%, down from 20.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Messaging Gateway is 3.1%, 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 Protection17.7%
Symantec Messaging Gateway3.1%
Other79.2%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Siva_Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber SecOps Principal at Dotcom Security
The product provides good content filtering options, but the false positive submissions must be improved
The tool is very stable. I rate the stability a seven out of ten. It's an on-premise application that runs on a virtual machine. It has dependencies on the hypervisor host that we're running it on. If it's not configured, the application can be influenced by it. Sometimes, there is a service stop error while the service is still running. Sometimes, the service just stops. Some policies do not act the way that we intend them to respond.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"A lot of automation is present, and the quarantining of malicious emails and these processes are good and really help us in the investigation as well as the remediation part."
"They have customized security rules, mature rules, anti-virus protection, as well as email authentication similar to SPF, DKIM, and DMARC."
"Its anti-phishing functionality is the most valuable. Certainly, the biggest problem I have is phishing."
"The archive feature is valuable."
"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."
"What I like most about Symantec Messaging Gateway is its usability. I also find its interface very friendly. The solution has a very good interface."
"The solution is excellent at blocking spam."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway is stable and scalable. Installation is easy, and the deployment and maintenance can be done by one administrative person."
"The stability is good; it's not buggy or glitchy, it works well, the performance is good, and they kept up with security patches."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a huge knowledge base about phishing, spamming, spoofing, etc."
"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."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
 

Cons

"The solution could be improved with the addition of PLP and email encryption features."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve the Mail Trace feature and make navigation easier."
"I remember having multiple tickets and cases from customers where when a link was broken or incorrect, URL Defense would start to apply and completely block the URL."
"The support team was a bit slow."
"The areas of Proofpoint Email Protection that could be improved or enhanced involve the email rewrite functionality. It can be aggressive sometimes, rewriting a lot of very benign content."
"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 price could be improved."
"I believe if the GUI were more user-friendly for people using it for the first time, or if there were more training available for end users to share with them, that would be good."
"We've had issues in the past where the user finds spam, and Symantec does not recognize it as spam."
"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."
"It could be more scalable."
"The solution interface is from 2003 and is outdated. Symantec Messaging Gateway needs to update the interface."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
"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 solution takes up a lot of memory."
"In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it expensive."
"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."
"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"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."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"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."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise62
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
To improve Proofpoint Email Protection, I suggest breaking down the URL into one versus three different GUIs. Regarding Proofpoint Email Protection's AI capabilities, I think its governance and sec...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
My main use case for Proofpoint Email Protection includes phishing emails, spam, URL isolation, and training. I utilize the email protect portal to ensure that none of our employees in any of the b...
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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: September 2026.
915,533 professionals have used our research since 2012.