No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Symantec Messaging Gateway comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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 September 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 18.0%, down from 20.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Messaging Gateway is 3.0%, 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 Protection18.0%
Symantec Messaging Gateway3.0%
Other79.0%
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.
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

"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by definitely lowering the amount of phishing or scam-type emails that our users were receiving, helping them focus more on their work rather than dealing with these types of fraudulent emails."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by reducing the number of cyber email attacks we are receiving compared to the past."
"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."
"The best features of Proofpoint Email Protection are the advanced level of anti-spam and antivirus technology, the TAP feature that helps me scan URLs and provides URL defense, outbound filtering and prevention capabilities, and particularly the TRAP feature where I can pull out all phishing emails from all users' mailboxes in a single click."
"A one-stop shop for email protection"
"As a cloud-based product, it can scale well."
"In the pros, we can see strong protection against phishing, spoofing, and malware threats, and good email filtering accuracy and threat visibility."
"Compared to other products, Proofpoint's real-time threat intelligence makes it less noisy; they collect and share threat information effectively, which benefits all customers."
"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."
"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."
"Since Symantec Messaging Gateway is a Linux-based solution it is stable."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a huge knowledge base about phishing, spamming, spoofing, etc."
"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."
"The solution is stable and the performance is good."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a good GUI, and it is very powerful in detecting viruses and spam."
"The cloud-based interface is very user-friendly."
 

Cons

"Proofpoint Email Protection's interface is confusing and could be improved."
"I think Proofpoint Email Protection could be slightly more intuitive."
"The support team was a bit slow."
"Given my other experience with other vendors, I think they are a bit on the high end and a bit on the pricey end for the email security functionality that we were using."
"Proofpoint has a lot of false alarms. Even their mail flow rules are not the best thing."
"I would want better spear phishing protection in the essentials package."
"For Proofpoint Email Protection, when it comes to support, there are times when they do not meet the SLAs for support, mostly on Fridays."
"The only limitation we have with Proofpoint Email Protection is when we implement it with Google Workspace."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
"They have updated the version of the Messaging Gateway and the new features they are adding the need to be re-evaluated. They have done some changes on the policy."
"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."
"The false positive submissions must be improved."
"In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature."
"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."
"What needs to be improved in Symantec Messaging Gateway is its local partner support, as it's not as technical."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has comparable pricing."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Email Gateway (SEG) solutions are best for your needs.
911,839 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
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?
The downside is I feel the vendor support is a little lacking and should be more responsive. The technical support is not up to the mark.
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
I am leading this security domain, and my L1 and L2s have been using Proofpoint Email Protection and other modules of Proofpoint Email Protection for more than three years.We are currently working ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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: August 2026.
911,839 professionals have used our research since 2012.