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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
109
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 July 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 18.6%, down from 21.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Messaging Gateway is 2.7%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection18.6%
Symantec Messaging Gateway2.7%
Other78.7%
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

"The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"Overall, we've been happy with the product and the results we've gotten."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is really good at what they do within their email protection niche."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my overall security posture, making it easier for users to encrypt files right in the portal and send them to customers, and it is simple for customers to access those files without difficulty."
"Using Proofpoint Email Protection has improved my SOC analyst workloads significantly by reducing false positives and the number of incidents in the queue."
"We have noticed a huge improvement in productivity of the users by clearing up their inbox of malicious emails and spam, and it has also prevented and secured our environment on a daily basis, making the security team's job much easier."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a strong and reliable solution for defending against advanced email threats, especially phishing and targeted attacks."
"Provides better control over emails, especially those sent via Office 365 on the cloud."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a huge knowledge base about phishing, spamming, spoofing, etc."
"The stability is good; it's not buggy or glitchy, it works well, the performance is good, and they kept up with security patches."
"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."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"I've been using Messaging Gateway for ten years."
"The solution is excellent at blocking spam."
"It has very good capabilities for managing malware."
"Symantec is a secure product."
 

Cons

"We find the cost to be prohibitive."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has a limitation regarding third-party tool integration and SIEM integration."
"Filtering false positives is highly challenging because it is impossible for humans to identify which emails are genuine and which are spam."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is an expensive solution."
"The flexibility of the solution can be improved."
"It's scalable, but the devil's in the details — you have to know your email volumes."
"The only downside with Proofpoint Email Protection is the cost."
"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 biggest problem is it's an on-prem product and we're trying to get out of having equipment in data centers."
"It will provide Excel reports and PDF reports, but it would be great if they supported the concept of Crystal Reports."
"If the customer has to think about budget and solutions to reduce IT cost, they should get away from Symantec and try using Microsoft."
"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."
"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."
"They really need to create a good package that competes with Microsoft."
"Recently, I've had some problems regarding their support. The tech was acquired by Broadcom, and since then, the support part is very bad."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"The tool's pricing depends on the customer's preference, offering options for an annual license or a monthly subscription. The cost varies based on factors such as the number of users and specific requirements. Overall, the pricing is competitive."
"We sell annual licenses for this solution."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"It is expensive."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"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."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise62
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
Proofpoint Email Protection is not the cheapest option, but the pricing is reasonable for large enterprises where email security is a major concern. The cost mainly depends on the number of users, ...
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
There are some shortcomings on the Proofpoint end. The email protection tool works before the delivery of the email to the client, and there is another console called threat response in Proofpoint ...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
I work for a company that provides email services to our client, so we act as a mediator. We mostly deal with threat emails that are flagged up. The architecture is layered, so we also use Microsof...
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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: June 2026.
906,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.