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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

"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."
"I recommend Proofpoint Email Protection because it provides everything in one place, such as security control."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by ensuring we are not at risk of a breach through email."
"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."
"Using Proofpoint Email Protection has successfully reduced the volume of emails that we need to review."
"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."
"Considering Proofpoint Email Protection's end-to-end visibility in email threats, focusing on both the email and the person, it accomplishes what automation does in half the human work."
"The solution offers very good flexibility. You can blacklist or whitelist with ease."
"I've been using Messaging Gateway for ten years."
"Symantec is a secure product."
"It has very good capabilities for managing malware."
"The solution is highly customizable. You can make rules for domains and configure policies for spam or malware. Messaging Gateway is an on-prem solution, so it's useful for companies without a cloud presence."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"The solution is "set and forget". You pay for it and everything is done for you."
"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 solution is excellent at blocking spam."
 

Cons

"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve the Mail Trace feature and make navigation easier."
"Sometimes it detects false positives."
"As a manager with multiple customers using Proofpoint Email Protection, having the ability to manage the admin console more efficiently would be beneficial."
"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."
"The stability and UI are the two areas of the solution with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"The false positives are an issue."
"Proofpoint has a lot of false alarms. Even their mail flow rules are not the best thing."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is an expensive solution."
"Recently, I've had some problems regarding their support. The tech was acquired by Broadcom, and since then, the support part is very bad."
"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."
"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."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
"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."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway should include better exclusions and exceptions for better administration."
"Messaging Gateway's advanced malware detection could be improved."
 

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."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"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 solution is expensive."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"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."
"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
20%
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
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.
916,197 professionals have used our research since 2012.