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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)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
99
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 May 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 19.5%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Messaging Gateway is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection19.5%
Symantec Messaging Gateway2.6%
Other77.9%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Vivek_Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Senior Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Advanced email defenses have protected healthcare staff and simplified incident response
There are many things that could be improved, but once you are very well-known about this application, you could perform that improvement plan. There are many scenarios where I have worked with Proofpoint Email Protection where a requirement was not fulfilled due to the limitation of the product. For example, we have Report Phish automation. With Proofpoint Email Protection, we can configure Report Phish and forward the email to any email addresses or shared mailboxes that we provide in the configuration. That email is forwarded as is with whatever the user reports as a phishing email. However, some organizations do not want the reported phishing email to go as is into their ticketing tool because it might contain malicious attachments and malicious links that are not required to go into their internal organization. Proofpoint Email Protection has that limitation. They cannot forward or restrict, but could forward only limited information such as some header information, sender subject details, or only limited information. As it is, the email can be forwarded, not as limited information. Proofpoint TRAP solution also has limitations. It cannot create alert notifications for some specific requirements because Proofpoint works the way it is designed, and if you want it to work based on our requirement, that should not be possible. There is a scope of limitations here. There are many improvements that should be made. First, they should work on their false positive minimization. Proofpoint generally takes all emails, investigates them, and classifies them. There are many situations where legit emails are blocked because that domain is found to be under a malicious category somehow, but actually it is not. False positive minimization could be improved, and they could enhance their other applications or solutions. There are many things that they could improve from each application and each portal.
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

"Using Proofpoint Email Protection has successfully reduced the volume of emails that we need to review."
"When those bad emails are kept out of the gate, and the user can just focus on the email that matters most to them, I think that is how much Proofpoint Email Protection is impacting the entire organization."
"The flexibility is unbelievable and you could get extremely creative to accommodate real case scenarios."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a strong and reliable solution for defending against advanced email threats, especially phishing and targeted attacks."
"It's detection of true positives are great, as it's cloud based it's very scalable and stable."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by making things safer; when we rolled it out, it gave us better filtering than the previous product that we were using, capturing a lot more of the malicious material and being easier to use."
"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is the best solution from the perspective of email security."
"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 feature that I like the best is the fingerprinting concept."
"The solution is excellent at blocking spam."
"The most valuable features of Symantec Messaging Gateway are advanced content filtering, malware, and antivirus defense."
"The cloud-based interface is very user-friendly."
"The main thing that I appreciate about this product is that the database of spam, malware, and ransomware is very large."
"I've been using Messaging Gateway for ten years."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway is stable and scalable."
 

Cons

"I believe they still need to improve by consolidating some portals, as currently, you have to log in separately to a few of them."
"I would like to see improvements in Proofpoint Email Protection's portal as it is sometimes slow."
"The solution can be expensive."
"Sometimes it doesn't detect actual spam emails, and sometimes it catches normal emails."
"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."
"Every client always finds it expensive, but I don't know how much they're paying for it."
"Integration for reporting needs to be improved, it's a little complex."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve by reducing the price."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway should include better exclusions and exceptions for better administration."
"If the customer has to think about budget and solutions to reduce IT cost, they should get away from Symantec and try using Microsoft."
"This product would benefit from better integration with Symantec Endpoint Protection."
"What needs to be improved in Symantec Messaging Gateway is its local partner support, as it's not as technical."
"The product must improve the user dashboards."
"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."
"The solution takes up a lot of memory."
"What's 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it expensive."
"The solution uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products."
"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"It is expensive."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
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 Enterprise53
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?
This is not something that I deal with regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
For a beginner level, someone who is very new to email security might find it difficult to manage as an admin. Navigation can be concerning because Proofpoint Email Protection has different console...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
Proofpoint Email Protection serves as our email security solution. The entire SOC team uses Proofpoint Email Protection. The granularity in admin access is different, so each team has their own acc...
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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.
892,943 professionals have used our research since 2012.