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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
110
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Digital Risk Protection (5th), Office 365 Protection (1st)
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
13th
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 November 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 16.7%, down from 20.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Messaging Gateway is 3.1%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection16.7%
Symantec Messaging Gateway3.1%
Other80.2%
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

"Proofpoint Email Protection is really good at what they do within their email protection niche."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is very effective because they are very proactive, always ahead of the attackers, and were already detecting new kinds of attacks before customers thought about them."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is quite scalable; I have not experienced any issues with the onboarding and offboarding of users and devices."
"URL scanning and online relay service are the most valuable features of Proofpoint Email Protection."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the central location dashboard for viewing all the related information for risk."
"Proofpoint Email Protection provides quite comprehensive protection."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to remove bad messages that were delivered, prior to being classified as unwanted."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it's a one-stop shop for email protection."
"The feature that I like the best is the fingerprinting concept."
"The solution is stable and the performance is good."
"The main thing that I appreciate about this product is that the database of spam, malware, and ransomware is very large."
"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 solution is "set and forget". You pay for it and everything is done for you."
"Symantec is a secure product."
"The solution is excellent at blocking spam."
"The setup is pretty simple."
 

Cons

"Proofpoint Email Protection is an expensive solution."
"The initial setup is complex."
"I have not noticed much change in operational efficiency after implementing Proofpoint Email Protection, but the process execution is light."
"The flexibility of the solution can be improved."
"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."
"It has too many screens. It is kind of a conglomeration of products. In other words, they built product A, product B, and product C, and they are yet to integrate them into a single administrative console. I would certainly like to see a more seamless administrative interface. I would also like to see them include more bang for the buck, by including features like email fraud protection, rather than making their product so piecemeal, where you are buying little pieces. I agree with the idea of having multiple tiers or layers, but maybe as small, medium, and large, as opposed to an a la carte menu."
"The false positives are an issue. There are many false positives that come in, which you report to Proofpoint."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve by reducing the price."
"If the customer has to think about budget and solutions to reduce IT cost, they should get away from Symantec and try using Microsoft."
"It is a nice product but is not user friendly in terms of the graphical interface. It is poor and is not rich in terms of the human interface."
"The solution takes up a lot of memory."
"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."
"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."
"They really need to create a good package that competes with Microsoft."
"The solution interface is from 2003 and is outdated. Symantec Messaging Gateway needs to update the interface."
"The product must improve the user dashboards."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"We sell annual licenses for this solution."
"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."
"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"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."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise23
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.
921,338 professionals have used our research since 2012.