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Sophos Email vs Symantec Messaging Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Sophos Email
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (13th), Office 365 Protection (3rd)
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Sophos Email is designed for Email Security and holds a mindshare of 1.6%, down 1.8% compared to last year.
Symantec Messaging Gateway, on the other hand, focuses on Secure Email Gateway (SEG), holds 3.0% mindshare, up 2.5% since last year.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sophos Email1.6%
Proofpoint Email Protection5.9%
Microsoft Defender for Office 3655.2%
Other87.3%
Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Messaging Gateway3.0%
Proofpoint Email Protection18.0%
Mimecast Advanced Email Security14.1%
Other64.9%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

ManojNair2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Comprehensive detection has protected email traffic and now simplifies endpoint security work
Sophos Email security is the primary product I use. It scans all your inbound and outbound email for malware. It also has a capability for looking for phishing and spear phishing content and blocking it. Email has an extended capability that includes what's called a secure web gateway. All user traffic gets managed through that, making it a combination product. The version of the product you run determines which features are available. Reporting is competent. There is scope for more improvements, which they will do as they do every year regularly. They keep updating the product. Reporting gives you the relevant details of what is happening, so it's mature on that front. The main benefit is security for your email. The beauty of the Sophos system is that the XDR functionality runs across the system. Sophos, Trend Micro, and Microsoft are the only three that have a very strong system with this concept. XDR stands for extended detection and response, and it's a technology where the system automatically exchanges security signals between the endpoint, the email, and other similar products of the same brand. If you have Sophos Endpoint and Sophos Email, you have very good connectivity from the endpoint to the cloud at the email level and to some extent onto the browsing traffic. You have a very rounded security aspect.
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

"There are many features that are important, but among those, the spam protection feature is very valuable. It help us to safeguard the email against phishing and ensures that there is maximum security enabled for our communication processes. It has a huge role in protecting our emails from potential threats."
"You will find a lot of value in this solution and the small difference in price should not matter, it does protect well."
"The main use case for Sophos Email is its robust security features; we are effectively blocking spam and phishing attempts, and we have strong control over these aspects."
"The most valuable feature is its email security."
"Endpoint and server protection are very effective."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The deployment is very easy. It's quite straightforward."
"I found the user interface friendly."
"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."
"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 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."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a huge knowledge base about phishing, spamming, spoofing, etc."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"The main thing that I appreciate about this product is that the database of spam, malware, and ransomware is very large."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a good GUI, and it is very powerful in detecting viruses and spam."
 

Cons

"Email installation could be more user-friendly so that it can be done without involving the partner."
"The solution has not found a way to block certain kinds of phishing emails."
"The product could include all the essential features and capabilities, similar to the on-premise, server-based version."
"The solution's sandboxing and spam control features could be improved."
"Sophos Email could improve DLP features."
"Price is obviously a challenging part, and I think it is the biggest problem we have suffered from over the last two or three years due to a 7 to 8% hike per year, twice a year, which is why we have some renewals on Sophos Email, Sophos XDR, EDR, and the firewall, but due to price hike, they are unable to renew it."
"The pricing could improve by having additional discounts."
"I would like to see improvements in the initial setup process, ensuring better compatibility with diverse customer infrastructures."
"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."
"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."
"We've had issues in the past where the user finds spam, and Symantec does not recognize it as spam."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
"The solution takes up a lot of memory."
"Where it is not available, as is the case with unstructured data, this product fails miserably."
"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."
"This product would benefit from better integration with Symantec Endpoint Protection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is quite reasonable, with a fixed cost and no additional charges."
"I rate the product's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The pricing is affordable, so I’d rate it around a four out of ten on the pricing scale. We pay about fifty pounds a month, including hardware so that costs may differ without it."
"The platform is inexpensive. It offers a cost-effective licensing model. We purchase its yearly license."
"We use exchange licenses, for which we get immediate support from Sophos."
"Licensing is paid on a yearly basis."
"I rate the price of Sophos Email a four out of five."
"The product is cheaper compared to other solutions."
"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."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos Email?
Regarding Sophos Email pricing, I would rate it between six or seven out of ten.
What needs improvement with Sophos Email?
Some existing functionality in the product needs better articulation in how data is displayed. In one place there is data, but the way the data should be shown is not being shown right now. I have ...
What is your primary use case for Sophos Email?
I work on the endpoints. I work on endpoint, email, and firewall. Email, I use it on my personal domain, so I know what it does.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Sophos Email Security
Symantec.cloud, Symantec Email Security.cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Del Monte Foods, Terra Verde, spicerhaart, RIVERLITE, Dataprise, SureBridge, Reed's School, Sayfol International School
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, Microsoft, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Email Security. Updated: August 2026.
913,654 professionals have used our research since 2012.