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Sophos Email vs TitanHQ SpamTitan comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Sophos Email
Ranking in Email Security
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Office 365 Protection (1st)
TitanHQ SpamTitan
Ranking in Email Security
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (18th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 13.7%, down from 20.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Email is 2.4%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TitanHQ SpamTitan is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
NaveedAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good identity proxy features, but sandboxing and spam control features could be improved
Sophos gives you a feature set to manage your on-premises firewall on the cloud. I just integrated my on-premises firewall into the cloud, and I can manage the tool through the cloud as well if needed. I recommend using Sophos Email as a proxy. For email gateways, I advise choosing mature products with rich feature sets, like Trend Micro or CrowdStrike. The solution's integration with other tools is very simple. I easily integrated Sophos Email with my Active Directory. My organization needs a WAF with a limited feature set, which we use through Sophos. Purchasing additional WAF will be costly, but I get sandboxing and WAF features free of cost with Sophos, which is included in the license. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
George Kajaia - PeerSpot reviewer
Work hours are not lost searching through spam emails to determine which emails are legitimate
In history on the reporting graph, when you are trying to search for sender by address, it won't search by domain. I could send an email from SendGrid with my domain, but with SpamTitan, if you search by that domain then it wouldn't search it. It only searches from the field, not in the envelope field. Unfortunately, mass mailing companies, like SendGrid, send email with the form address and that completely differs from the domain envelope form address. There is no way to search for the envelope form. So, I gave them an idea to improve this filtering. For example, if I have to search an email sent by SendGrid, then I am forced to search by the recipient, then find the emails marked as spam. This is quite a huge hassle. They told me that they are aware of this and will try to add it, but they haven't added it yet. I would like to implement a secondary delivery pool for mass mailings, having an alternate pool for mass mailing lists since there is only a single mail queue with SpamTitan. For example, if 10,000 emails are being sent, then the queue will be large. Unfortunately, without a secondary delivery pool, legitimate emails will wait in the queue to be delivered to my email. Therefore, I would like to have two queues: one for everyday emails and another for mass mailings. Now, I have to decide whether to buy a second SpamTitan license just for this reason because I am very satisfied with the functionality of SpamTitan overall and don't want to use another sender's appliance for this. From 2020 to 2021, there was a huge switch in the types of spam coming in. SpamTitan's anti-spam should be enabled to catch this spam. The spam catching rate went down over the last three to four years. I think this is because spammers are evolving and using different methods to send spam emails. The phishing rate of SpamTitan is not great, even Exchange Online Protection catches phishing better than SpamTitan. The most worrying are the phishing emails. I would like SpamTitan to upgrade and improve the phishing catch rate. The sandbox of the Bitdefender engine is not working correctly. They sent me an email that they pulled it because it was not working as it was intended to work. So, they are working on this as well, and maybe the sandbox will be fixed. The sandbox is for viruses. If something goes through then it is sent to the sandbox for analysis. However, I am not using the sandbox right now. I am just quarantining this type of attachment right away.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It’s easy to handle integrations, and we don't need a lot of people in our IT team."
"Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"The good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."
"The most valuable aspect of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is its ability to protect us from malware."
"The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over."
"I have found Sophos Email to be scalable."
"The anti-malware, risk scanning has been pretty spot on."
"Our client recently received many emails, and their employees didn't realize these emails were phishing attempts. Consequently, they clicked on them and fell victim to the attack. Therefore, it is important to secure their system with Sophos Email Security."
"The speed and stability were fine."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The feature of Sophos Email that we find most effective for detecting suspicious emails is primarily based on their signatures."
"The solution's identity proxy feature is very good and reliable."
"The tool is a good solution for protecting against email attacks and monitoring networks. It supports our compliance efforts and is easy to use and stable."
"The standout features include the anti-phishing feature, which is particularly advantageous as far as our clients are concerned; it was a very welcome addition for many of them."
"I have found the feature that creates seamless categorization of emails valuable. This is most likely done by having a large database to compare and to identify what are the domains that are currently spammers."
"The solution is not hard to manage."
"I like SpamTitan's email sandboxing. It is very effective and blocks almost 99% of spam. It also has zero-day threat protection."
"Their superior service comes at a very cost-effective price. This is the biggest part that really allows us to remain competitive. Their pricing for us has just been great. They have helped us to be where we need to be. They really do partner with us in that way so we can get more business. They provide the right pricing, which lets us remain competitive."
"The discovery work to resolve [issues] has gotten so much easier because we can see what's going on right at the edge of our incoming and our outgoing mail. A regular tech support dude can log in... and get a very practical view of what is going on..."
"They have something called Pattern Filtering, which has been a godsend... For example, if I don't want any email to ever come through that has the term "hot dog" in it, whether it be in the subject, the title, or anywhere else, I can immediately block such emails, company-wide. That has saved me so much time."
"I like the fact that SpamTitan filters out phishing and spoofing links. They call it AI-driven threat protection. Though I'm a highly educated, advanced computer user, I still like not having to pay attention to where the link is going. I can trust that SpamTitan will filter it out nine times out of 10."
 

Cons

"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help."
"The XDR dashboard has room for improvement."
"Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically."
"The product must provide better malware detection."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should improve the troubleshooting tools. It's unclear whether the device is blocked at the firewall level or at the device itself. The granularity needed for troubleshooting is currently lacking. From my perspective, Microsoft should address this issue to benefit many users who likely share the same sentiment."
"The tool’s stability should be improved."
"Email installation could be more user-friendly so that it can be done without involving the partner"
"Sophos Email can improve security."
"Sophos Email could better detect fake emails, especially when the domain names are similar. It needs to improve spotting spoofed domains, like when one letter differs in a domain name. It also needs to incorporate AI detection. Barracuda detects suspicious emails better. However, malware scanning is better in Sophos Email."
"The installation of Sophos Email could be easier. It's a bit difficult because setting up the email virtually requires some bit of technical knowledge."
"Their technical support is slow to respond."
"The security of the solution could improve."
"The solution has not found a way to block certain kinds of phishing emails."
"The GUI is problematic."
"Its GUI can definitely be improved. As the administrator of the product, the GUI isn't very logically built. If you need something, you don't have one menu where you can say, "Well, this relates to our customers," and manage everything for your customers in that interface. The naming and placement of some of the menus need improvement. For example, if I'm looking for a log to take a look at what has passed through the filter of a specific customer, I get these ZIP-packed files that I can't use for anything. I have to look under history instead. The naming of some of the features is off by a lot."
"Sometimes, things can get caught back in spam that you had previously released. Without going in, releasing the whole domain, and opening it up, since you don't want to do that often because the company can get infected as well, I have a couple of things that I previously released show back up again. I don't understand why this is happening, but I would like to know why it happened, e.g., did an algorithm change? It is important to know if I released an email last week why it was caught in spam the following week."
"There is room for improvement in automation; better wizards for deployment, for example."
"One of the things that I have been asking them to do is add the ability to scan a domain's age. It seems like the majority of spam right now have been registered with brand new domains. They are utilizing and abusing them for two weeks until they make it onto all the blacklists, then they pick a new one. They just move on. So, if we could scan a domain's age, and just say, "Outright block domains that are less than two weeks old," then it would make SpamTitan even better. They absolutely should be doing that. I would love it if they would do that."
"The interface looks a little dated and could be modernized."
"The SpamTitan user interface is not amazing, but I don't mind it. I know they are releasing a new one soon. I have seen it and it looks a lot better. That has been an area that needs improvement."
"They could improve on the color of the interface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has become expensive."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"The product is expensive."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"It falls somewhere in the middle—it's not excessively expensive nor very cheap."
"I rate the product's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The pricing is fair."
"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."
"Sophos Email is a little expensive for us, but it's necessary. We have a subscription and renew it every three years."
"It is an expensive solution. On a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price, I rate the pricing a seven."
"The pricing could improve by having additional discounts. For example, when customers buy have more than 50 or more users, there should be additional discounts."
"Sophos Email is neither cheap nor expensive."
"But the most critical factor was cost-effectiveness. SpamTitan was much cheaper than Barracuda and offered the same value."
"The reason that they can be so reasonable with their cost is that they don't have to spend a lot on support. It's such a stable product that you're not needing to contact them that much. If their customers don't need to call support every other day, they can give them a solution that is cost-effective."
"They have different packages, services, or products that they sell. I would recommend it for small businesses to larger organizations, even enterprises, but not individuals."
"Partner profitability is good with Titan HQ's partner program. This means that I recommend it to clients who trust me. My time and effort to educate them is compensated by TitanHQ, who provides the solution to me at a lower price than what the public gets it at, then I can make some money."
"The pricing is great, but it has been increasing on a yearly basis. It is now close to that of Microsoft solutions. If it continues to increase, then clients may need to migrate to a different solution."
"We used to use FortiClient and Symantec Messaging Gateway. We didn't like Symantec's solution, but we switched because of the cost. SpamTitan was more cost-effective than either of the other solutions."
"Cloud-based solutions charge per mailbox, which isn't ideal sometimes. A company could have 300 total mailboxes and only 50 in regular use, but they would have to pay the same for all of them. I want a cloud-based solution that gives a price based on the volume of email traffic."
"The price is quite advantageous; we were initially surprised at the pricing compared to other solutions, which made us doubt if this was the solution for us. Then, we discovered SpamTitan's features and how cost-effective it is. The sales team does an excellent job making our life easier in terms of pricing, which is another significant advantage of this product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I don't have detailed specifics on pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost.
What do you like most about Sophos Email?
The solution's identity proxy feature is very good and reliable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos Email?
Sophos Email pricing is a bit high, especially since I purchase through a partner, and they sell it at a higher price...
What needs improvement with Sophos Email?
Email installation could be more user-friendly so that it can be done without involving the partner. If made more use...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TitanHQ SpamTitan?
Pricing is affordable. We renewed for three years, and the cost is reasonable.
What needs improvement with TitanHQ SpamTitan?
The GUI is problematic. It's a mess and absolute rubbish now. We also face issues with the settings that are not yet ...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Sophos Email Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Del Monte Foods, Terra Verde, spicerhaart, RIVERLITE, Dataprise, SureBridge, Reed's School, Sayfol International School
De Montfort University, Scope Services, Park County School District, NRC, Quality Smith, Toyota, CarTrawler, Videotron
Find out what your peers are saying about Sophos Email vs. TitanHQ SpamTitan and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.