Symantec Messaging Gateway Reviews

Our primary use case is the protection of email. We are linked to Microsoft Office 365 and all of our emails, inbound or outbound, are processed through Symantec.

The main thing that I appreciate about this product is that the database of spam, malware, and ransomware is very large. The database capabilities are top-notch.

The level of operation is very good.

The cloud-based interface is very user-friendly.

This product would benefit from better integration with Symantec Endpoint Protection. As it is now, these tools work independently and they do not synchronize between themselves. For this reason, the security benefits go down slightly. When things such as email, spam filters, and endpoint protection are synchronized, the security is enhanced.

I have been using the Symantec Messaging Gateway for about one and a half years.

This is a stable product. We receive thousands of emails on a daily basis and it is responsible for filtering those both incoming and outgoing.

Scaling usage is very easy to do. We have 150 users in the company.

The technical support is good and we have no issues with them. There is an additional charge for support but we are satisfied with it, and everything comes with a cost at the end of the day.

This is the only email security product that we have used.

The initial setup is a very easy process. It is step-by-step and not complicated at all. It takes about half an hour to deploy.

Once installed, it is automatically updated so we are always using the latest version.

Our in-house team was responsible for deployment.

A subscription for technical support costs extra.

We continuously compare the performance of this product to others, such as a similar solution by Barracuda Systems. The Symantec solution really stands out in terms of how people rate it.

I highly recommend using the Symantec Messaging Gateway.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for security - to protect us from malware and to have anti-spam, content filtering. It's for that initial inspection of email before it gets into our environment.

The solution is stable and the performance is good. 

Technical support, under Symantec, was good.

They were great at keeping up with patching.

The product could scale.

The initial setup wasn't too difficult. 

Having the control center in just one place was difficult. Now that they are moving to the cloud, it will be less of an issue. 

The solution is slightly outdated. The version that we have now is due to the fact that the company hasn't moved up to the latest version. They're on 10.6 and the latest version is 10.74 or something like that. They were four versions behind.

The biggest problem is it's an on-prem product and we're trying to get out of having equipment in data centers. The company wants the reliability that the cloud offers. That's the main justification for leaving that product. I know they offer a cloud solution, however, when you have Microsoft having it as part of a package and you're already kind of paying for something, it makes sense to move over, rather than have two solutions doing the same thing in one company.

I worked for the company that I'm working at now, for 19 years, however, I was gone for six years. In that 19 years, I had about 10 years where I was using Symantec Messaging Gateway. 

The stability is good. It's not buggy or glitchy. It works well. The performance is good.

I haven't messed with it in six years, and prior to that, there were not really any issues. It was a pretty good product, and they kept up with security patches. I noticed that we have a product that looks for vulnerabilities. If it's alarming, Symantec will come back and say, "No, we're good, we don't have that code in our product." They seem to have been pretty good with that.

It was pretty easy to scale. You just added more scanners. The one downside was you could only have one control center unless you wanted to manually keep two different control centers at two different data centers, and configure them the same. 

That said, you'll never 100% have them alike. That's the one downside is that you're stuck with, no matter how you scale your scanners, in the DMZ, and you still have that one control center inside. That's how we deployed it. If we lose that data center, we lose that control center. There are some white papers out there now on how to make that change to a different control center, so it is possible, however, it's been a long time since I've looked at that.

We have about 15,000 end-users on the solution currently. 

Technical support was fine when it was Symantec. It might have changed since it was bought out by Broadcom. I can't speak to that.

We're moving over to Microsoft Defender P2.

I'm on a project now, however, the hardware's old as we bought it originally back when you bought the appliance from Symantec. Due to the fact that the hardware's old, and since the company's already paying for Microsoft, we've decided to just go full-on with the Defender P2 license, and pull that old hardware, and take the Symantec Messaging Gateway out. The goal is to get everything into the cloud. 

The initial setup isn't too complex. That said, there are some challenges when you start stacking on different policies and stuff like that.

I didn't know the pricing when we bought it, and that was a long time ago. I can't speak to the exact costs. 

We are currently on the oldest version that's supported. It might be around version 10.

We primarily use this solution to encrypt outgoing emails to the recipient. That is why I bought the solution from Symantec Messaging Gateway. 

The encryption screen messages are very good. No one can hack the emails.

The solution is excellent at blocking spam.

Recently, I've had some problems regarding their support. The tech was acquired by Broadcom. Since then, the support part is very bad right. They really need to improve this aspect.

They have updated the version of the Messaging Gateway and the new features they are adding the need to be re-evaluated. They have done some changes on the policy.

We've been using the solution for two years.

I've noticed lately that the solution can be buggy.

I have observed a few updates that have bugs. Right now, the solution is not updated due to some bugs that are coming from the updates. Currently, the company will not pay for the box from the software. That's why virtual appliances are not updating.

We've been in touch with technical support and we find that, since the Broadcom takeover, the support is lacking. They're very bad and not helpful at all. We've found that the support team is not able to provide full service to us any longer. When they were just Symantec, before the acquisition, they were quite good.

I also use McAfee, however, McAfee not working at 100%. Symantec has gone back to 99.9%. Everyone says "our product is at 100%", however, it is not possible. That's due to the fact that everyday hackers are busy finding new ways to breach security. 

I like both solutions. I've used them both for the last few years.

The initial setup is pretty straight forward, however, you need to get the policies right. That part is complex. You need some guidance from support teams, or you need to read some articles or admin guides that can be found on Google.

Deployment took about 30 minutes.

I handle the maintenance on my own. It doesn't require a lot of personnel to manage it.

We used an integrator to assist us with the implementation. They were very helpful and we were satisfied with their level of knowledge.

We're Symantec customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

The deployment of the solution is just virtual. We have acquired virtual appliances and we have projects ongoing on the machines.

The product itself is quite good, however, Broadcom needs to step up its support.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use it as a perimeter gateway where it scans for spam. We use all the features and configure all the features, like malware and content filtering. But most of the requests come for content filtering, where we need filters based on some specific words or subjects or based on the reports that come from government agencies.

It helps us by protecting us from spam, and it also checks for viruses.

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.

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.

I have been dealing with Symantec Messaging Gateway for about seven or eight years.

We have used it for many years, and I never faced any issues. Even if it crashes, let's say the VM itself rebooted or something, then it does Linux basic things and it comes back online.

We have a couple of nodes extended at the moment, and so far, we haven't had any issues with configuration, replication, or when the firmware is updated. It works fine.

Technical support was good before they moved to Broadcom. After it went to Broadcom, the support quality degraded.

It was deployed before I started working on it, but I feel like it was easy.

I would recommend this solution. I would tell potential users that it's simple and easy to configure, deploy, and manage.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Symantec Messaging Gateway a seven.

Symantec provides a layer of protection on the email gateway. It checks for malware, IP,  domain, etc. 

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 documentation could have more detailed examples of how to use the product in various situations. As more companies shift to the cloud, they could better integrate the on-prem and cloud versions through an on-prem client. 

I have used Symantec Messaging Gateway for many years. 

I rate Messaging Gateway eight out of 10 for stability.

I rate Messaging Gateway eight out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Symantec support eight out of 10.

Messaging Gateway is priced fairly.

I rate Symantec Messaging Gateway eight out of 10. 

I've been using Messaging Gateway for ten years.

Messaging Gateway's advanced malware detection could be improved.

Messaging Gateway is stable.

Messaging Gateway is scalable.

I've had no problems with Symantec's technical support.

The initial setup was easy.

I would recommend Messaging Gateway to other users and rate it nine out of ten.

Symantec Messaging Gateway has a huge knowledge base about phishing, spamming, spoofing, etc.

It is complicated to integrate the product with QRadar. This particular area needs improvement.

It is a stable platform.

We have three Symantec Messaging Gateway users in our organization. It could be more scalable.

We do not contact them directly. An intermediate corporation contacts the technical support team on our behalf. They have good engineers, but they could respond faster to the queries.

Neutral

The initial setup has medium complexity. It takes six to seven days for installation. However, improvement in the tool might take some more time.

It is easy to maintain and requires three executives to work on it.

It is a good product. I recommend it to others and rate it an eight out of ten.

Symantec Messaging Gateway is used for email security.

The most valuable features of Symantec Messaging Gateway are advanced content filtering, malware, and antivirus defense.

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.

In a future release, if dynamic variables in content filtering was added it would solve a lot of problems. If we could be able to use some variables or handle the content filtering policies somehow dynamically, such as comparing today's date to a date in the content header of an email. If it was more dynamic list checking instead of static rules we usually adjust on clients.

I have been using Symantec Messaging Gateway for approximately three years.

Since Symantec Messaging Gateway is a Linux-based solution it is stable.

Symantec Messaging Gateway is highly scalable.

The technical support from Symantec Messaging Gateway is good.

I rate the support from Symantec Messaging Gateway a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup of Symantec Messaging Gateway is straightforward.

I strongly recommend on-premise email security solutions. I'm strictly against cloud email security solutions, they are very problematic. There is cloud congestion for every kind of cloud-based software and the managed services are very hard to deal with for cloud-based solutions. On-premise solutions are easy to deploy and to troubleshoots. For cloud solutions, downtimes are the most prominent issue we witness. It is really difficult to be a part of cloud-based solutions since it is out of your control.

No one just wants their emails to be blocked or connection failures in their daily lives. That's why the on-premise solutions are the fastest and more manageable solutions.

Some aspects of this solution are going to expire because of the Broadcom acquisition.

I would highly recommend this solution to others.

I rate Symantec Messaging Gateway a nine out of ten.