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AppRiver Email Security vs IRONSCALES comparison

 

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

AppRiver Email Security
Ranking in Email Security
38th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IRONSCALES
Ranking in Email Security
19th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (20th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of AppRiver Email Security is 0.9%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IRONSCALES is 1.8%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IRONSCALES1.8%
AppRiver Email Security0.9%
Other97.3%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

John Zupancic - PeerSpot reviewer
Pricing that is competitive, excellent technical support, and email security
They do a better job of distinguishing between what's real and what's not than most of the other solutions we've tried. They are very easy to use. We don't have as many problems with email security. They have some areas that could be improved. For example, we also use Zix email Encryption for email encryption, which was clunky and could be improved, but the email security itself has been excellent.
Hemeshen Govender - PeerSpot reviewer
Applies AI automation to clearly identify and stop a lot of phishing emails
The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through. The solution improved our response to phishing attempts. IRONSCALES has a virtual assistant and some AI intelligence that's applied to it. That was the main differentiator between IRONSCALES and Microsoft. The solution's AI automation clearly identifies phishing emails and gives you an overall indication of why it found the mail to be malicious. It does the whole analysis for you to see why the email was deemed a phishing email. The solution's response time is better than that of our previous tool. The solution's user interface is pretty straightforward and user-friendly.

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 use and user-friendly. Users can also easily release spam emails."
"They are very easy to use."
"For me, the mobile app is most valuable. All other features are also very useful, but the mobile app makes it really easy for me to manage on the go. I don't have to be at my desk. I could be at the shops, or it could be in the evening when I am out, and I can get a notification on my phone that there is an incident that has been raised. I can sort it out very quickly without having to be at my work PC."
"The report function through Gmail is probably the most valuable feature. The next most valuable features are simulation and training."
"For what was being offered with IRONSCALES, I feel like we got an incredible deal."
"The stability is good."
"I would say the most valuable feature is what they call Themis. It's like a virtual analyst that uses the decisions that system admins make to generate a score for whether an email is legitimate, spam, or phishing. It gets better based on the decisions that we make over time. The automation piece is great as well. The integrated approach of email security combined with employee awareness training is excellent."
"The biggest benefit is that we get fewer phishing and spam emails, so using IRONSCALES has made our environment much safer."
"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to set it up, install, and manage the product."
"The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through."
 

Cons

"Email security checks contain a small number of false positives."
"It needs to make sure that the application is up to date with new attacks. They should also send us the demo or introductions for their new incoming features."
"There's room for improvement in the campaign management. IRONSCALES has many built-in templates that I use, but you can also build templates from scratch. However, the interface for creating custom templates needs to be updated."
"Its UI could be improved. My pet peeve with a lot of these cloud-based systems is that a lot of times, the interface for the management is a little clunky. If you live and breathe IRONSCALES all day long, you'll obviously know where everything is just from muscle memory, but the system is not designed for people to be in it all day long. You're only supposed to occasionally look at it. When things get moved around, it is not necessarily that intuitive. I'm an IT guy, and I can pretty much take the worst UI and figure it out, but the menus and the options in the interface could be a little cleaner graphically. If you have a quick problem that you want to resolve, it takes a little bit of digging in the admin console, whereas it should take a few clicks up front."
"Even though they have been continuously improving it, it is not 100% there. We have had a few incidents where legitimate emails were getting blocked, and we had to manually remove those emails from quarantine. It is 90% effective or accurate because, on rare occasions, some emails from customers were not getting delivered. In one or two instances, their emails got blocked by IRONSCALES, and we had to manually remove the emails from quarantine. I would like them to improve their algorithm to avoid flagging genuine emails as malicious. I would also like to be able to whitelist certain email addresses. I'd love to be able to whitelist a particular customer."
"The integration with Google Suite needs to be better. it's something they can work on."
"In addition to integrated training, they should also have personalized training that you don't have to do as part of a phishing campaign or a simulation."
"There is a feature called Account Takeover, which isn't what I want it to be able to do. I know that they're working on that, but when they first started the Account Takeover feature in incident management, it didn't have much information. It didn't have any usability to it. I already had tools in place that were better."
"The tool supports 15 to 16 languages, but the content it uses in the training in Spanish has certain limitations."
"I think the tool can continue to hone the product to ensure the detections are accurate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I can rate it five out of ten because there are different platforms that also offer the same services for lower prices. But AppRiver is more flexible."
"They're fairly inexpensive, but they're right in the ballpark of most of the other online products like that."
"Considering the value it provides, it is definitely worth the cost. We don't have to do manual analysis and remediation of phishing emails, which saves us a lot of hours. Its licensing is based on the number of users being supported and the number of email addresses being protected. I'm not aware of any additional costs."
"We pay $3000 plus a little more a year for the number of employees we have, and we're not even that big. The solution is at the higher end in terms of cost. It's not the most expensive product, but I would say it's worth the price if you have a high volume of email traffic. In our case, the solution has inspected over 162,000 emails between three and four months. It saved us a lot of time and money. It's a worthwhile investment because a bad actor only has to succeed once; we must defend against everything in our business. IRONSCALES offers a sense of security and confidence from being well protected."
"As compared to everything else we looked at, it was good. It was the best value for the dollars."
"They are pretty much the same as all the other competitors in the market."
"IRONSCALES is an expensive solution."
"There is an installation cost. Since we have this as a managed service, we pay for licensing and the managed service itself. Other than that, there are no additional costs."
"The tool is not very cheap, but it is affordable."
"The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
5%
Legal Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about IRONSCALES?
The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IRONSCALES?
The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution. There are other solutions apart from IRONSCALES that are more expensive, while some are a little bit more ...
What needs improvement with IRONSCALES?
I think maybe on the side of the awareness training, the tool can improve a little more information and have some other languages since even though English is good, Spanish is not so good. The tool...
 

Also Known As

AppRiver Advanced Email Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IHMC
Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
Find out what your peers are saying about AppRiver Email Security vs. IRONSCALES and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
866,685 professionals have used our research since 2012.