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Avanan vs Barracuda Email Security Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (20th), Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Avanan
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (22nd), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (41st)
Barracuda Email Security Ga...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
DMARC Authentication Software (2nd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Avanan2.2%
Proofpoint Email Protection6.8%
Microsoft Defender for Office 3656.3%
Other84.7%
Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Email Security Gateway9.5%
Proofpoint Email Protection19.0%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36516.1%
Other55.4%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
Robert Melendez - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President Information Technology at Makeready
Enhances email security and has a very simple and easy-to-use UI
Spam protection is the most valuable feature. We have implemented the tool to enhance our email security. It helps prevent phishing attacks. The anomaly detection capabilities are baked into the security platform. The product integrates wonderfully with Microsoft 365. It's built right on a cloud platform and works almost natively. The solution has a very simple and easy-to-use UI. The tool appears extremely powerful and has a good solid feature set. It catches things that are bad for my environment. The user interface is good the way it is. If the solution continues down that path, I see no problems with the way it is going. It feels like a mature product.
MM
Graduate Student at ain shams
Secures email by identifying threats and managing email policies effectively
The intuitive management interface feature makes email security policies very easy to implement as it's all about features that need to be enabled or disabled. Our investigation in any incident or mail is very useful as it provides all details about incoming mails, enabling thorough review and detection. The real-time threat intelligence feature is particularly useful as it detects all kinds of threats identified by incoming mails. The Impersonation license utilizes AI tools. Sometimes some phishing mails are reported as phishing, but they are not actually phishing mails. They are detected due to certain words and languages that appear suspicious but were generated by AI tools. Everyone or an advisor may use it for their own purpose or learning, even though it indicates that the mail detected is phishing when it's not.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable solution."
"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."
"For Cloudflare Access, I am using the free plan...The most valuable feature is their protection."
"It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it."
"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."
"Cloudflare One has assisted in securing my remote workforce through a SASE solution with Cloudflare One and the Workers part, although I am not currently using the Workers component."
"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."
"The blocking feature is very good."
"Email Attachment Protection detects any insecure files and quickly blocks them to prevent the spread of viruses to other secure documents."
"When we don't understand some functionalities, the customer support staff responds fast to our calls and provides immediate action."
"The customizable rules allow you to change aspects."
"Avanan is a stable software. My company hasn't faced any issues, bugs, or problems with the performance of Avanan."
"In the overall experience, I have come to conclude that Avanan has the best email management tools that can prevent cyber attacks."
"The ease of installation and the AI capacity of the product are valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its effectiveness; when scanning incoming emails for threats it can, in an automated fashion, quarantine suspicious attachments."
"I like Avanan's SmartDLP module. It's seamless, and the administrative overhead is low. We aren't a very sophisticated operation. We just want to reduce our exposure, so we find ThreatCloud helpful. Avanan's acquisition by Check Point was beneficial for them."
"It seems good in terms of spam blocking and virus blocking; it is lightweight, and we can filter all of our inbound and outbound emails, with controls for rate control, quarantine, and tagging, and we can see whether an email is a spam email or a phishing email."
"The complete filtering feature for all of the emails is valuable for us, as there are lots of attacks that come to our network through emails and it does a good job of blocking them."
"I would suggest implementing Barracuda Spam, because this solution has a multi-factor threat analysis engine, which other products don't have."
"The link protection and anti-phishing features are great."
"We are using this product to protect us against spam and viruses."
"The security protection is the best and it's GUI is user-friendly."
"With the cloud service, one of the nice things about Barracuda is the quarantine service. It gives the ability for our users to go in and check what has been quarantined, and then connect with our IT staff to release anything that should be fine so that we can test it before we release."
"We find the email security to be valuable."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."
"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."
"From a logging perspective, it is still a bit difficult to see exactly what users are being blocked with the current views."
"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"When there are any dynamic changes in complex applications, the tool takes a lot of time, making its analytics-related area a major matter of concern where improvements are needed."
"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."
"Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions."
"Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments."
"When sending bulky emails, the system slows down and takes a long time before it responds effectively to our requests."
"Email querying is not efficient throughout."
"The response to new threats is sometimes slow and can lead to data compromise."
"They need a little bit of improvement in AI logic, as sometimes, it quarantines frequent mailers as spam or suspects."
"It should reduce the amount of time needed for thorough scanning."
"The cost is higher for SMEs, however, the pricing and billing criteria can be lessened to accommodate more willing customers."
"The email filtration system is not well set since it sometimes blocks useful emails that are safe."
"The service best suited for small to medium-sized enterprises, not large enterprise companies."
"There are limited administration controls that should be improved."
"I am not aware of the licensing costs."
"There is room for improvement in the management of multiple domains."
"This product can always be made more secure."
"The pricing of this solution could be improved."
"Spam is not always detected, and it should be more automated. We have seen that some emails are allowed by these emails, which are then stopped by Microsoft."
"We would like to have a local support center in India so that they are operating in the same time zone and speak the same language."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"Having the flexibility and modeling to do the pricing that best fits the needs of the organization is incredibly ideal. That is what Avanan does. They know exactly how many users are using it, etc. We can tune the invoicing associated with how we are using the product so we can charge it back to the shows appropriately."
"The pricing of Avanan is reasonable."
"Good pricing arrangement as an SaaS offering."
"The product is not the cheapest in the market."
"Avanan’s price is comparable to Barracuda."
"We paid for an annual license."
"Barracuda has the best price. Every year we need to renew our license, and every year I need to compare Barracuda to two or three other players in the market. Barracuda always has a price that is 30 to 40 percent less than the other players' prices."
"The solution requires a license and we pay annually."
"The price of this solution is very high, but it's working fine."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is an affordable solution that caters to small, midsize, and high-end businesses with great revenue."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is a cost-effective solution."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $4,000 per year, and this includes updates for the antivirus and spam signatures."
"Compared to other products, this solution is quite affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access provides secure access to internal applications for employees, external members of the organization...
What advice do you have for others considering Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access is one of the best integrations available. While about two hundred vendors offer similar services, ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Sentinel?
Compared to the features and stability, Barracuda Email Security Gateway is affordable in terms of pricing, setup cos...
What needs improvement with Barracuda Sentinel?
On technical aspects, I think Barracuda needs to provide a fast response to any vulnerability on the system and enhan...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Sentinel?
My main use case for Barracuda Email Security Gateway is to protect our email and our email users, protecting our bus...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
No data available
Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall, Barracuda Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
Evolution Recruitment Solutions, Evans Delivery Company, Osoyoos Credit Union, Synovis Life Technologies, Camden County Technical Schools, DEK, Evans Delivery Company, Colgate Rochester Crozer, Hemmera, South Carolina Heart Center, Ferma Corporation, Major League Baseball (MLB), Healy Brothers Automotive Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Avanan vs. Barracuda Email Security Gateway and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
896,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.