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Avanan vs Barracuda Email Security Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (1st), Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Avanan
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (16th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (17th)
Barracuda Email Security Ga...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
DMARC Authentication Software (4th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

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.
Robert Melendez - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mohammed Shah Newaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Instantly blocked and reduced our spam emails
The solution has to improve in a very specific way. When we allow our customers to send or scan email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, we are permitting their email server IP address, but not any domain. One of our customers has an email server where they are hosting five domains within their server. They are sending and receiving email through that server by using Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Therefore, we allow their IP address to send email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, then we declare MX for receiving email on behalf of our customers. After receiving the email, we deliver it to the specific IP address of the customer. Since we are only allowing the IP address, if an incident happens within a customer's email server or an email server gets compromised, then it starts sending spam. That creates a huge problem for the solution as it allows all emails because the customer's IP address is allowed to relay email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Barracuda should add an option where it can add multiple domains, such as abc.com, bbc.com, and cbc.com. Therefore, this domains' emails will be allowed and other domains' emails will not be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Whereas, if you allow the IP address, then any of the domain's emails will be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. That is the drawback that I have observed. So, Barracuda should work on this.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is not resource-intensive."
"The stability of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is fantastic."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"The benefit that stands out to me is the ability for multiple individuals to collaborate simultaneously within the same document. Additionally, there is the option to save the document directly in the integrated OneDrive or SharePoint."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Defender for Office 365 at a ten."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"Easy to use for non-technical users."
"The ease of installation and the AI capacity of the product are valuable."
"Email inspection has saved many employees from spam attacks and viruses from unauthorized sources."
"Avanan is a stable software. My company hasn't faced any issues, bugs, or problems with the performance of Avanan."
"If we look at four to five years ago, we had close to six or eight people click a link in an email per month. Now, we are probably down to about five or six clicks a year, if not less."
"This technology is one of Check Point's acquisitions, and it is currently a powerful tool that provides all the protection that is not found in other tools."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its effectiveness. When scanning incoming emails for threats it can in an automated fashion, quarantine suspicious attachments."
"It can detect corrupted files and filters out documents with viruses."
"The feature that sets Barracuda apart from other solutions is the Office 365 cloud-to-cloud backup."
"We find the product to be scalable."
"Before this solution, we didn't have any separate feature for protecting our emails. We used to only have a firewall but now we have email security. It has a graphical interface and we can see the log every time. We can see that the performance is fine."
"Eliminating inbox clutter creates an opportunity to be more productive instead of wasting time manually sorting through spam."
"It catches a lot of things and has the ability to add domains as well as add senders and update their things."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is the complete capabilities it provides. Additionally, the phishing security and sandbox features are effective."
"The solution's anti-spam features are its most valuable aspect."
 

Cons

"Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better."
"We still see many false positives from time to time with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, so it would be good if we can reduce those false positives and provide better workflows for our end users, as sometimes they may not know what to do when they encounter a false positive."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"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."
"Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities."
"One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get a lot of information on integrations with such apps for security and authentication."
"Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"The system could be designed to give corporate emails first priority due to demands."
"There are times when we have false positives."
"Integration with various SaaS offerings, who are leading in the SaaS market."
"In Avanan, the email channel is one of the channels where data leakage happens, and they need to consider it from a DLP perspective."
"It is very difficult to find the required documentation."
"It should reduce the amount of time needed for thorough scanning."
"Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments."
"The system response in a slow computing device affects performance when sending and receiving emails."
"There are limited administration controls that should be improved."
"Some of the phishing emails are not being blocked. Another problem is that we are not able to manage the date and time in our time zone."
"The scalability needs improvement, it's the only feature that is required."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway can improve reporting and anti-spam. The anti-spam engine is not working well. We are seeing a lot of problems where spam is going through the gateway. Additionally, access privilege should be given to the IT support, because they don't have a lot of privileges. We are forced to give our IT support administrative access in order to clear and deliver emails and this should not be happening."
"False positives have given us issues."
"There is room for further integration with the wider platform."
"We had an incident where we didn't want to receive any emails or spam from a certain site and email address. We selected the mail ID, and we send it to Barracuda for analysis to see if it's spam or something like that. As of now, we haven't gotten any update or notification as to what happened with it."
"The solution should add automatic alerts to the mobile."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is very expensive."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"The product is expensive."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"Avanan’s price is comparable to Barracuda."
"Good pricing arrangement as an SaaS offering."
"The product is not the cheapest in the market."
"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."
"We find the solution's pricing okay."
"We typically purchase a one or three-year license for Barracuda Email Security Gateway."
"I rate the price of Barracuda Email Security Gateway a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The solution is priced low. We have received a good price discount here in Sri Lanka. There are additional licenses we have to purchase a license for the ATP."
"It is a cost-effective and relatively cheap solution as compared to others. Our customers have a yearly subscription. We do have a few customers with monthly subscriptions, but they have cloud-based Email protection, which is a different type of solution. Both solutions are very good."
"Compared to other products, this solution is quite affordable."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is an affordable solution that caters to small, midsize, and high-end businesses with great revenue."
"The price of this solution is very high, but it's working fine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
48%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

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?
Microsoft is quite affordable with a lot of features available for any size organization.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS recor...
What do you like most about Avanan?
Spam protection is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with Avanan?
Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments. Barracuda provides backup and retention of emails and Microsoft 365’s bac...
What do you like most about Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway is very simple to use.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway should include ATP in the next release.
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall, Barracuda Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
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.
850,900 professionals have used our research since 2012.