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Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) vs Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
9.1
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense improved security, reduced incidents, and increased efficiency, providing significant cost savings and operational stability.
Sentiment score
6.9
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup enhances productivity and ROI by reducing recovery failures, troubleshooting time, and overall costs.
If your staff can become aware and trained to have minimal incidents, that is a huge return on investment for any organization.
Account Executive at Hilton Worldwide
We have seen a return on investment evidenced by fewer breaching incidents and less workload for our security team.
Senior Software Engineer at Kroger
I have seen a return on investment with Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) as it has protected our customers against targeted phishing emails, set up training campaigns easily, and trained the human firewall.
Marketing Director at Unisys
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.6
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense customer support is praised for responsive, proactive 24/7 assistance, achieving high ratings from users.
Sentiment score
8.3
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup's customer service is praised for prompt, effective responses, though regional sanctions may limit access.
The customer support for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very responsive and supportive 24/7.
Marketing Director at Unisys
The customer support for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very proactive and responsive.
Senior Software Engineer at Kroger
The customer support for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very proactive and supportive.
Account Executive at Hilton Worldwide
Technical support is rated an eight out of ten.
Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
9.0
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense offers high scalability and reliability, efficiently supporting medium to large businesses' email protection needs.
Sentiment score
8.3
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup offers scalability, easy management, high reliability, but may struggle in high-end enterprise environments.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very scalable and grows with my organization's needs.
Account Executive at Hilton Worldwide
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very scalable, with no downtime noticed, and it is really fast.
Senior Software Engineer at GE
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is scalable because I do not need to manage anything; it will be managed on their end.
Security Practitioner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
9.1
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense is highly rated for stability, with most users experiencing no downtime, ensuring reliable operation.
Sentiment score
7.4
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup is stable, highly rated for performance, with minimal issues, especially on Hyper-Visor systems.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very stable; I have not experienced any downtime or reliability issues.
Senior Software Engineer at Procter & Gamble
 

Room For Improvement

Barracuda Email Gateway Defense needs UI, pricing flexibility, better documentation, improved integration, and enhanced phishing detection and support.
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup needs enhancements in file restore, recovery speed, platform support, scalability, pricing, and user interface.
The cost could be more affordable, especially for smaller organizations working on a tight budget.
Senior Software Engineer at GE
We need to enhance detection capabilities for phishing emails.
Security Practitioner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The price increased about two years ago, which is a big concern, especially for small organizations working on a tight budget.
Senior Software Engineer at Kroger
The solution needs multi-platform support as it is currently only available for VMware and Hyper-V.
Regional Sales Manager at S2
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup could be improved in several areas, such as enhancing scalability features.
Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
 

Setup Cost

Barracuda Email Gateway Defense is valued as budget-friendly for small organizations, despite being pricier than some alternatives.
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup is affordable, offers a free version for two VMs, and has variable regional pricing.
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that this tool is very cost-effective, but the price was increased around two years ago.
Senior Software Engineer at Kroger
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the cost is very effective and affordable.
Marketing Director at Unisys
I find the price to be cost-effective.
Senior Software Engineer at GE
The pricing of the solution is considered affordable.
Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
The pricing and licensing cost is challenging since most competitors offer cheaper pricing, making it difficult to penetrate the market with the current pricing strategy.
Regional Sales Manager at S2
 

Valuable Features

Barracuda Essentials enhances email security with advanced threat protection, anti-phishing, and user-friendly monitoring for increased productivity.
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup offers robust VM backup features, including easy setup, strong compression, and ransomware protection.
The URL filtering is excellent, as it reviews every link sent in an email and rewrites it to open in a sandbox first if clicked on.
Senior Software Engineer at Kroger
I value their ability to protect against various online threats such as spam, phishing, ransomware, and malware.
Marketing Director at Unisys
It has been a very good tool, increasing email security by 70%, improving compliance and risk management, and providing adequate training, making our staff more aware and alert, as they check more often and report more spam emails.
Senior Software Engineer at GE
The ability to perform data compression updates enhances overall efficiency and effectiveness.
Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
It provides storage for Office 365, which is beneficial, and the deduplication technology is excellent.
Regional Sales Manager at S2
 

Categories and Ranking

Barracuda Email Gateway Def...
Ranking in Cloud Backup
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Ba...
Ranking in Cloud Backup
31st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (35th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials)0.5%
Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup1.2%
Other98.3%
Cloud Backup
 

Featured Reviews

Kelly  Perry - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Procter & Gamble
Email defenses have reduced phishing risk and now protect our remote workforce every day
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) has had a very positive impact on our organization, especially since the pandemic with many remote workers. Our IT objective is 99.9% uptime with many redundant fail-safes in place. Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) helps to meet that objective by protecting the vast amount of email we receive on a daily basis. I can share specific metrics or results: we've reduced risk by 60% and increased visibility by 70%. Now we have peace of mind in our organization since we know our email is protected. Email protection has dramatically reduced attacks via spam, phishing, and malware in all sectors, enhancing protection and encryption of input and output and preventing data from being leaked from the internal network.
Asif Usmani - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Sales Manager at S2
Lacks multi-platform support and physical infrastructure but excels in storage optimization
We use it for VM backup and Office 365 backup I find the solution to be user-friendly and easy to manage and deploy. It provides storage for Office 365, which is beneficial, and the deduplication technology is excellent, especially in optimizing storage capacity compared to others. In terms of…
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902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Media Company
26%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials)?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is competitive compared to other solutions. They provide costs in a similar manner to their competitors.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials)?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) can be improved, as it offers advanced phishing features but still needs fine-tuning. While it is strong, some advanced and highly targeted ph...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials)?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is an email filtering gateway for inbound and outbound that integrates with platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Barracuda Email...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup?
The pricing and licensing cost is challenging since most competitors offer cheaper pricing, making it difficult to penetrate the market with the current pricing strategy.
What needs improvement with Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup?
The solution needs multi-platform support as it is currently only available for VMware and Hyper-V. It also lacks support for physical servers and workstations. Additionally, they should add more p...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Altaro VM Backup
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Thomson Reuters, Microsoft, Amazon, Harvard University, MIT, Peugeot, Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) vs. Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.