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Barracuda Email Protection vs Barracuda Message Archiver comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 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

Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Archiving
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (13th), Security Incident Response (7th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Barracuda Message Archiver
Ranking in Email Archiving
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Email Archiving category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 17.8%, down from 25.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Message Archiver is 4.9%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Archiving Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Barracuda Email Protection17.8%
Barracuda Message Archiver4.9%
Other77.3%
Email Archiving
 

Featured Reviews

Sherif Fouad - PeerSpot reviewer
Group ICT Manager at a mining and metals company with 501-1,000 employees
Have raised concerns about scanning engines and automation while continuing to rely on layered protection strategies
Incident response is something that requires more development from Barracuda's side. Regarding room for improvement for Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response, for the product, developing or improving the scanning engine is important, but it's a bit tricky. I know that they are working on it heavily. The difference between Barracuda and Sophos is Sophos focused heavily on cybersecurity while Barracuda tried to increase their product portfolio. Sometimes, in some cases, this might end up with their teams being unfocused or a bit thin and stretched and super busy. However, there is room for improvement. The product is great. The teams that are supporting are great. But there is always room for improvement. Even if you have a product that you would give a rating of 10 out of 10, there is always room for improvement. The day we stop improving is the day we die. Regarding the scanning engine, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response has a very good feature where you can create automated flows for how to handle specific emails that are detected as incidents. This needs a bit of an improvement. That's the only component of Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response that I believe requires improvement.
reviewer2153010 - PeerSpot reviewer
DP Manager at a agriculture with 51-200 employees
Easy to use and doesn't require any maintenance
It's just a backup for email so that if people delete and/or try to remove stuff they shouldn't, we can find it It's easy to use. It's a little bit more expensive than the others.  It's like anything. You got to log in when you want stuff nowadays. Other than that, it's pretty good. I didn't…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft. If someone deletes something in Office 365, we can get it back within Office 365, but it's difficult. Barracuda is much easier. There is a lot less management needed using Barracuda. The management becomes much easier for Office 365 and it's no longer on-prem, so there are fewer hours managing on-prem devices, servers, and things of that nature. We don't have network appliances anymore for the backup of our information."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"At the moment, I am working with Sophos Cloud, Sophos Intercept X; when they introduced the XDR, we used it, and then when they introduced the Optix, we used it, and then we upgraded our subscription with them to MDR, so we are now utilizing Sophos Cloud Central MDR."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"It's easy to use."
 

Cons

"Considering it integrates with Azure, I would like to be able to effectively set up policies where people are by default included in certain settings."
"The customer service and support could be improved if the support were available directly in Europe. Currently, the support is often managed from India, so we sometimes need to wait due to the time zone difference. It would be quicker and better if the support were provided by European staff."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"The product must enable bulk user management."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"It's a little bit more expensive than the others."
"The user mailbox management is poor."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"We pay annually. They never charged us for anything else. And they were quite a bit under that $20,000 mark. It was $19,074. And they've been pretty good about not skyrocketing the price or anything like that. It has gone up. It's gone up to $24,000 in 2020."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The product is expensive."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"We are satisfied with the pricing and the service is bundled so there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"They're a little bit more expensive than the others."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Email Protection?
Barracuda Email Protection is easy to deploy and maintain. It doesn't require a specialized resource to manage this tool.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Email Protection?
Their list price is too high, but in India, the selling price is affordable at around $10 per user per year. Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers t...
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Protection?
Considering it integrates with Azure, I would like to be able to effectively set up policies where people are by default included in certain settings. For instance, for email quarantine, I can't se...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Message Archiver?
We use Barracuda Message Archiver to keep a copy of our users' emails, both inbound or outbound. Our goal in using it is that from a compliance perspective, we can provide access to our auditors. I...
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Alfa Romeo, Texas A&M University, Time Warner, Nintendo, Boeing 
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Barracuda Message Archiver and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.