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Barracuda Email Protection vs Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade comparison

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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

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
13th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Check Point Anti-Spam and E...
Ranking in Email Security
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 12.9%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

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.
LeeMiles - PeerSpot reviewer
Very good threat protection, spam filtering, and cloud backups
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 set up a global setting. Users must go through an induction session where I guide them in configuring quarantine alerts rather than having default settings based on group membership. This seems like an oversight since they already use Active Directory details. They should assign policies based on group membership, which configures these settings by default.
Dushyant Trivedi - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively secures data centers against various threats, including spam emails and provides policy-based control
It is a stable solution. We implemented the solution in HA. This is because the solution is highly available and can withstand hardware failures and software upgrades. Once the solution is implemented, there is no need for any further downtime for the Check Point server. Because once we change any policy, we can break the High Availability (HA) session and define the new policy on the Check Point Security Gateway (SGW) in isolation. This allows us to test the new policy without affecting the production traffic. Once the new policy is tested and active, we can then activate it on the HA pair and bring the HA session back up. This process ensures that we can make changes to the policy without any interruption to the user experience. It is a really stable solution. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the individuals within our organization who are affected."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is its spam filter."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is data backups that we can provide through ticket requests."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Essentials are it's a trusted name and is rated very high on review sites. It blocks high percentages of spam and junk email and it's in the cloud. They have hardware appliances, but this is in the cloud. The solution is very effective at blocking malware and blocking spam and this is what we are looking for. There's not a whole lot of complexity, you want a solution that is very good at blocking out all of the unwanted emails."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"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."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"I like the flexible configuration set, e.g. both the content-based and the IP reputation anti-spam are supported, but you may choose to disable the mechanism you don't like."
"Mail sanitisation features are second to none."
"Since the engine is made to block by IP, domains, and reputation, we minimized the spam threats that end up in the user's mailbox."
"It's a fairly old solution, however, that has been updated over time to become one of the best manufacturers of security solutions."
"Due to its technology, monitoring, and manufacturer features, we have been able to reduce the intrusion of spam and other threats that can be uploaded via email."
"It does a better job of recognizing spammers."
"It is certainly very beneficial for a small business and works best in combination with other Check Point blades, such as the Data Protection Blade that protects against data loss via email."
"This solution helped us lock down and have our infrastructure easier to manage."
 

Cons

"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS records like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are not properly published."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help."
"Configuring the default strategies and policies in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps generates a lot of noise and false positives."
"The product must enable bulk user management."
"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."
"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"The support language is only English."
"The pattern used to filter emails could be improved"
"The UX/UI could be more friendly."
"While we often take advantage of Check Point's cloud part, including Infinity or Harmony, I would like to see products that directly deal with mobile or native environments or other operating systems that we have within the organization."
"They should upgrade support services and make a more user-friendly database."
"A possible improvement for the solution would be to be able to implement artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to improve the accuracy of detecting spam and malicious emails that are constantly arriving."
"AI-based threat detection could be enhanced to improve security."
"The interface is a bit overwhelming with information overload for someone new to it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."
"The product is very expensive."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"The solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."
"The product is expensive."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"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."
"I rate the pricing as an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"This is a simple system with a very low cost and basic functions, which surely is ideal for a small company."
"For licensing, my company makes yearly payments, which is expensive."
"Choosing the correct set of licenses is essential because, without the additional software blade licenses, the Check Point gateways are just a stateful firewall."
"The cost is competitive with other security products on the market."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"Reasonably priced solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Security Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
6%
 

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?
Money-wise, it is a part of the Office 365 ( /products/office-365-reviews ) suite, making it slightly more expensive ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
The main area for improvement is simplifying the implementation and rollout process. There are many conditions to be ...
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 t...
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 ...
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 defa...
What needs improvement with Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade?
Regarding Checkpoint, I would suggest an easier interface to understand. With time and practice, users can get a bett...
What is your primary use case for Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade?
My primary use case is to mitigate any spoofing or phishing attempts related to the intake of emails and outbound ema...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Barracuda Essentials
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
SF Police Credit Union (SFPCU)
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.