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Barracuda Email Protection vs Cofense Platform 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 Security
12th
Ranking in Security Incident Response
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (2nd), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Cofense Platform
Ranking in Email Security
41st
Ranking in Security Incident Response
13th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (41st), Security Awareness Training (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.7%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cofense Platform is 1.0%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Barracuda Email Protection3.7%
Cofense Platform1.0%
Other95.3%
Email Security
 

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.
MohamedShaker - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Team Leader at ITVikings
Secures the business for customers quickly and accurately
It secures the business for the customers. For instance, if any phishing emails come into the environment and employees see it, we direct the email to Triage. The Triage system will investigate it through AI technology to see if it's a phishing email or not. If it is a phishing email, it will quarantine it and erase it from the environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"The archiving and search features are very good."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"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 helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"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."
"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."
"For instance, if any phishing emails come into the environment and employees see it, we direct the email to Triage. The Triage system will investigate it through AI technology to see if it's a phishing email or not. If it is a phishing email, it will quarantine it and erase it from the environment."
 

Cons

"The product must enable bulk user management."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"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."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"If they continue improving and enhancing this solution, it could be even faster and more accurate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"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."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Insurance Company
8%
 

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...
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Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
Cofense Intelligence, PhishMe Intelligence, Intelligence ThreatHQ, Cofense Triage, Cofense LMS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Jackson Health System
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Proofpoint, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Email Security. Updated: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.