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Barracuda Email Protection vs Fortinet FortiMail 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
13th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (2nd), Office 365 Protection (5th)
Fortinet FortiMail
Ranking in Email Security
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.0%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiMail is 4.2%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fortinet FortiMail4.2%
Barracuda Email Protection3.0%
Other92.8%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

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.
MOHAN SUKUMAR - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure email management improves through advanced filtering and dynamic virus scanning
Fortinet FortiMail offers capabilities like settings for mail delivery, mail filtering, spam controls, and email bursting prevention. It also allows for email forwarding, dynamic filtering, and scanning based on virus signatures. I can set varying levels of security. The tool is flexible and provides essential features for mail security and management.

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 aspect includes attempts to spoof or compromise domains from external sources."
"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 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."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"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."
"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."
"Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are its performance and security."
"After implementing FortiMail, the spam, and malicious emails we receive have significantly reduced, making it much simpler to manage."
"FortiMail is extremely flexible and very easy to learn. Compared to other email security products that we've tried, it is mainly the ease of configuration that makes FortiMail valuable to us."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is its fully detailed dashboard."
"FortiMail is a stable product."
"The anti-spam features are valuable."
"The most valuable features are the endpoint defense features, it is very secure."
"Its threat detection capabilities have been beneficial."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"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."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"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."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"The only drawback to this solution is that the firmware is frequently updated, and each update results in downtime."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"The statistics and BI in general could be improved."
"The web console management interface could be improved."
"Improving the upgrade process, making it more user-friendly, and simplifying the management of hardware components could enhance the overall user experience and appeal of Fortinet's email security solution."
"It can be easier to configure or connect to the cloud to report on the attachments."
"My customers frequently ask to have detailed documentation for FortiMail and FortiWeb as they have in FortiGate. What they currently have is not enough."
"High Availability needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"I find Fortinet FortiMail pricing reasonable. There's no additional cost apart from its standard licensing fees."
"Price-wise, you get what you pay for in Fortinet FortiMail. Apart from the licensing costs, no additional expenses are attached to the solution's pricing."
"In the future I would like it if there's a possibility to lower the price of the bandwidth and UTM. It is quite expensive."
"The tool is very expensive."
"Pricing is straight-forward and renewable without complicated pricing structures."
"It is reasonable."
"It is a fairly priced product, considering what it does. The product offers good value for the money users spend on it."
"The pricing is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise14
 

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 experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail?
Fortinet FortiMail is considered overpriced by Indian rupee standards. My organization is not profit-making, and academic pricing is required, but it may not be available for security products like...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
It can be somewhat difficult to prepare precise or very deep rules to improve security, though the product is very good.
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials
FortiMail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Fortinet FortiMail and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.