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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
15th
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 July 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiMail is 4.6%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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 beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"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."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"The important feature is the application control, which makes administration much easier. It also has an intrusion prevention feature. There's also the wireless functionality, which works well with Huawei devices."
"The anti-spam feature is very valuable."
"The most valuable features are the endpoint defense features, it is very secure."
"It is a scalable solution."
"For me, Fortinet FortiMail is the best solution I have ever tried."
"Technical support is great. They are able to look at their patches and offer quick responses. We even have an account manager in the Middle East. They are very good."
"Troubleshooting is very simple because you can see where the email was not delivered and why it would be considered as spam."
"FortiMail possesses notable strengths, and one key feature is its store-and-forward concept."
 

Cons

"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"It's difficult for me to talk about areas for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail because I'm the general manager of the company and I'm an engineer with knowledge about the solution, but I'm not deeply involved in its implementation. As I mentioned previously, Fortinet FortiMail is also being used within the company, and I'm happy with its functionality, but sometimes, attacks pass and avoid the Fortinet FortiMail filters, but those could be very sophisticated attacks. There could still be an improvement in the filtering feature of the solution, though the security of Fortinet FortiMail is okay for me because I believe you can't implement one hundred percent security in any solution. The initial setup for the solution also needs improvement. The setup is supposed to be simple, but then the customer starts to complain that some of the false positive emails are reaching quarantine, so my team has to configure it again. There have been instances when Fortinet FortiMail rejects valid emails because some of the service partners of the customer have not been configured accurately, so the system considered valid mails as attacks to be quarantined, so aside from improving the filters, there should also be an improvement in the categorization of emails in the server. My team has to modify the configuration so that valid emails could pass and for Fortinet FortiMail to correctly filter the SPAM traffic. A feature that could be added to Fortinet FortiMail in its next release is advanced AI, so it can analyze and decide accurately on which mail is valid and which mail is SPAM."
"The only drawback to this solution is that the firmware is frequently updated, and each update results in downtime."
"I believe there is room for enhancement in content and web security features."
"The product's price is an area with shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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 FortiGate."
"Maybe FortiMail's integration could be better."
"The security products stop their operations once the subscription period expires. It is a wrong policy. If I trust a product, it has to continue working even after expiry. It should have a grace period of 30, 40, or 60 days. We can extend the subscription during those days. In some places, subscription extensions can take up to six weeks. During the renewal process, the support offered by the company is very poor. It also reduces security. We pay for the expired period but do not get protection during those times. The user of Fortinet FortiMail should have a feature to see spam names."
"Fortinet FortiMail should allow more flexibility with the content rules."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is 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."
"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."
"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 price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"Compared to its competitors, Fortinet's products are available at a higher price range."
"Fortinet FortiMail has an annual license agreement."
"This is a good solution and value for the money."
"The solution is reasonably priced compared to one of its competitors."
"I find Fortinet FortiMail pricing reasonable. There's no additional cost apart from its standard licensing fees."
"It's not as that expensive with the competitive different brands. The products sell a lot."
"Fortinet FortiMail is inexpensive."
"The product's licensing part depends on the number of mailboxes and the hard disk needed by customers. The cost of the license depends on the number of mailboxes and the number of emails."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
Fortinet FortiMail should keep pace with features offered by cloud-based services like Google and Microsoft Outlook. Additionally, the transition from on-premises devices to virtual appliances may ...
 

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: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.