Barracuda Email Protection vs IRONSCALES comparison

Barracuda Email Protection

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

Barracuda Email Protection and IRONSCALES are rivals in the realm of email security. While Barracuda is favored for its pricing and customer support, IRONSCALES takes the lead with its advanced features.

Features: Barracuda Email Protection provides robust email filtering, spam protection, and seamless platform integration. Its advanced threat detection helps in efficient email management. IRONSCALES excels in AI-driven threat detection, real-time threat intelligence sharing, and automated incident response, prioritizing AI technology for proactive security.

Room for Improvement: Barracuda could benefit from enhanced reporting tools, improved integration options, and a more flexible policy creation approach. IRONSCALES can improve by offering more detailed user interface customization, reducing false positives in threat alerts, and expanding the range of third-party integrations to include more platforms.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda Email Protection offers an intuitive setup with reliable customer support, ideal for smaller environments. IRONSCALES caters to larger, complex environments with seamless infrastructure integration and robust customer service, ensuring rapid response to customer queries.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda Email Protection is cost-effective with low setup costs, appealing to small enterprises. Although IRONSCALES has higher initial costs, its advanced features provide significant long-term ROI, especially in reducing threat response times.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Email Protection vs. IRONSCALES Report (Updated: December 2025).

Barracuda Email Protection vs. IRONSCALES

December 2025

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Helped 881,114 peers since 2012

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

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Archiving (2nd), Security Incident Response (7th), Office 365 Protection (4th)

IRONSCALES

Ranking in Email Security

14th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (16th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IRONSCALES is 1.8%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Barracuda Email Protection	3.3%
IRONSCALES	1.8%
Other	94.9%

Email Security

Featured Reviews

Sherif Fouad

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.

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reviewer2770017

Email Security Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Has improved threat analysis by providing clear email correspondence history and reporting tools

The best features IRONSCALES offers are the investigation tabs, headers, and correspondence history, which stand out the most for me. The investigation tabs are valuable for my work because reporting goes a long way in terms of playbooks and having a full investigation. The investigation tab knows exactly how to put the information in a way that makes it very easy for reports to get done fast. Security awareness training is a big part of IRONSCALES. The platform offers a broad spectrum in terms of what campaigns can be run for security awareness for users as well as reporting back on how users interact with their mails and understanding where the vulnerabilities lie. IRONSCALES has positively impacted my organization by making email security simple in terms of controlling mails, understanding where the threats are, and protecting the organization itself.

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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 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 best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."

"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."

"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."

"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."

"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."

"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."

More Barracuda Email Protection pros

"The fact that it is set-and-forget is valuable. Once you turn it on, you very rarely have to micromanage it, whereas, with a lot of spam filters, you have to go in very often."

"It is a totally stable solution."

"There is buzz around phishing awareness training. When I make a campaign, all of a sudden people in our organization are talking, thinking, and wondering about it. Therefore, it keeps people on their toes. That is perfect because it does exactly what we want it to do."

"Their anti-phishing platform is absolutely fantastic. The automated AI piece is amazing, and their technical support is fantastic."

"The report function through Gmail is probably the most valuable feature. The next most valuable features are simulation and training."

"AI-driven phishing detection and incident remediation are valuable. It saves time from having to do manual analysis and investigation, and we also get alerts for phishing emails."

"The best features of IRONSCALES are that most alerts are validated through AI, which reduces the fatigue of alerts that need to be worked on by the team handling the alerts investigation part."

"The most valuable features of the solution are that it is easy to set it up, install, and manage the product."

More IRONSCALES pros

Cons

"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."

"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."

"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."

"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."

"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."

"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 product must enable bulk user management."

"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."

More Barracuda Email Protection cons

"There's room for improvement in the campaign management. IRONSCALES has many built-in templates that I use, but you can also build templates from scratch. However, the interface for creating custom templates needs to be updated."

"Its UI could be improved. My pet peeve with a lot of these cloud-based systems is that a lot of times, the interface for the management is a little clunky. If you live and breathe IRONSCALES all day long, you'll obviously know where everything is just from muscle memory, but the system is not designed for people to be in it all day long. You're only supposed to occasionally look at it. When things get moved around, it is not necessarily that intuitive. I'm an IT guy, and I can pretty much take the worst UI and figure it out, but the menus and the options in the interface could be a little cleaner graphically. If you have a quick problem that you want to resolve, it takes a little bit of digging in the admin console, whereas it should take a few clicks up front."

"The tool supports 15 to 16 languages, but the content it uses in the training in Spanish has certain limitations."

"The user interface could be more attractive to users. The UI is not brightened or appealing."

"The simulation and training piece could be improved by having more granularity in terms of scheduling how campaigns are run and allowing people to directly take the training rather than having to go through an official campaign. That's not available yet."

"There is a feature called Account Takeover, which isn't what I want it to be able to do. I know that they're working on that, but when they first started the Account Takeover feature in incident management, it didn't have much information. It didn't have any usability to it. I already had tools in place that were better."

"I would like it if IRONSCALES had some sort of reminder mechanism, meaning IRONSCALES knows if a user completed the training or not. As long as it hasn't been completed, it keeps reminding every so often, alerts the manager, etc. Right now, it is all in the hands of the employee, and not all of them continue the process, which is a shame."

"In addition to integrated training, they should also have personalized training that you don't have to do as part of a phishing campaign or a simulation."

More IRONSCALES cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"Barracuda licensing model is good."

"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."

"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."

"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."

More Barracuda Email Protection pricing and cost advice

"Considering the value it provides, it is definitely worth the cost. We don't have to do manual analysis and remediation of phishing emails, which saves us a lot of hours. Its licensing is based on the number of users being supported and the number of email addresses being protected. I'm not aware of any additional costs."

"I don't know about its pricing because I don't run the budget or pay the bills, but if it was extortionate, we probably would be looking to scrap it, and because we are not, I assume its price is okay."

"There is an installation cost. Since we have this as a managed service, we pay for licensing and the managed service itself. Other than that, there are no additional costs."

"The tool is not very cheap, but it is affordable."

"They are pretty much the same as all the other competitors in the market."

"As compared to everything else we looked at, it was good. It was the best value for the dollars."

"The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution."

"We pay $3000 plus a little more a year for the number of employees we have, and we're not even that big. The solution is at the higher end in terms of cost. It's not the most expensive product, but I would say it's worth the price if you have a high volume of email traffic. In our case, the solution has inspected over 162,000 emails between three and four months. It saved us a lot of time and money. It's a worthwhile investment because a bad actor only has to succeed once; we must defend against everything in our business. IRONSCALES offers a sense of security and confidence from being well protected."

More IRONSCALES pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	4

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 do you like most about IRONSCALES?

The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IRONSCALES?

While I don't specifically oversee the pricing details, I understand that IRONSCALES is in the range of similar solutions while offering better results.

What needs improvement with IRONSCALES?

I would really prefer to drill down more on correspondence history. It provides detailed background information to actually understand what's going on. If there were clickable drill downs on specif...

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Barracuda Email Protection

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Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs IRONSCALES

Compared 7% of the time

Avanan vs IRONSCALES

Compared 6% of the time

Cofense Platform vs IRONSCALES

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Barracuda Email Protection

January 2026

Download Barracuda Email Protection product report

Download IRONSCALES product report

January 2026

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response

No data available

Overview

Barracuda Email Protection provides advanced security with features like AI protection and cloud-based spam blocking, making it essential for managing email risks effectively.

Barracuda Email Protection stands out with its robust malware detection, ease of use, and seamless integration with Microsoft 365, serving enterprises by simplifying email threat management. Despite its efficient spam filtering and straightforward setup, users seek improvements in email encryption, third-party vendor integration, report details, and more streamlined performance. Organizations leverage its AI capabilities for phishing detection and employee training, allowing for automated operations and comprehensive threat protection. Its archiving, search, and hands-off management are crucial for companies lacking extensive security resources, ensuring persistent email access and secure practices.

What are the key features of Barracuda Email Protection?

Cloud-Based Spam Blocking: Reduces unwanted emails effectively.
Impersonation Detection: Identifies phishing attempts seamlessly.
Malware Detection: Protects against malicious threats.
AI Protection: Enhances security with intelligent analysis.
Microsoft 365 Integration: Ensures smooth operation within existing systems.
Customizable Rules: Allows tailored security protocols.

What are the main benefits and ROI of Barracuda Email Protection?

Time Savings: Automates and streamlines email management processes.
Email Security: Maintains domain reputation by reducing spam and threats.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides a unified approach to email threats.
Central Management: Simplifies oversight with a unified console.
Reliable Support: Offers technical assistance and guidance.

In finance, healthcare, and large enterprises, Barracuda Email Protection is deployed for its reliable email archiving and retrieval, supporting compliance and data integrity. Industries benefit from its AI-powered phishing detection and employee training tools, enhancing operational security and reducing risk exposure.

Barracuda Networks

IRONSCALES delivers cutting-edge AI-driven email phishing detection and prevention, seamlessly integrating with Microsoft 365 for enhanced security.

IRONSCALES, with its advanced AI capabilities, focuses on email security by detecting phishing threats, mitigating business email compromises, and preventing impersonation. Its integration with Microsoft 365 strengthens spam filters, automatically responding to suspicious emails. The platform is used globally for threat inspection, quarantine, and end-user incident reporting. Staff training is enhanced through simulated phishing campaigns, offering an extra layer of protection beyond Microsoft's spam filters. Areas for improvement include better Google Suite integration, pricing adjustments, and enhanced reporting features.

What features make IRONSCALES stand out?

AI Phishing Detection: Advanced algorithms for identifying phishing threats.
Microsoft 365 Integration: Seamless enhancement of email security within Microsoft systems.
Mobile App: Manage email threats on the go.
Anti-Phishing Training: Simulated campaigns for staff education.
Multi-Organization Management: Centralized administration for multiple entities.

What benefits and ROI should you consider?

Time-Saving: Automated detection and response to threats improve efficiency.
Comprehensive Security: Offers an additional protection layer beyond standard spam filters.
Ease of Use: Intuitive integration and user-friendly design streamline operations.
Risk Reduction: Minimizes potential email security breaches through proactive threat management.

In finance, IRONSCALES plays an essential role in safeguarding sensitive data from phishing attacks, ensuring compliance with industry standards. Educational institutions use IRONSCALES for training faculty and students on recognizing phishing attempts, thereby enhancing overall cybersecurity awareness. IT sectors leverage its capabilities for managing complex threat landscapes.

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems

Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp