Barracuda Email Protection vs IRONSCALES comparison

Barracuda Email Protection

Read 14 IRONSCALES reviews

2,264 Views
1,879 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Barracuda Email Protection and IRONSCALES compete in the email security category. IRONSCALES appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced AI-driven features.

Features: Barracuda Email Protection provides robust spam filtering, archiving solutions, and AI-based impersonation detection. IRONSCALES offers AI-driven threat detection, a mobile app for incident management, and a global community for automated threat resolution.

Room for Improvement: Barracuda Email Protection could enhance its reporting capabilities and integration with security awareness training platforms. IRONSCALES might benefit from further reducing false positives and exploring deeper integration options with other security systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda Email Protection is known for an easy deployment process and excellent customer service. IRONSCALES provides a streamlined, self-service deployment model with efficient, though less hands-on, technical support.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda is cost-effective with quick ROI due to lower setup costs, ideal for budget-conscious buyers. IRONSCALES, despite higher initial costs, promises long-term ROI with its superior features, appealing to those prioritizing advanced security measures.

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

Barracuda Email Protection vs. IRONSCALES

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 869,513 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

12th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Archiving (2nd), Office 365 Protection (5th)

IRONSCALES

Ranking in Email Security

17th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (18th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 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 IRONSCALES is 1.7%, down from 2.3% 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	3.0%
IRONSCALES	1.7%
Other	95.3%

Email Security

Featured Reviews

LeeMiles

Director, Information Technology at St Albans High School For Girls

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.

Read full review

Hemeshen Govender

Technology CyberSecurity at Oryx industries

Applies AI automation to clearly identify and stop a lot of phishing emails

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. The solution improved our response to phishing attempts. IRONSCALES has a virtual assistant and some AI intelligence that's applied to it. That was the main differentiator between IRONSCALES and Microsoft. The solution's AI automation clearly identifies phishing emails and gives you an overall indication of why it found the mail to be malicious. It does the whole analysis for you to see why the email was deemed a phishing email. The solution's response time is better than that of our previous tool. The solution's user interface is pretty straightforward and user-friendly.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 product is easy to deploy and maintain."

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

"The most valuable aspect includes attempts to spoof or compromise domains from external sources."

"The solution is straightforward to set up."

"The archiving and search features are very good."

"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."

More Barracuda Email Protection pros

"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."

"The stability is good."

"I would say the most valuable feature is what they call Themis. It's like a virtual analyst that uses the decisions that system admins make to generate a score for whether an email is legitimate, spam, or phishing. It gets better based on the decisions that we make over time. The automation piece is great as well. The integrated approach of email security combined with employee awareness training is excellent."

"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."

"For what was being offered with IRONSCALES, I feel like we got an incredible deal."

"For me, the mobile app is most valuable. All other features are also very useful, but the mobile app makes it really easy for me to manage on the go. I don't have to be at my desk. I could be at the shops, or it could be in the evening when I am out, and I can get a notification on my phone that there is an incident that has been raised. I can sort it out very quickly without having to be at my work PC."

"The biggest benefit is that we get fewer phishing and spam emails, so using IRONSCALES has made our environment much safer."

"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

"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."

"The product must enable bulk user management."

"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."

"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."

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

"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."

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

"The platform's pricing needs improvement."

More Barracuda Email Protection cons

"I would love to see the indication of compromise and how the solution utilizes open source resources. It would be good to see that included in the paid versions. It would be a small addition but add a lot of value for clients."

"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."

"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."

"I think the tool can continue to hone the product to ensure the detections are accurate."

"Even though they have been continuously improving it, it is not 100% there. We have had a few incidents where legitimate emails were getting blocked, and we had to manually remove those emails from quarantine. It is 90% effective or accurate because, on rare occasions, some emails from customers were not getting delivered. In one or two instances, their emails got blocked by IRONSCALES, and we had to manually remove the emails from quarantine. I would like them to improve their algorithm to avoid flagging genuine emails as malicious. I would also like to be able to whitelist certain email addresses. I'd love to be able to whitelist a particular customer."

"The only thing that I could say is that some of the reporting features could be better."

"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."

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 product is expensive."

"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."

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

"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."

"Barracuda licensing model is good."

"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."

"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."

More Barracuda Email Protection pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"IRONSCALES is an expensive solution."

"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."

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

"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."

"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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

869,513 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	3

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?

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?

There are areas that could be improved with this product. Regarding the Spanish language awareness training, while they are producing good content, it appears to be initially produced in English an...

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Barracuda Email Protection

Comparisons

Compared 34% of the time

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 16% of the time

Abnormal Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 8% of the time

Mimecast Email Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 7% of the time

Avanan vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 6% of the time

More Barracuda Email Protection Competitors

Proofpoint Email Protection vs IRONSCALES

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs IRONSCALES

Compared 11% of the time

Avanan vs IRONSCALES

Compared 11% of the time

Mimecast Email Security vs IRONSCALES

Compared 7% of the time

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs IRONSCALES

Compared 7% of the time

More IRONSCALES Competitors

Product Reports

Barracuda Email Protection

October 2025

Download Barracuda Email Protection product report

Download IRONSCALES product report

September 2025

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials

No data available

Overview

The popularity of Microsoft 365 means criminals test and design their attacks to bypass its native security features. And that means you need additional layers of defense. With Advanced Threat Protection enabled, Barracuda uses multiple layers of detection, including signature, static, and behavioral analysis, along with CPU-emulation sandboxing to accurately detect and block zero-hour targeted attacks and ransomware.

Traditional email gateways use static rules and policies—reputation analysis, block lists, and malicious payloads—to determine if an email is malicious.

Barracuda protects your Microsoft 365 inbox against evasive threats with a powerful AI engine that learns the unique communication patterns within your organization through access to internal and historical emails. Once it understands what legitimate emails looks like for each user, it can detect anomalies that signal malicious intent. This context-based detection is more effective at blocking targeted attacks, which are designed to bypass traditional rule-based email security.

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