Barracuda Email Protection vs Kaspersky Security for Mail Server comparison

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Kaspersky Security for Mail Server

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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

Microsoft Defender for Offi...

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 12.6%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kaspersky Security for Mail Server is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Security

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja

Head of Department of Network Communications at Eko electricity

Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis

The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.

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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.

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Taha Khaleel

Chief Operations Officer at PRO-VISION

A highly reliable solution that provides monitoring capabilities and protection to multiple types of devices

The initial setup of Kaspersky Security for Mail Server is very easy. The initial setup of Kaspersky Security for Mail Server takes around four minutes. The solution is deployed on the cloud and on-premises. For the deployment process, you can buy the solution in a CD form or purchase it directly from the company website and activate it. My company needs managers, engineers, and developers to deploy the solution. The number of people required for the deployment process changes from time to time, so all the staff are included not just for the deployment of the solution but also to make improvements to the solution in the future. You can contact Kaspersky to see if they can provide the solution with integration capabilities for your company by providing you with an open account, which I haven't tried yet, though I plan to try it in the future.

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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

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."

"It’s easy to handle integrations, and we don't need a lot of people in our IT team."

"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."

"The solution is very easy to use. All you have to do is to assign the license to the end-user and it's done. The customer will only have the feature activated, and the solution will monitor the emails to determine if they are a threat or not."

"The stability of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is fantastic."

"The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over."

"The most valuable aspect of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is its ability to protect us from malware."

"The benefit that stands out to me is the ability for multiple individuals to collaborate simultaneously within the same document. Additionally, there is the option to save the document directly in the integrated OneDrive or SharePoint."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 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."

"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 solution is straightforward to set up."

"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."

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

"The archiving and search features are very good."

"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."

More Barracuda Email Protection pros

"The most valuable feature is the straightforward setup."

"The most valuable features are the anti-phishing and anti-spam capabilities."

"You can install the plugins on the same machine hosting your exchange solution. It's a good complement for Sophos security, which scans the traffic before it reaches your mail service. Kaspersky is on the mail server itself while Sophos handles the incoming traffic. With both of them working together, we have the perfect solution for mail."

"We have achieved cost savings of up to thirty percent by using Kaspersky Security for Mail Server."

"The integration rate is very high in Kaspersky, which is why most of our customers like it."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is a highly reliable and dependable solution."

"I find the product valuable because it provides easy integration with other platforms like Fortinet firewalls."

Cons

"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."

"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."

"Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS records like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are not properly published."

"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."

"In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help."

"There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."

"In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement."

"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 cons

"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."

"I would like to see better integration with other products."

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

"The product must enable bulk user management."

"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."

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

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

More Barracuda Email Protection cons

"The solution is not 100 percent stable and that can use improvement."

"I have only made contact via email, and it is a little slow. I would give customer service a rating of six or seven. Improving Spanish support would greatly benefit users."

"The biggest problem in the solution is related to its license renewal since it is pretty hard in Kaspersky to find out the procedure to renew a license."

"I rated the overall solution a five out of ten. If a user is looking for a low-budget solution with mid-level security without AI features, Kaspersky Security for Mail Server is suitable."

"Encrypted email attachments are not being monitored by this solution, which is an area that they need to work on."

"Kaspersky lacks in the area of customization, so simpler customization options need to be provided to users."

"It would be great if Kaspersky could do what Sophos does for us. However, we love having these two different technologies doing the same thing. Sometimes Sophos has the patch to block a novel threat, but Kaspersky doesn't."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has become expensive."

"The product is very expensive."

"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."

"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."

"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."

"For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."

"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."

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

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

More Barracuda Email Protection pricing and cost advice

"The solution is not expensive."

"The solution offers one of the best prices possible to its users, making it even better than Barracuda. Kaspersky Security for Mail Server is ten times cheaper than Barracuda."

"My company makes annual payments towards the licensing costs solution."

"Price-wise, I would rate this product a four out of five. It could be a bit cheaper."

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856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

19%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

University

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

University

10%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?

Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?

Microsoft is quite affordable with a lot of features available for any size organization.

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?

Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS recor...

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 t...

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 ...

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 defa...

What do you like most about Kaspersky Security for Mail Server?

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is a highly reliable and dependable solution.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kaspersky Security for Mail Server?

The pricing is moderate. It is not expensive but not cheap either. For Mexico, a good price is about 20 dollars per a...

What needs improvement with Kaspersky Security for Mail Server?

I believe integration with other platforms like Fortinet firewalls and a feature similar to a SIEM ( /categories/secu...

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Comparisons

Compared 13% of the time

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 7% of the time

Mimecast Email Security vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 5% of the time

Abnormal Security vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Business vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Competitors

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 20% of the time

Abnormal Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 9% of the time

Avanan vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 6% of the time

Mimecast Email Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 5% of the time

More Barracuda Email Protection Competitors

Fortinet FortiMail vs Kaspersky Security for Mail Server

Compared 31% of the time

Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs Kaspersky Security for Mail Server

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiMail Cloud vs Kaspersky Security for Mail Server

Compared 11% of the time

Security Gateway vs Kaspersky Security for Mail Server

Compared 10% of the time

Sophos Email vs Kaspersky Security for Mail Server

Compared 10% of the time

More Kaspersky Security for Mail Server Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Defender for Office 365

May 2025

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 report

Download Microsoft Defender for Office 365 product report

Barracuda Email Protection

Download Barracuda Email Protection product report

Email Security

Download Kaspersky Security for Mail Server product report

Kaspersky Security for Mail Server report

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365

Barracuda Essentials

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect organizations against advanced threats in their email, collaboration, and productivity environments. It combines the power of Microsoft's threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to provide real-time protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other malicious attacks.

With Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations can safeguard their email communication by detecting and blocking malicious links, attachments, and unsafe email content. It employs advanced anti-phishing capabilities to identify and prevent sophisticated phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information or compromise user credentials.

This solution also offers robust protection against malware and ransomware. It leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze email attachments and URLs in real-time, identifying and blocking malicious content before it reaches users' inboxes. Additionally, it provides advanced threat-hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to proactively investigate and respond to potential threats.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 goes beyond email protection and extends its security features to other collaboration tools like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. It scans files and documents stored in these platforms, ensuring that they are free from malware and other malicious content. It also provides visibility into user activities, helping organizations detect and mitigate insider threats.

Furthermore, this solution offers rich reporting and analytics capabilities, providing organizations with insights into their security posture and threat landscape. It enables security administrators to monitor and manage security incidents, track trends, and take proactive measures to enhance their overall security posture.

Microsoft

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

Email is the number one vector used by cybercriminals to penetrate and attack enterprise IT systems.

Kaspersky Security for Mail Server uses Next Generation technologies including advanced heuristics, machine learning and sandboxing to detect and protect against ransomware, spam, phishing, data loss and even unknown threats penetrating your IT systems through emails and malicious attachments.

Kaspersky

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.

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

Vimpel Com, Estrella Galicia, Krombacher

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Kaspersky Security for Mail Server