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Barracuda Email Protection vs Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Email Security (10th), Security Incident Response (9th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Microsoft Purview Communica...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
GRC (15th), Digital Risk Protection (11th), Microsoft Security Suite (32nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Corporate Compliance solutions, they serve different purposes. Barracuda Email Protection is designed for Email Archiving and holds a mindshare of 15.1%, down 18.6% compared to last year.
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance, on the other hand, focuses on GRC, holds 1.2% mindshare, down 1.6% since last year.
Email Archiving Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Email Protection15.1%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36519.7%
Mimecast Email and Collaboration Threat Protection18.7%
Other46.5%
Email Archiving
GRC Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance1.2%
RSA Archer5.6%
AuditBoard3.9%
Other89.3%
GRC
 

Featured Reviews

Xavie Simons - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at Procter & Gamble
Improved email security has reduced spam, simplified encrypted mail, and strengthened user trust
The best features Barracuda Email Protection offers include good spam filtering and very good sandboxing of all links, as well as good encryption. It also has integrated logging for user management of their own spam. It has better filtering technology, so few are false positives as well, with excellent anti-spam engines and logging. It is extremely easy to install, configure, and set up, and there is excellent message tracking for folks that say they have not received an email they were expecting. Integrated logging and user management make my daily work easier because it is very easy to log in and to manage this tool, hence making it a very good tool for email protection. It also has excellent, easy-to-add designated users as site administrators, and it is competitively priced. It has a user-friendly portal, strong cloud-based features, and no additional maintenance cost, along with responsive support. Barracuda Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by handling encryption better than any other tool I have used before, which has increased our email protection significantly. Our security has also increased from forty percent to sixty-five percent, especially when dealing with all the threats that come through emails. It has been a great tool because we can handle email delays and delays on file scanning. When our partners are happy, we are very happy, and it has helped us have less time chasing bad emails. The fast implementation of encrypted mail keeps employees working with less interruption since they are happy, satisfied, and secure.
CP
System administrator
Facilitates compliance and records management but needs user-friendly enhancements
The features I appreciate the most in Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance include the ability to build cases, give them dates, and find them based on the notes that I left behind. The importance of Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance building taking into account critical regulations from around the world is very significant. It helps us stay up to date. While I don't need the functionality, Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and security platform environments, including AWS and GCP. It takes into account critical regulations from around the world. It helps us stay up to date with what's going on. We can show compliance in real-time. It's very easy to pull records. The time it saves is very useful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Threat Protection feature is a good tool and a very efficient tool."
"The most valuable aspect includes attempts to spoof or compromise domains from external sources."
"The main benefits Barracuda Email Protection provides for us are saving time and money because we don't run into any kind of attack or disruption in the mail service that we may face, including ransomware attacks."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"The most valuable feature is the gateway."
"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."
"We found Barracuda to be more efficient, easy to use, and customizable."
"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."
"The time it saves is very useful."
"The features I appreciate the most in Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance include the ability to build cases, give them dates, and find them based on the notes that I left behind."
"Customer support is excellent."
"Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance helps with extra collaboration and ensures communication is within the framework."
 

Cons

"Customers chose a different product after experiencing a problem when they upgraded the firmware, which caused the system to restart multiple times during working hours."
"They can still improve."
"Sometimes, in some cases, this might end up with their teams being unfocused or a bit thin and stretched and super busy."
"The licensing and pricing need to be improved."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"Barracuda Email Protection can be improved by enhancing the reporting feature."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance can be improved by having more tutorials available for those who aren't used to using this platform."
"Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance can be improved by having more tutorials available for those who aren't used to using this platform."
"The product should incorporate more automation with the help of AI."
"Monitoring and compliance for web applications could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"The product is expensive."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise7
No data available
 

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?
I think the costs of Barracuda Email Protection are acceptable because I am selling another software license for anti-spam, and I have no problem with that product.
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 needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance?
I was talking with some engineer from Microsoft about how we can audit our web page. They create or add to Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance that part, the Layer seven of the OSI model, to...
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance?
Overall, I rate Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance at a nine. I highly recommend it to anyone due to its robust system and valuable resources for IT security, risk assessment, and data mana...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance?
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is a bit expensive, $500 per license, but it is cheaper compared to products like ComplyAd, GeoComply, and ComplyAdvantage.
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Mimecast, Barracuda Networks and others in Email Archiving. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.