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Barracuda Email Protection vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management 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
Ranking in Email Archiving
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (12th), Office 365 Protection (5th)
Microsoft Purview Data Life...
Ranking in Email Archiving
11th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (2nd), Data Governance (29th), Microsoft Security Suite (33rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Email Archiving category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 25.2%, up from 22.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Archiving Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Barracuda Email Protection25.2%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management0.2%
Other74.6%
Email Archiving
 

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.
AnonyAdmin - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides data protection across platforms and connects to different devices
The rollout of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is not yet complete. The goal of this implementation is to mitigate the risk of oversharing, particularly in anticipation of the broader adoption of Copilot. Purview's ability to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, as well as data in other SaaS applications, is crucial. As a university with a bring-your-own-device policy, we cannot control the devices used by our diverse population of students and faculty. Therefore, an inclusive ecosystem that seamlessly integrates with various devices is essential, as we cannot enforce restrictions on specific devices or mandate particular technologies due to the open nature of our system. It is critical that Purview provides data protection across diverse cloud and platform environments, including AWS and GCP. Historically, our primary platform has been AWS, but we are increasingly expanding into Microsoft Azure. Therefore, I anticipate a future where we utilize both platforms extensively, making comprehensive data protection essential. Purview's design incorporates critical global regulations, ensuring compliance for university researchers and the institution itself with government and various regulatory requirements. Purview enhances visibility across our data estate. The new AI-powered data security features, especially the oversharing report, promise to be invaluable by providing insights into potentially overshared files and sites. This automation eliminates the need for custom scripts and manual data mining, previously necessary for identifying such issues, and ultimately saves significant development time. Purview saves time by eliminating the need for manual scripts, which can take days to run due to the volume of people and sites involved. Instead of running scripts multiple times or waiting hours for completion, Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"The archiving and search features are very good."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."
"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"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."
"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."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process."
"The system is stable; I haven't encountered any worldwide stability issues unlike other office products."
"The UI is the most valuable feature."
"The automatic data labeling is compelling, and we are investigating its use."
 

Cons

"The product must enable bulk user management."
"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"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."
"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 time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges."
"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
"Microsoft's Purview Data Lifecycle Management preview features can be unreliable, hindering their usefulness."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"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."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"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 solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"The service operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, charging an extra one cent per field of metadata scanned in our data."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise3
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?
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 Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
We opted for Purview Data Lifecycle Management due to its significant cost advantage over competitors. At a 95 percent price reduction, it was a clear winner. The service operates on a pay-as-you-g...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
One of the requirements is to have data leak policies and data access policies. This is very critical to enforce data governance standards, which relate to data classification, access control, data...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
I am a customer and user of the tools. We are a big shop, and both the companies I work for are Microsoft Office 365 customers with over eighty thousand seats. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Mana...
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials
Microsoft Information Governance, Microsoft Purview Records Management
 

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 Barracuda Email Protection vs. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management and other solutions. Updated: October 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.