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Barracuda Email Protection vs Mimecast Email Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

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 Office 365 Protection
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (2nd), Email Security (13th), Security Incident Response (7th)
Mimecast Email Security
Ranking in Office 365 Protection
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Office 365 Protection category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 12.8%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mimecast Email Security is 22.3%, up from 15.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Office 365 Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Mimecast Email Security22.3%
Barracuda Email Protection12.8%
Other64.9%
Office 365 Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Sherif Fouad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
HS
Email Security Engineer at Logic Infosecurity
Experience high detection and user-friendly policies with reliable email security implementation
The system is not user-friendly because you have to create policies that are mapped in a dictionary. As an IT engineer, I understand how it works, but explaining it to another IT person can be difficult. Having more user-friendly dashboards would improve the work experience. In Mimecast Email Security, checking policies in the dictionary or gateway is very complicated, and not everyone understands this process. If you examine the Check Point portal, it's user-friendly with easily accessible tabs that anyone can explore. With Mimecast Email Security, making changes might impact existing mailboxes. The portal is complicated compared to Check Point's user-friendly interface.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"The archiving and search features are very good."
"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 are security and ease of use."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"We like Mimecast's spam filtering. The email signature feature is also a big plus for our users."
"The solution is pretty straightforward to use and easy to set up."
"It's good, it keeps the spam out."
"URL inspection works pretty well."
"Mimecast certainly helped my customers reduce phishing emails."
"I would rate Mimecast Email Security a nine out of ten."
"What I like about the integration is that it is directly into Microsoft 365, users can use their Microsoft 365 credentials to log into the portal and access their mail."
"The setup was easy."
 

Cons

"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"The product must enable bulk user management."
"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 solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"Sometimes, in some cases, this might end up with their teams being unfocused or a bit thin and stretched and super busy."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"We have subscribed to an archival service, and yet, when we have to get our data out, we have to pay a fee to get our own data. They charge an extraction fee."
"Mimecast needs to reduce the number of false positive emails; a big pain point for us."
"They could provide a unified licensing model, including all the security features."
"As a user, the user interface of the management console could be upgraded, for example."
"Their support should be improved. They are notorious for sending you to knowledge-based articles rather than actually talking to you, but that is, unfortunately, kind of becoming a trend with everything. In terms of features, I haven't had any complaints. However, I don't like the fact they moved to a paid training subscription model. They used to have a lot of free webinars for training, but they have started to charge for them in the past year."
"Mimecast need to ensure that the body text format is correctly handled and that images are properly embedded in the body text."
"Many of our users complain that the system is blocking too many attachments. It's a good practice from a security perspective, but our users think Mimecast is doing too much. It might be something we'll have to adjust."
"Its pricing can be improved. It is a bit expensive."
 

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 price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"The solution is expensive."
"I'm always going to say the price needs to be lower, but it's reasonable."
"It's an expensive solution."
"The customers can select the license packages as per their requirements."
"The product has good pricing in terms of return on investment."
"Compared to the other products in the market, it is neither cheap but nor very expensive. I would rate it somewhere in the middle, 5 out of 10."
"The licensing costs are per-user for the product that you get with them."
"Compared to the other solutions in the market, Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection's pricing is fine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
 

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 Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection?
The interface of this solution is very easy to navigate and user-friendly. There is no delivery in email and other communications, making it reliable. The configuration is relatively easy.
What needs improvement with Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection?
There is room for improvement since new threats are emerging. Considering the availability of new features would be worthwhile. Mimecast Email Security is somewhat expensive compared to the competi...
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Azizi Developments, Affinity Credit Union, Aftercare, Al Abbar Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Mimecast Email Security and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
880,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.