Barracuda Email Protection vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security comparison

Barracuda Networks and Perception Point are both solutions in the Email Security category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.8, while Perception Point is ranked #15 with an average rating of 9.0. Barracuda Networks holds a 2.9% mindshare in Email Security, compared to Perception Point’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Perception Point users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Barracuda Email Protection and Perception Point Advanced Email Security compete in email protection. Perception Point has the upper hand with advanced threat protection features, making it a strong choice for those prioritizing security.

Features: Barracuda Email Protection includes comprehensive threat protection, spam filtering, and data protection. Perception Point offers zero-day attack identification, adaptive threat analysis, and advanced threat defense. These features set Perception Point apart in dealing with emerging threats.

Room for Improvement: Barracuda could enhance its reporting capabilities and integration with third-party tools. It may also improve its security awareness training platform. Perception Point could expand its feature set beyond the basics, refine its UX/UI for more customization options, and improve incident response times further.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda Email Protection is easy to deploy, integrating seamlessly with existing infrastructures and offering strong customer support. Perception Point is also easy to set up with a cloud-native platform that provides scalability and flexibility, and it offers excellent customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda's competitive pricing provides good ROI for comprehensive security solutions without high expenditure. Perception Point, with premium setup costs, justifies the higher expense through superior threat detection capabilities, offering significant value for enterprises needing advanced security.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Email Protection vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security

June 2025

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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 Perception Point Advanced Email Security is 2.2%, up from 2.1% 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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Fabio Amorim Araujo

Founder at Envisionare Solucoes em Tecnologia

Has good detection and response capabilities

The solution is very easy to use. We don't have any difficulty with transactions. Finding information, customizing configurations, and getting support or documentation is simple. I don't have any negative points to mention. I would recommend this solution to others. On a scale of one to ten, I'd give it a ten. It's amazing for us—the protection, the analysis time compared to Microsoft 365, and the pricing are all good. We're using both solutions—spam and protection channels. Recently, we presented two-week results to a customer, and they liked them and wanted to buy the solution. Our feedback is positive. We're developing a strategy to increase sales of the solution. When we deliver executive summaries to customers, we present good news about our company and discuss how Perception Point Advanced Email Security can help improve their security.

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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

"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."

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 facilitates efficient management and updates through the cloud. We do not have to worry about incompatibilities. It just works."

"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."

"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is data backups that we can provide through ticket requests."

"Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable."

"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."

"The good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 pros

"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."

"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."

"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."

"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 archiving and search features are very good."

"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."

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

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

More Barracuda Email Protection pros

"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"We can use it to perform detection and analysis of emails. For any malicious content found in emails, it gives in-depth analysis reports to end users. If you log into the console, you can see in-depth detection and how it happens."

"Perception Point Advanced Email Security has a correct price point and offers very good email filtering capabilities."

"The solution’s effectiveness when it comes to detection is very good. It is stopping malicious emails and tagging emails noted as spam. So, we are able to disseminate those emails, get what we need, and block clearly malicious emails. It saves us a lot of valuable time. It keeps our users safe, e.g., the majority of emails that they would have gotten in the past don't even make it into their inbox."

"After integration, the tool is very easy to use. I had a problem with scripts for one customer, but my team did the integration for other customers without issues. So, I think I made a mistake in my integration. Both inline and API work fine."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to identify malicious content and phishing emails and reduce the workload we have to do in terms of security."

"Their security engines are very effective at stopping malware and potential attacks before they reach a user's mailbox. They have the best detection engine."

"Another feature that we really like, one that was introduced a few months back, is the way it categorizes threats into groups, such as Emotet, Qbot, Formbook, and the like. It's not only telling you that something is malware, but it's also giving you insight into what kind of malware... You understand what you are facing and whether you are a target for a specific group of threats..."

More Perception Point Advanced Email Security pros

Cons

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's Mac functionality requires improvement to deliver the same level of protection found on Windows devices."

"Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically."

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

"There is a different console for different things; I just want one consolidated console."

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

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data."

"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."

"Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 cons

"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."

"The platform's pricing needs improvement."

"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."

"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."

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

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

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

"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."

More Barracuda Email Protection cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of adding the DLP (Data Loss Prevention) solution, which would be a good option for Perception Point to look into."

"In terms of architecture, and I know that they're going to improve this, the solution needs to be much more redundant. There was an outage a month ago in AWS, and that basically stopped the service for two or three hours. Although in two years, this was the first time that something like that happened, our expectation from a company like Perception Point is that it should work with either a multi-cloud or multi-region architecture, to improve the resilience."

"They need more customer engagement. The product works very well. The IR works very well when we contact them. However, day-to-day, they should have more in communication with their customers explaining new products and features. There is possibly something that if I would know about it, then I would buy and use it. Maybe I need it. They need to improve their communications."

"It would be helpful for Perception Point Advanced Email Security to have more integration with other solutions."

"From a forensics point of view, it could improve a bit more from a threat intelligence aspect. So, if I find a malicious email, they could have more investigations about sources, headers, where it comes from, if they have seen it in other campaigns before, etc. I would like a little bit more from a threat intelligence point of view so I can understand who else might be affected and attacked as well as the vectors of attack."

"The only thing that can be improved in Perception Point is the in-depth analysis and attribution to cyberattack groups."

"They could improve their anti-spam engine a little bit, because there are a lot of false positives. Sometimes, emails pass through their system but are spam. In terms of security and engines for malicious emails and antivirus, they're doing a good job. Their other engines can be improved."

"Perception Point Advanced Email Security should make available more use cases."

More Perception Point Advanced Email Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."

"The solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."

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

"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 pricing and cost advice

"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 product is expensive."

"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."

"Barracuda licensing model is good."

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

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

"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."

More Barracuda Email Protection pricing and cost advice

"The price of the solution is high."

"Pricing is lower in comparison to Proofpoint."

"We were able to get reasonable pricing that matches the ROI we want, so I think that it is the correct price point."

"The pricing is not cheap, but I can see the value. In security, if you are trying to save by giving up quality, that's a very bad decision."

"We would always like it to be cheaper and save more money. However, we are getting the value from it."

"In Brazil, the dollar price affects the cost. Perception Point Advanced Email Security is about 50 percent less expensive."

"There is room for improvement for them with an MSP partner. The pricing is good and fair. Our customers don't complain. The only thing is that it's a little bit old school. They don't have a system that automatically checks the number of users that our customers have so we can just update the licenses ourselves through a website. It is still done manually. They have a person who checks invoicing monthly to determine if there have been any changes. A nice improvement would be if they could get automated licensing counts."

"They are not the most expensive vendor. There are much more expensive vendors. They are not cheap, but they are not the most expensive. They are somewhere in the middle."

More Perception Point Advanced Email Security pricing and cost advice

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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

18%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?

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

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Perception Point Advanced Email Security?

The most valuable feature is the technical support services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Perception Point Advanced Email Security?

In Brazil, the dollar price affects the cost. Perception Point Advanced Email Security is about 50 percent less expen...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Perception Point Advanced Email Security?

There are always places for improvement, but this needs deeper thought and planning. Integration and end-user interac...

See all answers

Comparisons

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

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

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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

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Avanan vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Compared 13% of the time

Fortinet FortiMail vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiMail Cloud vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Compared 11% of the time

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Compared 10% of the time

More Perception Point Advanced Email Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Office 365

May 2025

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 report

Download Microsoft Defender for Office 365 product report

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection

June 2025

Download Barracuda Email Protection product report

Buyer's Guide

Perception Point Advanced Email Security

May 2025

Perception Point Advanced Email Security report

Download Perception Point Advanced Email Security product 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

Perception Point Advanced Email Security is a comprehensive solution designed to protect organizations from advanced email threats. Leveraging cutting-edge technology, it offers multi-layered defense mechanisms to detect and block sophisticated attacks such as phishing, malware, and ransomware.

With its advanced threat intelligence capabilities, it can identify and neutralize zero-day threats in real-time. The solution also provides robust data loss prevention features, ensuring sensitive information remains secure. Its user-friendly interface allows for easy management and monitoring of email security, while its seamless integration with existing email platforms ensures a hassle-free deployment process.

Perception Point Advanced Email Security is a reliable and efficient solution that safeguards organizations against the ever-evolving landscape of email-based threats.

Perception Point

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security

June 2025

Free Report: Barracuda Email Protection vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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