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Barracuda Email Protection vs Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform 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 (14th), Office 365 Protection (5th)
Proofpoint Intelligent Com...
Ranking in Email Archiving
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (9th), File Archiving (6th), Compliance Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Email Archiving category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 30.7%, up from 21.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform is 3.0%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Archiving Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Barracuda Email Protection30.7%
Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform3.0%
Other66.3%
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.
Anita Brüggemann - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively reduces spam and malicious emails with reliable detection capabilities
It would be helpful to make it easier for end users to filter and see items in the quarantine within the Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform. As an admin, I believe it would be sensible if end users could also see the quarantine folder in the Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform so they can create their own rules. The reports are all predefined, and I cannot create custom reports, so I am not fully satisfied with their visibility. I would appreciate the ability to generate my own reports.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspect includes attempts to spoof or compromise domains from external sources."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"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 Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"The archiving and search features are very good."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"Our experience with the platform has been positive as it has maintained consistent control over spam and malware threats."
 

Cons

"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"The product must enable bulk user management."
"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 solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"The Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform does not provide features that help reduce manual efforts, so additional human resources are still required to manage security."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor 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."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Government
6%
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform?
It would be helpful to make it easier for end users to filter and see items in the quarantine within the Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform. As an admin, I believe it would be sensible if e...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform?
We use the Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform because it has a good ability to detect viruses and malicious emails, and it collects a lot of spam emails. Since we use this platform, the spa...
What advice do you have for others considering Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform?
It is a cloud-based deployment of the Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform. We worked with an internet provider, who is also a security provider, and it took one day to deploy it on the cloud...
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials
Proofpoint e-discovery and Analytics, Proofpoint Enterprise Archive
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Barracuda Networks, Veritas and others in Email Archiving. Updated: August 2025.
866,300 professionals have used our research since 2012.