Barracuda Email Protection vs Varonis Platform comparison

Barracuda Networks and Varonis are both solutions in the Email Security category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.8, while Varonis is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.0. Barracuda Networks holds a 3.0% mindshare in Email Security, compared to Varonis’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Varonis users who would recommend it.

Barracuda Email Protection

Read 18 Barracuda Email Protection reviews

2,130 Views
1,832 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Varonis Platform

Read 14 Varonis Platform reviews

9,243 Views
185 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Barracuda Email Protection

Varonis Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 7, 2025

Barracuda Email Protection and Varonis Platform are competitive solutions in cybersecurity, targeting different aspects of data protection. Barracuda excels in email security with strong pricing and customer support, while Varonis features an array of advanced capabilities for comprehensive data protection.

Features: Barracuda Email Protection is known for robust spam filtering, phishing protection, and email continuity. Varonis Platform specializes in data classification, threat detection, and extensive data analytics.

Room for Improvement: Barracuda can enhance its integration capabilities and reporting features. Varonis could benefit from reducing its setup complexity and offering more flexible cost options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda offers straightforward cloud-based deployment with accessible customer support. Varonis requires more extensive setup time due to its complex features but provides detailed documentation and support for enterprise-level deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda Email Protection offers lower initial costs and a faster ROI due to its focused scope and efficient deployment. Varonis, while more expensive upfront, delivers substantial ROI through its advanced data security features and analytics capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Email Protection vs. Varonis Platform Report (Updated: October 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Varonis Platform

October 2025

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Helped 869,202 peers since 2012

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 Security

12th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Archiving (2nd), Office 365 Protection (5th)

Varonis Platform

Ranking in Email Security

20th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (9th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (7th), Data Governance (4th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Compliance Management (7th), Ransomware Protection (10th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (7th), Insider Risk Management (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.0%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Barracuda Email Protection	3.0%
Varonis Platform	0.3%
Other	96.7%

Email Security

Featured Reviews

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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Frederic Delos

Senior Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data

The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

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

"The archiving and search features are very good."

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

"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."

"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."

"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."

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

"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."

More Barracuda Email Protection pros

"The 24/7 support is the most valuable feature. They have been able to answer support questions pretty quickly."

"Varonis offers robust data access governance, allowing us to understand which sensitive data exists and who has access to it."

"The solution ensures that users have not accidentally shared sensitive information with the wrong people or too many people."

"I also appreciate the reporting feature, which allows for the extraction of various reports based on specific needs. These reports can be used for audit purposes, such as tracking changes in file locations or deletions."

"Technical support from Varonis is rated as nine out of ten."

"The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand what's happening in our environment."

"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."

"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."

More Varonis Platform pros

Cons

"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."

"The platform's pricing needs improvement."

"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."

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

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

"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."

"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."

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

More Barracuda Email Protection cons

"The product is very complicated."

"For unstructured data monitoring, it's one of the top ones, if not the top one, due to its usability."

"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."

"The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components."

"It is significantly complex."

"The solution's interface is a little complicated with regard to setting up filters and reports."

"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."

"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."

More Varonis Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Barracuda licensing model is good."

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."

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

"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."

"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."

More Barracuda Email Protection pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."

"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."

"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."

"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."

"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	11

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.

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 a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Protection?

See all answers

What do you like most about Varonis Platform?

The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?

Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area for improvement. Varonis requires more access permissions for its core function...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?

The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organization to protect it. We are looking for a solution that can scan our repositor...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 34% of the time

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 16% of the time

Abnormal Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 8% of the time

Mimecast Email Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 7% of the time

Avanan vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 6% of the time

More Barracuda Email Protection Competitors

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs Varonis Platform

Compared 21% of the time

Cyera vs Varonis Platform

Compared 11% of the time

BigID vs Varonis Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Wiz vs Varonis Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Purview Information Protection vs Varonis Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More Varonis Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection

October 2025

Download Barracuda Email Protection product report

Buyer's Guide

Varonis Platform

September 2025

Download Varonis Platform product report

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials

SlashNext Complete

Overview

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

Varonis Platform enhances data security and governance with advanced analytics, identifying unusual access patterns and sensitive areas. Its centralized interface manages permissions across systems, offering essential capabilities for alerting and reporting.

Varonis Platform provides continuous data protection and monitoring by identifying and alerting on unauthorized data access. It offers comprehensive insights into file access and user activities, supporting data classification and simplifying compliance with tracking and monitoring capabilities. Integration with storage systems enables users to manage permissions and access effectively. Room for improvement includes cloud integration and simplifying its interface and calculation engine for ease of use. Challenges include on-premises dependency, licensing costs, and a need for enhanced DLP capabilities.

What are the primary features of Varonis Platform?

24/7 Technical Support: Ensures continuous assistance and issue resolution.
Advanced Analytics: Identifies unusual data access patterns for increased security.
Centralized Permission Management: Manages access permissions across systems.
Data Classification: Categorizes data to enhance protection measures.
Integration with Storage Systems: Simplifies compliance through tracking and monitoring.

What benefits and ROI should users expect?

Increased Security: Protects against unauthorized data access.
Compliance Simplification: Offers comprehensive tracking and monitoring to meet compliance standards.
Efficient Permission Management: Simplifies access controls across platforms.
Enhanced Alerting: Provides timely notifications of potential security breaches.

In finance, Varonis aids in safeguarding sensitive financial data, while in healthcare, it secures patient records. Legal industries utilize it for protecting client information, and retail sectors manage sensitive customer data. These industries benefit from Varonis' ability to prevent unauthorized access and streamline compliance.

Varonis

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems

Nottingham Building Society

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Varonis Platform

October 2025

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