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Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway 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 Security Ga...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
DMARC Authentication Software (2nd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (7th)
Fortra's Clearswift Secure ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (29th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Barracuda Email Security Gateway is designed for Secure Email Gateway (SEG) and holds a mindshare of 9.2%, up 6.4% compared to last year.
Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway, on the other hand, focuses on Email Security, holds 1.1% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Email Security Gateway9.2%
Proofpoint Email Protection19.5%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36517.0%
Other54.3%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway1.1%
Proofpoint Email Protection7.2%
Microsoft Defender for Office 3656.9%
Other84.8%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

MM
Graduate Student at ain shams
Secures email by identifying threats and managing email policies effectively
The intuitive management interface feature makes email security policies very easy to implement as it's all about features that need to be enabled or disabled. Our investigation in any incident or mail is very useful as it provides all details about incoming mails, enabling thorough review and detection. The real-time threat intelligence feature is particularly useful as it detects all kinds of threats identified by incoming mails. The Impersonation license utilizes AI tools. Sometimes some phishing mails are reported as phishing, but they are not actually phishing mails. They are detected due to certain words and languages that appear suspicious but were generated by AI tools. Everyone or an advisor may use it for their own purpose or learning, even though it indicates that the mail detected is phishing when it's not.
PC
Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Stable, but malware needs improvement and customer support is poor
They need to improve the malware in the product. I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support. The support is poor, the supplier takes a lot of time and it's expensive. We have some issues here when I contact the supplier, it takes a lot of time for them to get back to us but there's no solution. I am now looking at Symantec as a possible alternative.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Barracuda Email Security Gateway has a good feature of email spooling, which acts as a first line of security."
"It is a really good product with a lot of features. It is responsive, updated, and modern. It is easy to use and has an easy interface for non-IT users. Its dashboard is also quite fine. It is also quite flexible and has an API at the backend."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is very simple to use."
"This solution has helped to significantly reduce the amount of junk email that we receive."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is stable."
"The anti-spamming, anti-fishing features are great."
"The protection from Barracuda Email Security Gateway is essentially a sandboxing solution."
"Barracuda has one of the best email security solutions for SMB and big enterprises."
"Go for it! I think it's an excellent product with great technical support."
"Ability to create your own content-filtering policies with relative ease."
"A stable solution."
"We use a few features for web proxy, and another feature is the email content filter and malware for our internal policy in the email content."
 

Cons

"The DMARC security is somewhat weak and could be strengthened."
"The UI could be a little cleaner and require less clicking around in different modules."
"There are limited administration controls that should be improved."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway can improve email detection. We have some emails that are bypassing the threat scanning. There are some impersonation emails passing through."
"Few customers require an on-premises fabric ATP box for attack detection and response."
"There are limited administration controls that should be improved."
"I would like to have better integration with third-party archival vendors to facilitate moving data in and out."
"There's a bit of configuration work that's needed with the DNS service provider, but other than that, everything else should be very smooth."
"Malware needs improvement."
"I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support."
"FTP server and TRUST Manager functionality."
"FTP server and TRUST Manager functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a cost-effective and relatively cheap solution as compared to others. Our customers have a yearly subscription. We do have a few customers with monthly subscriptions, but they have cloud-based Email protection, which is a different type of solution. Both solutions are very good."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is an affordable solution that caters to small, midsize, and high-end businesses with great revenue."
"We paid for an annual license."
"We typically purchase a one or three-year license for Barracuda Email Security Gateway."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is a cost-effective solution."
"We are using the trial version right now, and before purchasing the license, we need to solve some of the issues that we are facing. We need a proper solution for our email, and then we will look into pricing. We have a vendor for licensing."
"We pay between $8 and $10 USD per user per month."
"The price of the solution should be reduced. The price in the USA is less than where we are. Our local distributor of the solution is manipulating the market."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Construction Company
9%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise13
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Sentinel?
Compared to the features and stability, Barracuda Email Security Gateway is affordable in terms of pricing, setup cost, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Sentinel?
On technical aspects, I think Barracuda needs to provide a fast response to any vulnerability on the system and enhance Barracuda support. Customer support for Barracuda Email Security Gateway need...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Sentinel?
My main use case for Barracuda Email Security Gateway is to protect our email and our email users, protecting our business from most of the sophisticated attacks like phishing attacks and spam. We ...
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Also Known As

Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall, Barracuda Sentinel
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Evolution Recruitment Solutions, Evans Delivery Company, Osoyoos Credit Union, Synovis Life Technologies, Camden County Technical Schools, DEK, Evans Delivery Company, Colgate Rochester Crozer, Hemmera, South Carolina Heart Center, Ferma Corporation, Major League Baseball (MLB), Healy Brothers Automotive Group
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Proofpoint, Mimecast and others in Secure Email Gateway (SEG). Updated: May 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.