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Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs IRONSCALES comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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...
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
DMARC Authentication Software (2nd)
IRONSCALES
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (18th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is 6.4%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IRONSCALES is 3.3%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Shah Newaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Instantly blocked and reduced our spam emails
The solution has to improve in a very specific way. When we allow our customers to send or scan email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, we are permitting their email server IP address, but not any domain. One of our customers has an email server where they are hosting five domains within their server. They are sending and receiving email through that server by using Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Therefore, we allow their IP address to send email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, then we declare MX for receiving email on behalf of our customers. After receiving the email, we deliver it to the specific IP address of the customer. Since we are only allowing the IP address, if an incident happens within a customer's email server or an email server gets compromised, then it starts sending spam. That creates a huge problem for the solution as it allows all emails because the customer's IP address is allowed to relay email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Barracuda should add an option where it can add multiple domains, such as abc.com, bbc.com, and cbc.com. Therefore, this domains' emails will be allowed and other domains' emails will not be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Whereas, if you allow the IP address, then any of the domain's emails will be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. That is the drawback that I have observed. So, Barracuda should work on this.
Orion Trist - PeerSpot reviewer
Saved us a big deal by catching malicious links and attachments sent directly to our staff and has also been helpful for educating our staff
It has helped immensely because it has gotten rid of malicious links and malicious attachments that have been targeted at our different staff members. It has definitely protected us on more than one occasion. Their integrated approach of combining email security and employee awareness training is excellent because the training is a reminder for staff to continually be on their feet and look out for the ever-changing landscape. It also lets us know who has been trained, who hasn't been trained, and what they're like. It integrates a risk ratio for all our employees. Its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities are very important because I don't want to have to manage 24/7. Having the AI to do a lot of the work for me is invaluable. Its automated detection and response capabilities are excellent. It does a wonderful job. They provide all the stats on what it has done. It gives you information about how much time is saved and all that kind of good information. Its automated detection and response capabilities have massively decreased the time we spend manually reviewing email events. Since May, it has taken care of 170 hours. So, it has saved 88 hours per analyst. It is very good in terms of the customization of the automated detection and response capabilities. It is granular, and you can adjust it however you want. If it is too high, you can turn it down. If it is too low, you can turn it up.

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 feature of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is the complete capabilities it provides. Additionally, the phishing security and sandbox features are effective."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is very simple to use."
"All features it provides on the cloud environment are very, very useful, including the antivirus that is enabled on it."
"Before this solution, we didn't have any separate feature for protecting our emails. We used to only have a firewall but now we have email security. It has a graphical interface and we can see the log every time. We can see that the performance is fine."
"It's easy to use. The configuration and web interface are user-friendly."
"Barracuda is good at keeping the garbage from reaching your inbox."
"The most valuable feature of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is that it blocks almost 99 percent of threats from users' email inboxes."
"The most important features of Barracuda Email Security Gateway are the simple and quick configuration, interactive console, and easy-to-understand logs."
"The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through."
"The report function through Gmail is probably the most valuable feature. The next most valuable features are simulation and training."
"I would say the most valuable feature is what they call Themis. It's like a virtual analyst that uses the decisions that system admins make to generate a score for whether an email is legitimate, spam, or phishing. It gets better based on the decisions that we make over time. The automation piece is great as well. The integrated approach of email security combined with employee awareness training is excellent."
"There is buzz around phishing awareness training. When I make a campaign, all of a sudden people in our organization are talking, thinking, and wondering about it. Therefore, it keeps people on their toes. That is perfect because it does exactly what we want it to do."
"The fact that it is set-and-forget is valuable. Once you turn it on, you very rarely have to micromanage it, whereas, with a lot of spam filters, you have to go in very often."
"The biggest benefit is that we get fewer phishing and spam emails, so using IRONSCALES has made our environment much safer."
"For what was being offered with IRONSCALES, I feel like we got an incredible deal."
"Their anti-phishing platform is absolutely fantastic. The automated AI piece is amazing, and their technical support is fantastic."
 

Cons

"Artificial intelligence improvement could be used to help block spam and phishing mail that is directly delivered to users."
"The solution could improve by adding DomainKeys (DKIM) functionality. This is something that is essentially required nowadays for outbound security. They do not have it on their on-premise solution appliance but they have alternate arrangements for their cloud solution."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway should include ATP in the next release."
"The technical support is not available globally 24/7 and this is the biggest problem with the product."
"The reports are standard, and it would be nice to be able to customize them."
"The DMARC security is somewhat weak and could be strengthened."
"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."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"In addition to integrated training, they should also have personalized training that you don't have to do as part of a phishing campaign or a simulation."
"The tool supports 15 to 16 languages, but the content it uses in the training in Spanish has certain limitations."
"There is a feature called Account Takeover, which isn't what I want it to be able to do. I know that they're working on that, but when they first started the Account Takeover feature in incident management, it didn't have much information. It didn't have any usability to it. I already had tools in place that were better."
"Even though they have been continuously improving it, it is not 100% there. We have had a few incidents where legitimate emails were getting blocked, and we had to manually remove those emails from quarantine. It is 90% effective or accurate because, on rare occasions, some emails from customers were not getting delivered. In one or two instances, their emails got blocked by IRONSCALES, and we had to manually remove the emails from quarantine. I would like them to improve their algorithm to avoid flagging genuine emails as malicious. I would also like to be able to whitelist certain email addresses. I'd love to be able to whitelist a particular customer."
"The simulation and training piece could be improved by having more granularity in terms of scheduling how campaigns are run and allowing people to directly take the training rather than having to go through an official campaign. That's not available yet."
"I would love to see the indication of compromise and how the solution utilizes open source resources. It would be good to see that included in the paid versions. It would be a small addition but add a lot of value for clients."
"The only thing that I could say is that some of the reporting features could be better."
"IRONSCALES should bundle more features together instead of separating them and charging additional licensing fees."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost is competitive, it's not too high and not too low."
"We typically purchase a one or three-year license for Barracuda Email Security Gateway."
"The solution requires a license and we pay annually."
"For overall value and cost, Barracuda came in as most appropriate, price as well as services provided. In terms of price, it's average . It's not the most expensive, it's not the least expensive but it works well."
"We pay between $8 and $10 USD per user per month."
"This is one of the major points for integrating this solution in any organization. Barracuda Email Security Gateway needs to make it a bit more tolerable for customers because it is increasing every year. They should create a plan for reducing the cost."
"Compared to other products, this solution is quite affordable."
"e solution's pricing is exceedingly high, and it continues to increase."
"The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution."
"I don't know about its pricing because I don't run the budget or pay the bills, but if it was extortionate, we probably would be looking to scrap it, and because we are not, I assume its price is okay."
"We pay $3000 plus a little more a year for the number of employees we have, and we're not even that big. The solution is at the higher end in terms of cost. It's not the most expensive product, but I would say it's worth the price if you have a high volume of email traffic. In our case, the solution has inspected over 162,000 emails between three and four months. It saved us a lot of time and money. It's a worthwhile investment because a bad actor only has to succeed once; we must defend against everything in our business. IRONSCALES offers a sense of security and confidence from being well protected."
"They are pretty much the same as all the other competitors in the market."
"There is an installation cost. Since we have this as a managed service, we pay for licensing and the managed service itself. Other than that, there are no additional costs."
"As compared to everything else we looked at, it was good. It was the best value for the dollars."
"IRONSCALES is an expensive solution."
"Considering the value it provides, it is definitely worth the cost. We don't have to do manual analysis and remediation of phishing emails, which saves us a lot of hours. Its licensing is based on the number of users being supported and the number of email addresses being protected. I'm not aware of any additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
50%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway is very simple to use.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway should include ATP in the next release.
What do you like most about IRONSCALES?
The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IRONSCALES?
The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution. There are other solutions apart from IRONSCALES that are more expensive, while some are a little bit more ...
What needs improvement with IRONSCALES?
I think maybe on the side of the awareness training, the tool can improve a little more information and have some other languages since even though English is good, Spanish is not so good. The tool...
 

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
Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs. IRONSCALES and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.