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Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

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 Threat Scan...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

JM
Manager, Information Technology at Friendly House
A highly scalable and easy-to-learn product that blocks phishing and spam emails
The product must improve the features associated with creating a blacklist. Currently, to add a content block, I have to go to a different screen. It seems cumbersome. The solution sells Impersonation as a separate product. I don’t see why it cannot be in the same product like other vendors have.
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main benefit that I am getting from this solution is that it filters almost 95% of my spam mail."
"The most valuable feature of Barracuda Email Threat Scanner is the security it provides by delaying the delivery of suspicious emails until they can be reviewed inside the Barracuda control panel."
"The main benefit that I am getting from this solution is that it filters almost 95% of my spam mail. Some spam mails bypass Barracuda Email Threat Scanner, but when I add those domains or addresses to the filter list, they get blocked. Some users on my premises do not understand which mail attachments or links should be opened. By filtering with Barracuda Email Threat Scanner, we are not getting any type of phishing mails. So, our infrastructure is safer, and as an IT person, I feel relaxed."
"It was easy to learn the product."
"For securing access, USB security helps us block our USB ports and that ensures that users do not plug USB drives into their computers."
"We like that it has a free version available."
"We find that Microsoft Defender Antivirus is very stable, and we've experienced complications with other solutions in the past and found that this is one of the most stable solutions."
"We rely on this product for endpoint protection in our organization because we have not subscribed to any antivirus, apart from Microsoft Defender, and it has improved the way our organization functions because there have been no virus attacks to date on our laptops and it has not negatively affected our end-user experience."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is different from other security tools because we can configure it to use multiple types of scanning or archiving."
"The solution's main antivirus capabilities are okay, and so far they have kept us safe."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comes pre-installed in Microsoft Windows."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy to load and it runs quietly in the background, unlike other solutions."
 

Cons

"Only one to two accounts were compromised, and for that, Barracuda blocked all incoming and outgoing mails."
"We had an incident last month where the PCs of one or two colleagues, who were outside of our factory and were using a defined network, got infected by some kind of malware. From their PCs, more than 1,000 mails were produced per hour, causing spamming on our mail server. Barracuda blocked the full mail communication. Only one to two accounts were compromised, and for that, Barracuda blocked all incoming and outgoing mails. It created a great problem for other users and our office activities. Our server was blocked for three days, which we did not expect. Technically, only one or two accounts should be blocked. When a domain or IP is blocked, communication becomes tough. It may be a configuration issue at our provider's end, where there was a mistake in configuring Barracuda. It could also be a problem related to Barracuda."
"If the price were lower, perhaps we could purchase our own."
"The product must improve the features associated with creating a blacklist."
"It takes some time to understand how this solution works. A few things are unclear at the beginning, such as whether it actually restricts the virus or spam at the initial stage, or when there is a security update, how will we come to know and how will it get synchronized."
"We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation."
"On the Mac OS platform, there is no parity between Windows and Mac OS. The solution is very feature-rich and very well-integrated into Windows, and I guess baked into Windows 10 and Windows 11. Whereas, on the Mac OS platform, there is still some work there to give it a more feature-reach platform."
"Sometimes, there are difficulties in downloading a file considered as malicious."
"I would like the solution to be able to prevent unauthorized programs from installing and to block unauthorised URLs which is similar to web filtering product."
"The frequency of the patching, and the frequency of the updates, are not included with the free version."
"Some integration components for Mac should be added. We use both Windows 10 desktops and Mac desktops, but presently, the Mac component is still lagging a bit behind."
"Updates are not coming out of preview quickly enough and it is holding back on the development of the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Barracuda Email Threat Scanner is provided by our IT service provider, who also provides all the support. The licensing fee that we pay to our provider is $200 per month, that is, $1 per user. There is no additional cost. Before taking the subscription from our provider, I researched the market for Barracuda. The cost is between $5,000 to $8,000 for three years. After that, the same cost is there for renewal. If you have 200 to 500 users, it is better to take a subscription from a provider. If you have more than 500 users, then you can own the Barracuda server through the cloud or on-premises deployments. It is costly for a lesser number of users. If you increase the usage or the number of users, then the overall cost decreases. They can reduce the cost of Barracuda Email Threat Scanner for a small number of users. We could not and would not have used this solution if we had not got the renting or subscription option."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"We mostly use Microsoft products. We use Office 365, and we use Azure. We're also a Microsoft partner. So, the licensing was much cheaper for us, and at the same time, a lot of the features that we were looking for were included in Defender."
"We have the E5 security license, and the solution comes with that."
"If you don't purchase the advanced threat protection then there is no additional charge."
"I don't know the standalone costs. It is my understanding that the M365 E5 is $56 a month or something close to that pricing. That would be for the full suite. Just Defender might be $8 a month. I can't say for sure."
"Its price at the moment is very good because you get a lot of value for your money, especially with the subscriptions. If you have the E1, E3, or E5 enterprise subscription, you pay per month per user, and you get almost an infinite number of solutions. If you compare the price to the number of solutions that you get, it is a very good deal."
"Compared to ESET, the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is on the higher side."
"The solution comes free with Microsoft Windows 10."
"Microsoft Defender ATP is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Performing Arts
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise45
Large Enterprise96
 

Questions from the Community

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Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Entisys 360,
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
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