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Darktrace vs Fortinet FortiMail comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
20th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (15th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (11th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (13th), Access Management (12th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (8th), ZTNA (3rd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Darktrace
Ranking in Email Security
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (2nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (1st), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (1st), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (11th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (9th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th), AI Observability (9th)
Fortinet FortiMail
Ranking in Email Security
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 2.1%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiMail is 3.3%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiMail3.3%
Darktrace2.1%
Cloudflare One1.5%
Other93.1%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
AM
Technical Consultant - Unix Platform Services at BITS AND BYTE IT CONSULTING PVT LTD
Consistent threat hunting and anomaly detection deliver valuable insights for network security management
In terms of improvement for Darktrace, pricing is the main concern. Pricing bothers me and this is one of the major factors when choosing a solution. When we get feedback from customers, that's the only felt need. When we factor in Darktrace, we do it only limited. We put it on where the perimeters and connections are, but still, some gray areas are left out, especially if we have multiple branches. We need Darktrace on each branch to get the data out, and I suggest having some kind of a centralized product that gets data from multiple sources to aggregate and provide the data.
Abhimanyu Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Targeted email filtering has reduced spam and phishing and now saves significant investigation time
The best features of Fortinet FortiMail include its techniques and tactics, which are highly effective compared to other solutions such as Microsoft 365. Although Fortinet FortiMail may not be as advanced in some aspects, it is well recognized for its strong performance in handling spam and phishing. It performs thorough mail scanning and also offers a sandboxing feature that enhances protection. Fortinet FortiMail has had a positive impact on my organization by significantly reducing unwanted email activities such as spam and phishing. It provides accurate detection and generates results that often exceed what can be achieved through manual analysis. Since deploying Fortinet FortiMail, I have observed a reduction in investigation time by at least 20 to 30 percent.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."
"This solution is easy to understand and easy to configure."
"Enables me to work from two locations."
"The blocking feature is very good."
"Cloudflare Access is part of the Zero Trust philosophy."
"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."
"It is a stable solution."
"Cloudflare DDoS is better than its competitors for its security, deployment, and scalability."
"In terms of features, the data or information they collect and unsupervised machine learning are very valuable. Its unsupervised machine learning has reduced our team's effort. Both Darktrace and Vectra work on unsupervised machine learning that learns the behavior or develops a profile on its own, which allows our security team to do some other tasks rather than spending time on Darktrace or Vectra. Because of unsupervised machine learning, its detection capability is quite good. Along with that, if we utilize the integration feature properly, the automated incident response capability of Darktrace is quite useful."
"The most valuable feature is the solution's ability to trim out the false positives and point your attention to the real important stuff."
"What I like about Darktrace, is that you can quickly identify threats."
"The most valuable feature is that it gives us visibility of rogue traffic that is on the network."
"AI analytics are built directly into the product."
"The Dynamic Threat Dashboard is very nice, as it lists all of your threats and rates them, and then you can choose whether to investigate further."
"The product can scale."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it does not require human intervention to eliminate a threat."
"It can block a lot of fake emails."
"I love the integration between Fortinet products."
"FortiMail effectively filters all emails coming to our mail server, blocking malicious ones automatically."
"FortiMail is extremely flexible and very easy to learn. Compared to other email security products that we've tried, it is mainly the ease of configuration that makes FortiMail valuable to us."
"The key benefits of this solution are its user-friendly interface and clear instructions, as well as the wealth of online resources and helpful health community available for support. These features make it easy for users to navigate and utilize the solution effectively."
"Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are its performance and security."
"The product helps users handle security challenges as it offers prefiltering options and does relatively good incident reporting."
"Fortinet FortiMail is a very good product and reliable, and we find it easy to sell it."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
"From a logging perspective, it is still a bit difficult to see exactly what users are being blocked with the current views."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."
"Lacks a VPN feature to provide a secure connection to the data center."
"The one downside is the pricing, which is quite high."
"Updates keep coming, which is great, but I prefer a unified UI experience. The intelligence section and the incident view should be seamlessly connected in one view to avoid jumping between pages."
"It's a very complex platform."
"There are still some issues with the network capturing or blocking traffic even after implementing exceptions."
"Upper management wasn't sold on the value proposition."
"It's quite expensive to have."
"This is quite an expensive product so the pricing is something that can be improved."
"I would like to see a feature where the tool ingests information from an anti-malware product that is present at the endpoint."
"Fortinet FortiMail is considered overpriced by Indian rupee standards. My organization is not profit-making, and academic pricing is required, but it may not be available for security products like FortiGate."
"Sometimes, authentic emails get blocked by the solution's firewall."
"Fortinet FortiMail can be improved in terms of its dashboard, which is small and not visually appealing, making deeper investigations difficult."
"The biggest room for improvement would be the deployment. It will be hard for someone who doesn't understand the interface to deploy. If you understand it, you can find your way around the problems."
"Sometimes it takes a little bit too long to determine if an email is good or not. If they could shorten that time span, it'd be so much better. It does delay our email, which does not make users happy. That said, I would have to say we have not been blacklisted for quite a while now."
"They should add a lot of threat-intelligence feeds from different sources - not only from one source (FortiGuard)."
"Fortinet FortiMail's technical support team has shortcomings and needs improvement."
"ortiMail has some latency issues and sometimes takes time to receive emails."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"Darktrace is quite an expensive solution."
"The cost of the solution is expensive for smaller businesses. They will not be able to afford it or might not need this type of security solution."
"I am using a demo of Darktrace for deployment and testing which is free."
"If you consider the features and the cost of market leaders, we are satisfied with the pricing."
"We've budgeted about 50,000 Kuwaiti dinars for the solution. That is a yearly operating cost."
"It is expensive."
"The cost of the solution can be reduced to make it more appealing to customers."
"All of the other modules, such as the licensing modules, are on par. It's one for one."
"9,000 Euro per annum for Fortinet Mail and sandbox."
"FortiMail has extra charges for installation, configuration, and project management."
"Pricing is straight-forward and renewable without complicated pricing structures."
"Fortinet FortiMail is inexpensive."
"It's not as that expensive with the competitive different brands. The products sell a lot."
"The pricing is good."
"I have no information on pricing for the competition because right now, my company is working only with Fortinet, but I can say that in general, the price for Fortinet FortiMail was accepted by the customers easily. The POC is also important when a customer is buying a solution. The customer wants to see how the product runs, and as Fortinet FortiMail is a stable product that runs without big issues, it has a bigger chance of getting chosen by customers over its competitors, even if its price may be a little higher. Pricing for the solution is competitive. Sometimes it's less, sometimes it's a little bit higher, but it isn't far from what other solutions charge."
"Compared to its competitors, Fortinet's products are available at a higher price range."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access provides secure access to internal applications for employees, external members of the organization...
What advice do you have for others considering Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access is one of the best integrations available. While about two hundred vendors offer similar services, ...
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing u...
Which is better - SentinelOne or Darktrace?
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Darktrace?
Concerning pricing for the product, I would say it is somewhat expensive.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
In my opinion, points for improvement for Fortinet FortiMail include sometimes the speed and fine-tuning the false po...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
No data available
FortiMail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Irwin Mitchell, Open Energi, Wellcome Trust, FirstGroup plc, Virgin Trains, Drax, QUI! Group, DNK, CreaCard, Macrosynergy, Sisley, William Hill plc, Toyota Canada, Royal British Legion, Vitol, Allianz, KKR, AIRBUS, dpd, Billabong, Mclaren Group.
Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Find out what your peers are saying about Darktrace vs. Fortinet FortiMail and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.