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Digital Shadows vs Proofpoint Email Protection 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

Digital Shadows
Ranking in Digital Risk Protection
6th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Digital Risk Protection
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (3rd), Security Awareness Training (2nd), Office 365 Protection (2nd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Digital Risk Protection category, the mindshare of Digital Shadows is 4.5%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Digital Risk Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection1.3%
Digital Shadows4.5%
Other94.2%
Digital Risk Protection
 

Featured Reviews

DavidJones7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Has required additional context for alerts but supports monitoring impersonation and threat activity effectively
I do not rate Digital Shadows a nine or ten because there are many things that need improvement. The information we get is kind of generic. For instance, for impersonation, we don't have much detail on their history, when it was used or how it was misused. Those further details would be really helpful, but the information we receive is basic, such as when it was last registered and when it was updated, without more insight about the malicious factors. For basic support from Digital Shadows, my impression is that it is six to seven because many times we see duplications or bugs, and the quality of the alerts is not up to the mark. We have escalated many times, but we do not receive solid responses from them in terms of fixes. Digital Shadows should focus on the engineering side rather than the support aspect because support is there to help us get updates, but in terms of quick fixes, it is not as responsive. The need for improvement lies more with the engineering part in fixing issues, which is linked to support.
AhmedRamadan - PeerSpot reviewer
Optimize email security with effective sandboxing and auto Pull for quarantine
Proofpoint is used as an email security gateway for big enterprises, primarily for their on-premises servers. Many customers also use it alongside Office 365 Proofpoint offers a complete solution for email security with features like DLP, email archiving, and encryption. The most valuable…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Digital Shadows helps our organization identify and mitigate cyber threats through their crawling of the internet, gathering information, pivoting it, and then sending those alerts to us which we monitor from our SIEM tool."
"The most effective feature for threat intelligence, in my opinion, is collecting impersonating websites."
"The most effective feature for threat intelligence, in my opinion, is collecting impersonating websites."
"They have customized security rules, mature rules, anti-virus protection, as well as email authentication similar to SPF, DKIM, and DMARC."
"The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features are the business email compromise protection and targeted attack prevention."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the TAP Dashboard. It provides more detailed information that can be used for forensic analysis. This is an advantage that other email security providers, such as Cisco, IronPort, or Microsoft do not offer in their dashboards."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is stable enough and does its job of virus, malware, and email scam detection. Setting it up is not too complicated."
"The stability is very good."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's advantage is that, when it's working properly, it tends to catch more threats as compared to other products."
"Provides better control over emails, especially those sent via Office 365 on the cloud."
 

Cons

"The solution doesn't pick up all the brands of the URLs. I have a relatively small company name, however, the solution still misses a certain number of URLs with my company's name in it that are impersonating websites. It's not very comprehensive, to be honest."
"For basic support from Digital Shadows, my impression is that it is six to seven because many times we see duplications or bugs, and the quality of the alerts is not up to the mark."
"The solution doesn't pick up all the brands of the URLs."
"Some use cases haven't been dealt with yet."
"Unfortunately, the whole product is going downhill right now, ever since they were sold to Thoma Bravo. We're constantly having problems with stability and the product in general."
"I want Security Awareness Training in there as a package deal. A lot of companies are starting to value email security a little bit more and take it a little bit more seriously, and the great product that we link together with a lot of these sales is a training product called Security Awareness Training. It is an upsell that we do with Proofpoint, and it is definitely something that I recommend everybody with email security to look into. It would be great if Security Awareness Training is included with the email security."
"The solution's server console and cluster dashboard have been the same for four years so need to be upgraded."
"Proofpoint should have better integration with complex environments that need more than one instance of Proofpoint, as there are issues with nested instances."
"In terms of improvement, the price could be better. Additionally, more security could be implemented."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve on the training. Every organization is different and to fine-tune it to block everything properly there needs to be better training. Sometimes it can block some of the information it shouldn't."
"We find the cost to be prohibitive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"It is expensive."
"The price is reasonable."
"The licensing model for Proofpoint Email Protection is simple. It's based on the number of users. Price-wise, Proofpoint Email Protection is a five out of ten because it's a pretty expensive solution."
"They are competitively priced, but I have been forced to get quotes for other solutions now because they haven't been responding to requests to do the work that we would like them to do."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Digital Shadows?
Regarding the cost of Digital Shadows, I think prices are a bit higher. The information provided is already available; some of it is paid information. However, considering all the information they ...
What needs improvement with Digital Shadows?
I do not rate Digital Shadows a nine or ten because there are many things that need improvement. The information we get is kind of generic. For instance, for impersonation, we don't have much detai...
What is your primary use case for Digital Shadows?
Our main use cases for Digital Shadows are mainly using it for threat intel. For instance, we have our domain listed on Digital Shadows. Whenever we see any sort of impersonation domain registratio...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
In terms of pricing, it is okay compared to others. I would say it is normal. Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
I believe they still need to improve by consolidating some portals, as currently, you have to log in separately to a few of them.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Cofense PhishMe, Proofpoint Digital Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Pret A Manger, Human Rights Watch
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Find out what your peers are saying about Digital Shadows vs. Proofpoint Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.