Fortinet FortiMail vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiMail and Perception Point Advanced Email Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Email Security solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiMail vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security Report (Updated: March 2023).
688,618 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. There are a lot of things that you cannot handle on the graphic interface, like message filters. For this, you need to go to a lower level where you have more power, like command line interface. So, this solution has the best of both worlds. There are not a lot of bells and whistles. It is more practical with access to most features that you can configure.""It's flexible. There are a lot of rules and policies that can be easily applied for certain employees or certain mailboxes.""The malicious URL scanning, as well as the anti-malware features, have been really useful for us in our environment.""What I find the most valuable about Cisco Secure Email is that the logs are not that difficult to see even if you're not used to them. The logs are reasonably readable and diagnosing the problem is not too hard with them.""The added value of it is that every migration to a new version is initiated by the Cisco version itself, so that is a bunch of work that you don't have to do on the Cisco ESA system on-premise. As it becomes a safe platform, you don't need to invest anything in your own data center or in your upgrade path.""Cisco Secure Email Cloud Gateway has allowed our users to be able to concentrate on the emails that they do receive. Previously, our users had to deal with nine million additional emails across the organization, which is nearly 1,000 emails per user to have to deal with a month. That's a massive amount for our staff to deal with and probably several hours of their time. We have a lot of clinical staff, being a hospital. We want to make our staff as productive as possible. By removing a lot of that spam and phishing type emails, this allows them to do their job.""It is doing its work. It is doing what it was actually designed to do. It has ensured we don't have business email compromises, and it has also ensured that our brand Galaxy is unique all year round.""I love the Advanced Malware Protection feature. It works very well... The appliance has more security such as SDF, DKIM, DMARC, and encryption."

More Cisco Secure Email Pros →

"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.""The anti-spam feature is very valuable.""Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are its performance and security.""It can block a lot of fake emails.""Fortinet FortiMail has a lot of valuable features. It works great. It also has an antivirus feature. Support for Fortinet FortiMail was also great when my team wanted to block some geographic IPs, but couldn't figure out how to do it. The support team provided clear communication on how to resolve that issue. Another valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is SPAM filtering which tells you how many spammy emails you've received. Based on my current use cases, I'm happy with Fortinet FortiMail.""Fortinet FortiMail is easy to use and the detection rate is very good. You can customize content filters and profiles are done easily. Additionally, there is a sandbox integration feature that is good.""Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are antispam, antivirus, database, and data loss prevention (DLP).""We found the initial setup to be mostly straightforward."

More Fortinet FortiMail Pros →

"It really works well on SharePoint when you upload a file or save a file. Advanced Email Security scans if it is malicious and identifies issues. It can do some forensics on its console, which is nice.""The Perception Point Incident Response team acts as an extension of our SOC team. This is very important for us. This is a benefit provided for their main product of scanning our emails. If Perception Point can give me IR, this is really good versus other products that do not provide this kind of service. Perception Point's service is great. They are very professional. That reduces the time that my internal SOC has to deal with my internal IT person. They just send an email to the IR team at Perception Point, who continues the investigation and blocks any emails, if necessary. This is very good because it can reduce a lot of time and effort from my team. It is like an extension of my SOC, but external.""The most valuable feature I have found is the speed of scanning emails.""The most valuable feature is the hardware-assisted platform module.""The most valuable feature of Perception Point Advanced Email Security is the filtering and securing of emails.""The most valuable features of the solution are the ones that are related to finding impersonation attacks and detecting attempts to steal credentials. In scenarios where attackers get you to follow URLs to a malicious site that looks similar to a good site, and then ask for the user credentials to try to steal them, it is very useful.""Their security engines are very effective at stopping malware and potential attacks before they reach a user's mailbox. They have the best detection engine.""We haven't had a client, who uses their protection, have an email security breach. That is the best thing about what they do. We don't have to think too much. Their product just works and keeps bad emails away."

More Perception Point Advanced Email Security Pros →

Cons
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky.""We have Microsoft and we have the E5 licenses, they have more EDR responses on certain emails. That's something that Cisco ESA on the cloud doesn't have. They don't do anything about MITRE attacks. They only detect if there is a malicious email or a threat and they remove it.""If you are not a technical guy, it is hard to maneuver, but as soon as you work on it, it gets better and better. If there was a better way to know how to do things or how to find things, it would be good.""The area of license renewal should be improved. We normally renew our license every year. There is a feature called smart licensing, and I switched from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode because of what I thought smart licensing does. I thought it would make licensing renewal seamless and very swift, but ever since I've switched to smart licensing, each time I want to renew my license, it is a whole lot of headache. The process is not smooth, and I had to keep calling Cisco TAC to see how the issue can be resolved. At one point, I wanted to revert back to the legacy mode, but I can't revert. Once you switch from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode, you can't revert. They should improve on the visibility of the smart licensing mode so that it can indeed be smart and easier to use for the license renewal every year. That is one challenge.""We have been struggling in the last month with Cisco encryption and with the S/MIME encryption. I don't know if it is an issue on our side or if these features of the solution are not working very well.""I would like more functionality and how to use it for Level 2 type staff. The biggest issue is it needs to be easier to use and navigate.""My opinion on the licensing of this solution is that it is a mess that needs sorting out. I am not particularly bothered by pricing as I administer it and make recommendations for people to buy or not to buy.""The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."

More Cisco Secure Email Cons →

"The solution's pricing is flexible and can be adjusted for African utility companies. Microsoft often offers special pricing formulas for African governments and organizations and it is similar to Fortinet FortiMail. In my country, government institutions receive discounted pricing from Fortinet FortiMail.""Fortinet FortiMail could improve general user management. There are no password policies for users.""My customers frequently ask to have detailed documentation for FortiMail and FortiWeb as they have in FortiGate. What they currently have is not enough.""FortiMail's dashboard is somewhat complex and could be made simpler.""A room for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is that it only has a hardware version. I also didn't find the solution scalable, so that's another area for improvement.""It's difficult for me to talk about areas for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail because I'm the general manager of the company and I'm an engineer with knowledge about the solution, but I'm not deeply involved in its implementation. As I mentioned previously, Fortinet FortiMail is also being used within the company, and I'm happy with its functionality, but sometimes, attacks pass and avoid the Fortinet FortiMail filters, but those could be very sophisticated attacks. There could still be an improvement in the filtering feature of the solution, though the security of Fortinet FortiMail is okay for me because I believe you can't implement one hundred percent security in any solution. The initial setup for the solution also needs improvement. The setup is supposed to be simple, but then the customer starts to complain that some of the false positive emails are reaching quarantine, so my team has to configure it again. There have been instances when Fortinet FortiMail rejects valid emails because some of the service partners of the customer have not been configured accurately, so the system considered valid mails as attacks to be quarantined, so aside from improving the filters, there should also be an improvement in the categorization of emails in the server. My team has to modify the configuration so that valid emails could pass and for Fortinet FortiMail to correctly filter the SPAM traffic. A feature that could be added to Fortinet FortiMail in its next release is advanced AI, so it can analyze and decide accurately on which mail is valid and which mail is SPAM.""They should add a lot of threat-intelligence feeds from different sources - not only from one source (FortiGuard).""In the Latin America market, some spam messages use Portuguese language. Some clearly spam messages would be better identified by the anti-spam if not for the language."

More Fortinet FortiMail Cons →

"They need more customer engagement. The product works very well. The IR works very well when we contact them. However, day-to-day, they should have more in communication with their customers explaining new products and features. There is possibly something that if I would know about it, then I would buy and use it. Maybe I need it. They need to improve their communications.""We have had a few false positives, not that many, but a few... they have a feature where someone from the Incident Response team can look at an email and mark it as 'verified malicious.' You might think that if an engine detects it is malicious, and an IR team member has flagged it as malicious, it will definitely be malicious. But that's not always the case.""Email alerts should be available in real-time.""I think the interface could be improved in the next release.""The only thing that can be improved in Perception Point is the in-depth analysis and attribution to cyberattack groups.""They could improve their anti-spam engine a little bit, because there are a lot of false positives. Sometimes, emails pass through their system but are spam. In terms of security and engines for malicious emails and antivirus, they're doing a good job. Their other engines can be improved.""It would be helpful for Perception Point Advanced Email Security to have more integration with other solutions.""They just don't do a good job of promoting themselves. They seem like a typical busy IT company who is just working on fixing problems and making technology better. However, they are not fantastic at marketing themselves to existing partners, which is not a bad thing. It is just something for improvement."

More Perception Point Advanced Email Security Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There are additional fees for adding features."
  • "At times, we feel the pricing is a bit too high, but then, there is also room for discounts. We enjoy a lot of discounts, and that is why we are still with them. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
  • "In my previous organization, avoiding four instances of CryptoLocker within an estimated six month period is approximately $600,000 in lost time and effort. Our five year cost was about a million dollars, and the four outages that we had equated to 65 percent of that five year cost."
  • "It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars."
  • More Cisco Secure Email Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "There is a license required for this solution and it is on an annual basis. I am satisfied with the price."
  • "The fees for Fortinet FortiMail can be complicated. However, overall the pricing is fair."
  • "There is either an annual or six-month charge to use this solution. Fortinet FortiMail is cheaper than Proofpoint or Cisco Security, or other email security appliances."
  • "The pricing is good."
  • "There is a license required for this solution."
  • "Fortinet FortiMail has an annual license agreement."
  • "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."
  • "My company has a three-year license for Fortinet FortiMail, including the support, but I'm not so sure of how much the solution costs because I'm not part of the procurement team. What's more important to me is the functionality and stability of Fortinet FortiMail. In terms of Fortinet FortiMail licensing, the cost is calculated based on company requirements. For example, it's based on the features you need for your environment, on capacity, how many CPUs you have, etc."
  • More Fortinet FortiMail Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "They are not the most expensive vendor. There are much more expensive vendors. They are not cheap, but they are not the most expensive. They are somewhere in the middle."
  • "We were able to get reasonable pricing that matches the ROI we want, so I think that it is the correct price point."
  • "The price of this solution was within our budget and I think that it will suit most SMBs."
  • "It fits every budget. It has a low price. I can't go ahead and sell it for any price I want. They are quite strict. They say, "This is the price that you can sell it for and this is the price for you as a reseller." That is it. It is not a lot of money. I will not become rich from it, but I like that they keep a standard for everyone. They are a fair company."
  • "It has very reasonable pricing. Normally, the end user is paying. Perception Point is already in the Amazon marketplace, so we cannot sell it as a distribution partner. For example, we cannot take more than that margin of what they offer in the marketplace. Whatever the end user is paying, it is definitely worth it and it is not that high."
  • "The pricing and licensing are very fair compared to competing companies in the same field."
  • "There is room for improvement for them with an MSP partner. The pricing is good and fair. Our customers don't complain. The only thing is that it's a little bit old school. They don't have a system that automatically checks the number of users that our customers have so we can just update the licenses ourselves through a website. It is still done manually. They have a person who checks invoicing monthly to determine if there have been any changes. A nice improvement would be if they could get automated licensing counts."
  • "The pricing compared to the value Perception Point brings is super-competitive. They're not the cheapest in the market, but the value and the quality of the product are superior to anything else in the market, so we don't mind paying more for it."
  • More Perception Point Advanced Email Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It's flexible. There are a lot of rules and policies that can be easily applied for certain employees or certain… more »
    Top Answer:My opinion on the licensing of this solution is that it is a mess that needs sorting out. I am not particularly bothered… more »
    Top Answer:If you are not a technical guy, it is hard to maneuver, but as soon as you work on it, it gets better and better. If… more »
    Top Answer:Fortinet FortiMail has a lot of valuable features. It works great. It also has an antivirus feature. Support for… more »
    Top Answer:I find Fortinet FortiMail pricing reasonable. There's no additional cost apart from its standard licensing fees.
    Top Answer:A room for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is that it's hardware-based. It only has a hardware version. I also didn't… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature is the hardware-assisted platform module.
    Top Answer:The price of this solution was within our budget and I think that it will suit most SMBs. There are no additional costs… more »
    Top Answer:Email alerts should be available in real-time. Alternatively, emails should be sent more often. It would be better to… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
    FortiMail
    Learn More
    Overview

    Cisco Secure Email is an email security solution that provides advanced protection to safeguard inboxes. The solution includes comprehensive defense from the most damaging threats so your employees and organization can remain secure at all times. In addition, it includes advanced threat defense capabilities that detect, block, and remediate threats in incoming email faster. Simultaneously, it protects an organization’s brand, prevents data loss, and secures important information in transit with end-to-end encryption.

    Cisco Secure Email Features

    Cisco Secure Email has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Advanced threat analysis: Easily identify the malicious techniques used in attacks targeting your organization. Understand the specific business risks and categorize threats to gain insight into the parts of your organization that are most vulnerable to attack.
    • Robust, actionable threat data: The solution’s searchable threat analysis data provides critical contextual insight to the attack scope and breadth and expedites remediation.
    • Real-time URL analysis: With this feature, you can drop emails with risky links automatically or block access to newly infected sites with real-time URL analysis to protect against phishing.
    • Domain-based message authentication (DMARC): Users can prevent brand abuse from attackers using their organization’s domain to carry out phishing campaigns with automation of the domain-based message authentication (DMARC) process.
    • Data loss prevention (DLP): The solution enables users to protect sensitive content in outgoing emails.

    Cisco Secure Email Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Cisco Secure Email. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Optimize your defenses: The solution is designed to protect your organization from threats that can come from multiple sources, including phishing, malware, and ransomware. It can defend against all of them with industry-leading threat intelligence that empowers you to act quickly.
    • More efficient processes: You can use the solution’s orchestration feature to simplify workflows, reduce the burden on your team, and focus on more strategic initiatives.
    • Easy-to-manage tools: The solution is built with tools that are user-friendly and help you spend less time managing alerts. They allow users to quickly detect emerging threats and quarantine suspected threats to prevent their spread.
    • Flexible license options: Cisco Secure Email provides three different license choices: Secure Email Essentials, Secure Email Advantage, and Secure Email Premier.
    • Increase spam catch rates: Cisco Secure Email blocks unwanted emails using a multilayered scanning architecture.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Cisco Secure Email is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it has an intuitive interface, reputation filtering, few false positives, and great protection features.

    Enrique J., Owner at Jolly Security Inc., says, "It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. The most valuable feature is reputation filtering.”

    The solution has a “low rate of false positives, good support, and it integrates well with other Cisco security products,” explains Mark R., IT Admin / Manager at a retailer.

    PeerSpot user Charles N., Network Security Engineer at Galaxy Backbone Ltd., mentions, “It is doing its work. It is doing what it was actually designed to do. They have a lot of features such as Advanced Malware Protection, Email Protection, Advanced Phishing Protection, Antispam, Antivirus, and Outbreak Filters.”

    As cyber attacks become more sophisticated, it is crucial for email security solutions to offer multi-layered protection. Fortinet's proven email security platform, FortiMail, is a comprehensive multi-layered threat protection solution designed to secure users from the full spectrum of email-based threats, which includes zero-day threats, credential impersonation, spam, phishing, malware, and business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

    Fortinet FortiMail offers a variety of deployment models to best fit your organization’s email security needs. On-premises, private or public cloud, or hybrid email environments can be deployed and managed in-house by your team or managed by Fortinet’s data centers. FortiMail also employs virtual machines that provide robust scalability options and flexible deployment of email security infrastructure.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Fortinet FortiMail provides your organization with the following benefits:

    • Eliminate message-based threats by using FortiMail’s advanced inspection capabilities before they can harm your users.
    • Flexible licensing ensures that you don’t have to create a license for each user as you scale your network upwards.

    • Achieve regulatory compliance with sophisticated messaging content archiving, quarantining, and routing tools.
    • Stop spam before it takes over your messaging system and network resources, ensuring that your messaging performance remains optimized.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Some of Fortinet FortiMail’s top features include:

    • Spam and malware prevention: FortiMail employs advanced techniques and technologies, such as outbreak protection, impersonation detection, content disarm and reconstruction, and sandbox analysis to provide users with high-performing antispam and antimalware tools designed to prevent unwanted bulk email, ransomware, and other targeted attacks.
    • Powerful data loss prevention: Identity-based email encryption and archiving help prevent the loss of sensitive and important information and ensure that your organization adheres to compliance with corporate and industry regulations.
    • Automatic updates: Receive dynamic updates from the FortiGuard subscription services that automatically upgrade your antispam and antivirus functionality using intelligence gathered by Fortinet's dedicated global threat research team.
    • Seamless integration: Integrations with other Fortinet products and external third-party components enable companies to enhance their security by sharing indicators of compromise (IoCs) across a unified security system.
    • Easy email management: Gain full visibility over real-time email traffic with Fortinet FortiMail’s intuitive dashboards, rich reporting features, centralized quarantine tools, and end-user controls. Control email traffic with the solution’s full mail transfer agent and mail-handling capabilities. The solution’s quick-start setup wizard greatly reduces the complexity of deployment and management.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Fortinet FortiMail stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful anti-virus tool and its robust spam protection capabilities.

    Flamur P., head of security management at Ipko Telecommunications, writes, "Fortinet FortiMail has a lot of valuable features. It works great. It also has an antivirus feature. Support for Fortinet FortiMail was also great when my team wanted to block some geographic IPs, but couldn't figure out how to do it. The support team provided clear communication on how to resolve that issue. Another valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is spam filtering which tells you how many spammy emails you've received. Based on my current use cases, I'm happy with Fortinet FortiMail."

    Perception Point is a Prevention-as-a-Service company, offering fast interception of any content-based attack across all collaboration channels including email, cloud storage, CRM apps, and messaging platforms. The company prevents phishing, BEC, spam, malware, Zero-days, N-days well before it reaches the enterprise’s end-users. Deployed in minutes with no change to the enterprise’s infrastructure, our solution conforms with any policy and requires zero fuss from IT teams. On top of that, the company offers a significant added value service through our Incident Response team that serves as a force multiplier to the enterprise’s SOC team.

    Perception Point's unique technology, which folds 7 different detection layers to provide a single verdict, has been recognized by Gartner and has proven time and time again to deliver the most effective ROI when compared to leading cyber solutions. As a result, the company now serves many global enterprises of all sizes and across all verticals, including Telecom, Food & Beverage, Tech, Healthcare, and more.

    Offer
    Learn more about Cisco Secure Email
    Learn more about Fortinet FortiMail
    Learn more about Perception Point Advanced Email Security
    Sample Customers
    SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
    Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
    Information Not Available
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Energy/Utilities Company18%
    Retailer18%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider21%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Wholesaler/Distributor11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Comms Service Provider17%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Educational Organization12%
    Government9%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company25%
    Hospitality Company17%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Transportation Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company13%
    Retailer12%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business49%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise22%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise43%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise54%
    Buyer's Guide
    Fortinet FortiMail vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiMail vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    688,618 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 8th in Email Security with 21 reviews while Perception Point Advanced Email Security is ranked 7th in Email Security with 15 reviews. Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.4, while Perception Point Advanced Email Security is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiMail writes "Has a SPAM filtering feature and gives better protection against SPAM, phishing attempts, and ransomware; provides good support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Perception Point Advanced Email Security writes "Catches emails that others don't, and we can escalate messages to the Incident Response team for additional expertise". Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, Proofpoint Email Protection and Fortinet FortiMail Cloud, whereas Perception Point Advanced Email Security is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Proofpoint Email Protection, IRONSCALES, Avanan and Vade for Office 365. See our Fortinet FortiMail vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security report.

    See our list of best Email Security vendors.

    We monitor all Email Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.