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Fortinet FortiMail vs Symantec Messaging Gateway 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

Fortinet FortiMail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (6th)
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Fortinet FortiMail is designed for Email Security and holds a mindshare of 4.0%, down 5.8% compared to last year.
Symantec Messaging Gateway, on the other hand, focuses on Secure Email Gateway (SEG), holds 2.6% mindshare, up 2.5% since last year.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fortinet FortiMail4.0%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36511.4%
Proofpoint Email Protection8.2%
Other76.4%
Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Symantec Messaging Gateway2.6%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36527.6%
Proofpoint Email Protection21.0%
Other48.8%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

MOHAN SUKUMAR - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure email management improves through advanced filtering and dynamic virus scanning
Fortinet FortiMail offers capabilities like settings for mail delivery, mail filtering, spam controls, and email bursting prevention. It also allows for email forwarding, dynamic filtering, and scanning based on virus signatures. I can set varying levels of security. The tool is flexible and provides essential features for mail security and management.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
The product provides good content filtering options, but the false positive submissions must be improved
The tool is very stable. I rate the stability a seven out of ten. It's an on-premise application that runs on a virtual machine. It has dependencies on the hypervisor host that we're running it on. If it's not configured, the application can be influenced by it. Sometimes, there is a service stop error while the service is still running. Sometimes, the service just stops. Some policies do not act the way that we intend them to respond.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They have a feature called CDR, Content Disarm, Reconstruction, click protection, and DLP for encryption purposes."
"The spam filtering is great."
"I would rate Fortinet FortiMail ten out of ten overall."
"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."
"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."
"The antiphishing capabilities are very good."
"The integration with FortiSandbox is good, and something that we utilize often."
"The number of false positives is minimal."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the content filtering policies because the solution offers huge options for configuration, such as hardware manipulation, et cetera, and the dictionaries make the work easier."
"The anti-malware and spam features are valuable."
"Symantec is a secure product."
"The solution is "set and forget". You pay for it and everything is done for you."
"I like that it's simple and easy to configure, deploy, and manage. The reporting function has all the features we're looking for, and we are fine with that."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a good GUI, and it is very powerful in detecting viruses and spam."
"It is a solid and stable product."
"The feature that I like the best is the fingerprinting concept."
 

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."
"ortiMail has some latency issues and sometimes takes time to receive emails."
"It would be nice if we could manage the solution from the cloud so I could handle things off-site if necessary."
"Fortinet FortiMail's technical support team has shortcomings and needs improvement."
"I think they need to look into it and improve their signatures. This will help with blocking incoming spam emails."
"The product should work on licensing and provide more detail once the license is selected for the customer."
"The product could incorporate even more artificial intelligence to enhance the functionality, but it is a competetive and intelligent product as it."
"I think the security of the product could improve."
"What needs to be improved in Symantec Messaging Gateway is its local partner support, as it's not as technical. The support my company gets from the partner isn't good. Vendor support is good, but local partner support isn't. I'm happy with Symantec Messaging Gateway as a solution, but the problem is with its partner support. To me, Symantec Messaging Gateway is a complete solution, but it can be very difficult to search the web for resolutions to issues or problems you experience from it. If this could be improved or resolved in the next release of Symantec Messaging Gateway, then that would be good."
"This product would benefit from better integration with Symantec Endpoint Protection."
"The solution takes up a lot of memory."
"The false positive submissions must be improved."
"What's lacking when you compare it with Proofpoint and other threat protection solutions is that it does the basic stuff, but we need more advanced threat handling."
"The solution interface is from 2003 and is outdated. Symantec Messaging Gateway needs to update the interface."
"It will provide Excel reports and PDF reports, but it would be great if they supported the concept of Crystal Reports."
"The product must improve the user dashboards."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"FortiMail is not cheap."
"Fortinet FortiMail is inexpensive."
"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."
"In terms of licensing, we are using a virtual machine license for the single virtual server which it runs on. Doing it this way enables us to cut costs by only licensing FortiMail for our exact use case. If you need to expand in future, you can later buy extra licenses per virtual machine."
"FortiMail has extra charges for installation, configuration, and project management."
"In the future I would like it if there's a possibility to lower the price of the bandwidth and UTM. It is quite expensive."
"If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"The cost of Symantec Messaging Gateway is too expensive in general. However, the appliance also includes the price of the license in the same bundle."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail?
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...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
It can be somewhat difficult to prepare precise or very deep rules to improve security, though the product is very good.
What needs improvement with Symantec Messaging Gateway?
The solution takes up a lot of memory. The system becomes slow. The performance must be improved.
What is your primary use case for Symantec Messaging Gateway?
We use the solution to secure our data and emails.
 

Also Known As

FortiMail
Symantec.cloud, Symantec Email Security.cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Doric, Joblink Plus, Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta, PPB Advisory, Slater & Gordon Lawyers, Sydney Adventist Hospital Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiMail vs. Symantec Messaging Gateway and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
869,883 professionals have used our research since 2012.