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Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway vs Symantec Messaging Gateway comparison

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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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (20th), Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (13th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (22nd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (9th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Fortra's Clearswift Secure ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (29th)
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway1.3%
Proofpoint Email Protection6.7%
Microsoft Defender for Office 3656.1%
Other85.9%
Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Messaging Gateway2.7%
Proofpoint Email Protection18.6%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36515.3%
Other63.4%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

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.
PC
Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Stable, but malware needs improvement and customer support is poor
They need to improve the malware in the product. I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support. The support is poor, the supplier takes a lot of time and it's expensive. We have some issues here when I contact the supplier, it takes a lot of time for them to get back to us but there's no solution. I am now looking at Symantec as a possible alternative.
Girish Vijay - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Manager IT at Carl Bechem Lubricants India Pvt. Ltd.
A stable and reasonably priced solution that performs well and has a very good malware database
Since Symantec merged with Broadcom, they might have lost some good technical engineers. Maybe that’s the reason why the product is performing poorly. When we have a good marketing and sales team, even though our product cannot perform, we will sell it at a high price because of the buzzwords. However, at the end of the day, the product should perform. Most of the products might not perform. Symantec is a very good product, but the services are basic. I rate the technical features of the product a nine out of ten. However, I would rate the services provided by the solution a six out of ten. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare is simple to use."
"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."
"Cloudflare One has assisted in securing my remote workforce through a SASE solution with Cloudflare One and the Workers part, although I am not currently using the Workers component."
"For Cloudflare Access, I am using the free plan...The most valuable feature is their protection."
"The blocking feature is very good."
"Enables me to work from two locations."
"I'm very satisfied with the environment and the dashboard."
"The capabilities of the software are strong enough for me to do what it's supposed to do. For me, we don't need to do a lot of configuration on our site. We just enable it and monitor it."
"Go for it! I think it's an excellent product with great technical support."
"We use a few features for web proxy, and another feature is the email content filter and malware for our internal policy in the email content."
"A stable solution."
"Ability to create your own content-filtering policies with relative ease."
"The solution is excellent at blocking spam."
"It is a solid and stable product."
"The main thing that I appreciate about this product is that the database of spam, malware, and ransomware is very large."
"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 solution is a leader in anti-spam email products and you can block 99% of spam emails, making it very effective with great performance."
"The solution is highly customizable. You can make rules for domains and configure policies for spam or malware. Messaging Gateway is an on-prem solution, so it's useful for companies without a cloud presence."
"The most valuable features of Symantec Messaging Gateway are advanced content filtering, malware, and antivirus defense."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
 

Cons

"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"From a logging perspective, it is still a bit difficult to see exactly what users are being blocked with the current views."
"Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions."
"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."
"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."
"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."
"Feedback could be enhanced."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support."
"Malware needs improvement."
"FTP server and TRUST Manager functionality."
"The product must improve the user dashboards."
"They have updated the version of the Messaging Gateway and the new features they are adding the need to be re-evaluated. They have done some changes on the policy."
"We've had issues in the past where the user finds spam, and Symantec does not recognize it as spam."
"Support could be better. What's also 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."
"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."
"It will provide Excel reports and PDF reports, but it would be great if they supported the concept of Crystal Reports."
"If the customer has to think about budget and solutions to reduce IT cost, they should get away from Symantec and try using Microsoft."
"The biggest problem is it's an on-prem product and we're trying to get out of having equipment in data centers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"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."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven 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."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
Information not available
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"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."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...
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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
Symantec.cloud, Symantec Email Security.cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Information Not Available
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 Proofpoint, Microsoft, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Email Security. Updated: July 2026.
907,372 professionals have used our research since 2012.