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IRONSCALES vs MetaDefender 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

IRONSCALES
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
16th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (14th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (5th)
MetaDefender
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
37th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (37th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (38th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of IRONSCALES is 2.9%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MetaDefender is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IRONSCALES2.9%
MetaDefender0.9%
Other96.2%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2770017 - PeerSpot reviewer
Email Security Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Has improved threat analysis by providing clear email correspondence history and reporting tools
The best features IRONSCALES offers are the investigation tabs, headers, and correspondence history, which stand out the most for me. The investigation tabs are valuable for my work because reporting goes a long way in terms of playbooks and having a full investigation. The investigation tab knows exactly how to put the information in a way that makes it very easy for reports to get done fast. Security awareness training is a big part of IRONSCALES. The platform offers a broad spectrum in terms of what campaigns can be run for security awareness for users as well as reporting back on how users interact with their mails and understanding where the vulnerabilities lie. IRONSCALES has positively impacted my organization by making email security simple in terms of controlling mails, understanding where the threats are, and protecting the organization itself.
Eido Ben Noun - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Architect at Diffiesec
Multi‑engine detection has significantly improved secure file transfers and threat prevention
Some feedback indicated that it takes too much time to configure certain policies because there are many options. Some people appreciate this because you can configure anything, but I believe MetaDefender should have a wizard or general policies that can be used for 80 percent of customers. I use the expanded file type and archive coverage feature sometimes, especially for customers who try to scan large archives with the deep scan capabilities of OPSWAT and Deep CDR. This provides full protection because it scans every single file, but sometimes it takes too long. When discussing CAB files or archives for patching or server updates and BIOS updates and operating system updates, the scanning process takes too long, and it was difficult for customers who sometimes decided not to scan because the scanning time was excessive. I use the reporting and audit visibility features. Some capabilities are lacking in reporting because we do not have full statistics that are easy for users to understand. If something requires checking and then referring to documentation to understand it, that is too much for most users. When looking at one of the statistics, you can see how many files have been scanned and then you see a number out of 500 or a different number if you change it. It is not a number of files or scan processes; it is a number of files inside a file. When you scan a PowerPoint presentation file, for example, it counts as forty different files because of all the sub-files. I understand from customers that when they look at the visualization data or statistics, they do not understand what is happening there. Most customers I see do not use the file-based vulnerability assessment feature. It has some good results about vulnerabilities, but I am not certain if it is that helpful because many organizations, when they deploy a file and see that there are vulnerabilities, still deploy it because it is part of the code. It can produce results, but those results do not cause any action. Many products have something more advanced than vulnerabilities and static scoring. They have tools that can inform you about a vulnerability, whether the vulnerability is exploitable, if it is weaponized, and if someone can use this vulnerability in your environment. The file-based vulnerability feature works, but for most people, they do not take any action based on the results or block files because of file-based vulnerabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IRONSCALES has positively impacted my organization by making email security simple in terms of controlling mails, understanding where the threats are, and protecting the organization itself."
"I would say the most valuable feature is what they call Themis. It's like a virtual analyst that uses the decisions that system admins make to generate a score for whether an email is legitimate, spam, or phishing. It gets better based on the decisions that we make over time. The automation piece is great as well. The integrated approach of email security combined with employee awareness training is excellent."
"There is buzz around phishing awareness training. When I make a campaign, all of a sudden people in our organization are talking, thinking, and wondering about it. Therefore, it keeps people on their toes. That is perfect because it does exactly what we want it to do."
"The best features of IRONSCALES are that most alerts are validated through AI, which reduces the fatigue of alerts that need to be worked on by the team handling the alerts investigation part."
"The fact that it is set-and-forget is valuable. Once you turn it on, you very rarely have to micromanage it, whereas, with a lot of spam filters, you have to go in very often."
"The report function through Gmail is probably the most valuable feature. The next most valuable features are simulation and training."
"Their anti-phishing platform is absolutely fantastic. The automated AI piece is amazing, and their technical support is fantastic."
"It is a totally stable solution."
"OPSWAT is the best alternative."
"I like the simplicity, the way it works out of the box. It's pretty easy to run and configure. The integration of the network devices with the ICAP server was easily done."
 

Cons

"Even though they have been continuously improving it, it is not 100% there. We have had a few incidents where legitimate emails were getting blocked, and we had to manually remove those emails from quarantine. It is 90% effective or accurate because, on rare occasions, some emails from customers were not getting delivered. In one or two instances, their emails got blocked by IRONSCALES, and we had to manually remove the emails from quarantine. I would like them to improve their algorithm to avoid flagging genuine emails as malicious. I would also like to be able to whitelist certain email addresses. I'd love to be able to whitelist a particular customer."
"IRONSCALES should bundle more features together instead of separating them and charging additional licensing fees."
"I would really prefer to drill down more on correspondence history. It provides detailed background information to actually understand what's going on."
"The integration with Google Suite needs to be better. it's something they can work on."
"The only thing that I could say is that some of the reporting features could be better."
"The tool supports 15 to 16 languages, but the content it uses in the training in Spanish has certain limitations."
"In addition to integrated training, they should also have personalized training that you don't have to do as part of a phishing campaign or a simulation."
"The user interface could be more attractive to users. The UI is not brightened or appealing."
"The documentation is not well written, and I often need to talk with support."
"Some capabilities are lacking in reporting because we do not have full statistics that are easy for users to understand."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know about its pricing because I don't run the budget or pay the bills, but if it was extortionate, we probably would be looking to scrap it, and because we are not, I assume its price is okay."
"The tool is not very cheap, but it is affordable."
"We pay $3000 plus a little more a year for the number of employees we have, and we're not even that big. The solution is at the higher end in terms of cost. It's not the most expensive product, but I would say it's worth the price if you have a high volume of email traffic. In our case, the solution has inspected over 162,000 emails between three and four months. It saved us a lot of time and money. It's a worthwhile investment because a bad actor only has to succeed once; we must defend against everything in our business. IRONSCALES offers a sense of security and confidence from being well protected."
"Considering the value it provides, it is definitely worth the cost. We don't have to do manual analysis and remediation of phishing emails, which saves us a lot of hours. Its licensing is based on the number of users being supported and the number of email addresses being protected. I'm not aware of any additional costs."
"There is an installation cost. Since we have this as a managed service, we pay for licensing and the managed service itself. Other than that, there are no additional costs."
"IRONSCALES is an expensive solution."
"The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution."
"As compared to everything else we looked at, it was good. It was the best value for the dollars."
"We bought a three-year license, and that was pretty expensive. We agreed that it was really worth buying. It could be cheaper, but we understand that quality comes at a price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Healthcare Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IRONSCALES?
The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IRONSCALES?
While I don't specifically oversee the pricing details, I understand that IRONSCALES is in the range of similar solutions while offering better results.
What needs improvement with IRONSCALES?
I would really prefer to drill down more on correspondence history. It provides detailed background information to actually understand what's going on. If there were clickable drill downs on specif...
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Also Known As

No data available
OPSWAT MetaDefender, MetaDefender Core
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
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