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IRONSCALES vs Proofpoint Email Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
IRONSCALES improves email security, saves time, reduces risks, and offers cost-effective protection against phishing and ransomware attacks.
Sentiment score
6.5
Proofpoint Email Protection effectively reduced threats and costs, excelling in phishing defense, leading to significant efficiency improvements.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
IRONSCALES support is highly rated for responsiveness and efficiency, with improvements and high satisfaction despite minor delays.
Sentiment score
7.1
Proofpoint Email Protection's customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some report slow responses or portal issues.
Customer support for IRONSCALES is outstanding.
I would rate their technical support as very good, as they respond promptly when my team opens a ticket.
I am familiar with the granular policy control feature of Proofpoint Email Protection, and I find their support excellent for modifying those policies.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
IRONSCALES efficiently scales with organizational growth, offering seamless integration with Office 365 and minimal maintenance while maintaining performance.
Sentiment score
7.5
Proofpoint Email Protection excels in adaptability and scalability, serving both small and large enterprises with ease and flexibility.
Proofpoint is scalable for multi-site organizations with thousands of users.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
IRONSCALES is highly stable and reliable in the cloud, with minimal disruptions and promising future system integrations.
Sentiment score
8.2
Users rate Proofpoint Email Protection highly for reliability and performance, with minor UI challenges and rare stability issues.
 

Room For Improvement

IRONSCALES needs feature bundling, UI improvements, more language support, Google Suite integration, better pricing, and enhanced security features.
Proofpoint Email Protection struggles with setup complexity, feature enhancements, pricing issues, and requires improved support and interface design.
If there were clickable drill downs on specific users or specific correspondence to relate them to certain types of mails, that would be beneficial.
Having a more user-friendly UI would make it easier to identify features and options when using the tool.
Though this isn't problematic for our users, the content could be updated more frequently.
Proofpoint could expand its phishing detection capabilities to improve its efficiency.
More security could be implemented.
I believe they still need to improve by consolidating some portals, as currently, you have to log in separately to a few of them.
 

Setup Cost

IRONSCALES offers a cost-effective, worthwhile solution for enterprises, saving time and money on phishing management despite some expense concerns.
Proofpoint Email Protection is considered costly, with pricing starting at $8 per user and varying by features.
While I don't specifically oversee the pricing details, I understand that IRONSCALES is in the range of similar solutions while offering better results.
Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees.
Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
 

Valuable Features

IRONSCALES offers AI-driven phishing protection, easy integration, mobile management, and enhanced security awareness with Microsoft 365 scalability.
Proofpoint Email Protection offers advanced threat defense, user-friendly interface, and seamless Office 365 integration for comprehensive email security.
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.
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.
IRONSCALES excels at analyzing the intention, not just the content itself, but the sender's attempt to gain user attention.
I appreciate that it's the industry leader, and its firewalling is very easy to manage and implement.
The most beneficial feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is mostly spam filtering; it was very efficient, and we were very happy with the functionality as only relevant emails were allowed for mailboxes.
The main feature I find most effective is that Proofpoint Email Protection scans emails and quarantines the doubtful ones.
 

Categories and Ranking

IRONSCALES
Ranking in Email Security
17th
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (18th)
Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
3rd
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Security Awareness Training (2nd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of IRONSCALES is 4.0%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 21.0%, up from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection21.0%
IRONSCALES4.0%
Other75.0%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Hemeshen Govender - PeerSpot reviewer
Applies AI automation to clearly identify and stop a lot of phishing emails
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. The solution improved our response to phishing attempts. IRONSCALES has a virtual assistant and some AI intelligence that's applied to it. That was the main differentiator between IRONSCALES and Microsoft. The solution's AI automation clearly identifies phishing emails and gives you an overall indication of why it found the mail to be malicious. It does the whole analysis for you to see why the email was deemed a phishing email. The solution's response time is better than that of our previous tool. The solution's user interface is pretty straightforward and user-friendly.
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…
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Email Gateway (SEG) solutions are best for your needs.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
University
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise17
 

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?
There are areas that could be improved with this product. Regarding the Spanish language awareness training, while they are producing good content, it appears to be initially produced in English an...
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

Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Find out what your peers are saying about IRONSCALES vs. Proofpoint Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.