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KnowBe4 vs Proofpoint Email Protection vs Proofpoint’s ZenGuide 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Security Awareness Training Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
KnowBe413.7%
Riot8.0%
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide5.7%
Other72.6%
Security Awareness Training
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection19.5%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36517.0%
Mimecast Email and Collaboration Threat Protection15.9%
Other47.6%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Security Awareness Training Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide5.7%
KnowBe413.7%
Riot8.0%
Other72.6%
Security Awareness Training
 

Featured Reviews

Amran Hossain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineering Manager at Field Nation
Training program enables comprehensive security awareness and cautious email practices
One feature that would be highly beneficial in a future release is the ability to automatically send training articles or security tips to users on a regular, scheduled basis—for example, weekly or monthly. While the current training modules and phishing simulations are highly effective, ongoing awareness is equally important to keep security top of mind in day-to-day operations. These short, digestible articles or micro-learning content could cover recent phishing trends, real-world examples of security breaches, or quick tips on secure online behavior. Periodic delivery would serve as a continuous learning touchpoint, reinforcing key concepts from the main training and adapting to evolving threats. Ideally, this feature would also include personalization, allowing content to be tailored based on a user’s role, previous training performance, or common mistakes observed in phishing simulations. This kind of proactive, lightweight training approach could significantly enhance employee engagement with security practices and help maintain a strong security posture over time.
Vivek_Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Senior Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Advanced email defenses have protected healthcare staff and simplified incident response
There are many things that could be improved, but once you are very well-known about this application, you could perform that improvement plan. There are many scenarios where I have worked with Proofpoint Email Protection where a requirement was not fulfilled due to the limitation of the product. For example, we have Report Phish automation. With Proofpoint Email Protection, we can configure Report Phish and forward the email to any email addresses or shared mailboxes that we provide in the configuration. That email is forwarded as is with whatever the user reports as a phishing email. However, some organizations do not want the reported phishing email to go as is into their ticketing tool because it might contain malicious attachments and malicious links that are not required to go into their internal organization. Proofpoint Email Protection has that limitation. They cannot forward or restrict, but could forward only limited information such as some header information, sender subject details, or only limited information. As it is, the email can be forwarded, not as limited information. Proofpoint TRAP solution also has limitations. It cannot create alert notifications for some specific requirements because Proofpoint works the way it is designed, and if you want it to work based on our requirement, that should not be possible. There is a scope of limitations here. There are many improvements that should be made. First, they should work on their false positive minimization. Proofpoint generally takes all emails, investigates them, and classifies them. There are many situations where legit emails are blocked because that domain is found to be under a malicious category somehow, but actually it is not. False positive minimization could be improved, and they could enhance their other applications or solutions. There are many things that they could improve from each application and each portal.
EM
Project Manager at Fives Syleps
Has helped run awareness campaigns and phishing simulations but needs better multilingual support and user-level tracking
They have made good improvements, but there are still some limitations. For example, we have many entities and want each entity to have their own statistics. Additionally, in the fake phishing part, there is not one type for one language per campaign, as we have many languages. For running fake phishing campaigns, we are obliged to create specific campaigns for specific languages, and consolidation is not easy. It helps us make awareness activities, but it is not easy to evaluate the cybersecurity score for each user. If I take one user and compare their status six months ago to today, I want to know if their maturity score has increased or not. Proofpoint's ZenGuide has some limitations in that aspect. This function would be very important if implemented. It gives global statistics which is good, but sometimes we want to focus on each user, going through the company and groups. I want to know what a user's level was six months or one year ago compared to today across different cybersecurity activities in Proofpoint's ZenGuide. This includes monthly awareness, cybersecurity training, fake phishing campaigns, communication, and reporting malicious or suspicious emails. I want to have one score combining all these activities for each user to determine their global level. Having multi-language fake phishing campaigns would be beneficial. Currently, it is just one campaign per language, making consolidation difficult. In the future, for one campaign, the template should correctly assign the language type depending on the language used by the user.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their support is very quick and informative, deserving a rating of 10."
"Their customizable nature allows us to create scenarios that closely resemble real-world phishing attempts, making them highly relatable to our end users."
"There are many valuable features. It's already deployed in the cloud, and you don't have to install anything. You just upload your users to the cloud and tweak something if needed. You can whitelist some servers to work with this properly. When everything is ready, you can start using the platform and its many automated features."
"KnowBe4's formulas for risk reduction simply work. Being a technical company, our initial phish-prone percentage wasn't super high, but it was still around 18%. Since we have been requiring ongoing training and simulated phish testing, our average phish-prone percentage hovers in the 0 to 3% range now."
"The benefits I have seen from using KnowBe4 include that many people are now cautious."
"The impact of KnowBe4's automated training campaigns on the overall cybersecurity posture is quite comprehensive because it covers everything from the very basics of cybersecurity to evolving and emerging threats."
"KnowBe4 significantly enhanced people's awareness of cybersecurity threats within the company through its simulations that replicated real-world scenarios."
"I appreciate the training methodology. It is detailed with videos and real examples about handling phishing emails and dealing with social media links received through WhatsApp, email, or other platforms."
"The power, flexibility, configurability, and Proofpoint Email Protection's professional services were some of the biggest selling points for me at the time and the things that I benefited from the most."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a very robust solution."
"The most valuable features of Proofpoint Email Protection are the performance from being on the cloud."
"URL scanning and online relay service are the most valuable features of Proofpoint Email Protection."
"In terms of detection of spam, malware, and virus, the detection is 99.9% accurate."
"The anti-spam features are excellent on the email firewalls."
"The Tap and Trap features. They are the best features."
"I recommend all of my customers to migrate and start using Proofpoint as it is secure, minimizes risk, and eliminates phishing attacks."
"Most valuable is the SSO integration with our AD, so the users can employ our federation service to log in."
"I would definitely recommend Proofpoint's ZenGuide to others, as I think the branding and the ability to add your own branding on all different avenues, through the email communications, training, simulations, and everything, is probably the biggest advantage I've seen so far."
"Wombat has given our users a heightened sense of security awareness, and as a result, the click rate on phishing emails has dropped significantly."
"Proofpoint's ZenGuide analytics provides many useful reports that we can access on the dashboard."
 

Cons

"In terms of improvement, we would appreciate having the attachments or more details on the raw messages used in the PhishER site, as sometimes it can be a bit buggy."
"During the last downtime, it caused significant disruption as users couldn't access the system."
"This product has a questions and answers section which is in text form. It could be updated to include a video game format where an employee uses the game to answer these scenarios."
"It can be more interactive with users. We want to put the users in different scenarios and let them make decisions. For example, instead of making users go through a video and then asking questions, it can have a video where they click on the scenarios and have to make decisions. It can maybe have something like a live simulation. It would be nice for users."
"The training program is very interactive, but sometimes it is hard to follow the process, particularly the steps."
"It could be more localized for Ukrainian users."
"The training program is very interactive, but sometimes it is hard to follow the process, particularly the steps."
"A lot of their training is designed for people who are almost entirely computer illiterate, which is fine because you want to be comprehensive in your cybersecurity training, but much of the content they have might not be required, and that might cause frustration, especially when you're trying to implement a cybersecurity program where you're training your entire workforce."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's interface is confusing and could be improved."
"Some use cases haven't been dealt with yet."
"Integration and filtering out who you want and don't want to have integrated ID could be improved."
"Pricing for the platform could still be cheaper."
"The solution could be improved with the addition of PLP and email encryption features."
"The only downside with Proofpoint Email Protection is the cost."
"I would like to see improvements in Proofpoint Email Protection's portal as it is sometimes slow."
"The scalability can be improved, and the solution can be optimized."
"For running fake phishing campaigns, we are obliged to create specific campaigns for specific languages, and consolidation is not easy."
"We would like to create reports for local IT leaders in a different way, more suitable for upper management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is paid on a yearly basis. You can go to the official site to check their approximate pricing. It's based on the number of users or staff. It can vary from country to country, but for Ukraine, it works as it's stated on the site."
"I don't know the cost, but I believe we are paying yearly. We did like a three-year or five-year contract. I am not aware of any extra costs in addition to a standard licensing fee."
"I rate the product pricing as four out of ten."
"It's about five dollars a seat per month."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"The solution is expensive."
"Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees."
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"We sell annual licenses for this solution."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
"Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it expensive."
"received very good pricing, as we are also working with the Proofpoint spam appliances."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise52
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about KnowBe4?
Their customizable nature allows us to create scenarios that closely resemble real-world phishing attempts, making th...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for KnowBe4?
I would not know about the pricing because it has been subsidized for us, so I am not fully aware of the actual cost.
What needs improvement with KnowBe4?
I have a challenge with the stability while using KnowBe4. I have made an observation regarding the login process. Fo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
This is not something that I deal with regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
For a beginner level, someone who is very new to email security might find it difficult to manage as an admin. Naviga...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
Proofpoint Email Protection serves as our email security solution. The entire SOC team uses Proofpoint Email Protecti...
What needs improvement with Wombat Security Education Platform?
They have made good improvements, but there are still some limitations. For example, we have many entities and want e...
What is your primary use case for Wombat Security Education Platform?
Proofpoint's ZenGuide is a solution that we have been working with for a long time. We use it each month for awarenes...
What advice do you have for others considering Wombat Security Education Platform?
We were trying to make comparisons between solutions to determine which would work better for our group. We have not ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
Proofpoint Security Awareness Training, Wombat Security Education Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

West Aurora Public School District 129
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Carnegie Mellon University, Royal Bank of Scotland, City of Garland, Texas
Find out what your peers are saying about KnowBe4, Huntress, Proofpoint and others in Security Awareness Training. Updated: April 2026.
892,678 professionals have used our research since 2012.