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KnowBe4 vs Proofpoint Email Protection 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Security Awareness Training
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Amran Hossain - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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…
Girish Vijay - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"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."
"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."
"Since we did not have any security program initially, this training program was introduced by our CTO as the first training program in our company."
"KnowBe4 has a lot of high-quality content, and their interface is very user-friendly."
"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."
"KnowBe4 has a training program that lasts approximately 15 or 30 minutes, and we provide this security training for our employees so they learn which emails they should open, which links they should click, which links they should not click, and which software they should install."
"The main thing is the overall report card. We get to tell the percentages of users who click on links and who don't click on links. We also get an overall score or risk score from them, which also helps us."
"KnowBe4 has been quite useful for us as a mid-size company, providing a lot of information."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the dashboards and their visibility, easy configuration, and artificial intelligence. Additionally, the reports are very important and helpful."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the central location dashboard for viewing all the related information for risk."
"The solution has very strong detection for most of the phishing and malicious emails received from the outside."
"The stability is very good."
"It's detection of true positives are great, as it's cloud based it's very scalable and stable."
"I recommend all of my customers to migrate and start using Proofpoint as it is secure, minimizes risk, and eliminates phishing attacks."
"The setup was easy."
"As a cloud-based product, it can scale well."
"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."
"The feature that I like the best is the fingerprinting concept."
"The most valuable features of Symantec Messaging Gateway are advanced content filtering, malware, and antivirus defense."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a huge knowledge base about phishing, spamming, spoofing, etc."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
"The solution is "set and forget". You pay for it and everything is done for you."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"If a new feature is introduced and a user without an IT background faces difficulty in operating the new feature, chat bots would be very helpful to ask questions and get responses."
"The training program is very interactive, but sometimes it is hard to follow the process, particularly the steps."
"The training program is very interactive, but sometimes it is hard to follow the process, particularly the steps."
"KnowBe4 should focus more on these issues and provide guidance on dealing with links received from individuals who attempt to manipulate our emotions, particularly on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn."
"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."
"During the last downtime, it caused significant disruption as users couldn't access the system."
"Pricing for the platform could still be cheaper."
"You only receive one model in Proofpoint Email Protection and the other ones you have to purchase at a high price. There should be more available with the solution and additional models should be less expensive."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve on the training. Every organization is different and to fine-tune it to block everything properly there needs to be better training. Sometimes it can block some of the information it shouldn't."
"I would want better spear phishing protection in the essentials package."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The support team was a bit slow."
"Integration for reporting needs to be improved, it's too complex."
"In terms of improvement, the price could be better. Additionally, more security could be implemented."
"The solution interface is from 2003 and is outdated. Symantec Messaging Gateway needs to update the interface."
"We've had issues in the past where the user finds spam, and Symantec does not recognize it as spam."
"The product must improve the user dashboards."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
"In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature."
"The false positive submissions must be improved."
"The documentation could have more detailed examples of how to use the product in various situations. As more companies shift to the cloud, they could better integrate the on-prem and cloud versions through an on-prem client."
"It will provide Excel reports and PDF reports, but it would be great if they supported the concept of Crystal Reports."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product pricing as four out of ten."
"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."
"It's about five dollars a seat per month."
"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."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"It is on a yearly basis. Their floor for SMB doesn't matter. The user count is 100 users and below at $2,500 a year. Its cost is higher than other solutions. It is probably about 20% to 30% higher than what you would get with Microsoft. There are no additional costs. All costs are factored in. It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The solution uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products."
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"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."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
In terms of pricing, it is okay compared to others. I would say it is normal. Additional costs do come in, but it enh...
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
It became very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances, and I may advise Proofpoint to adjust marketing so...
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

No data available
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Cofense PhishMe, Proofpoint Digital Protection
Symantec.cloud, Symantec Email Security.cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

West Aurora Public School District 129
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
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 KnowBe4, Proofpoint, Sophos and others in Security Awareness Training. Updated: August 2025.
865,140 professionals have used our research since 2012.