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KnowBe4 vs Proofpoint’s ZenGuide comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 18, 2026

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

KnowBe4
Ranking in Security Awareness Training
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide
Ranking in Security Awareness Training
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Security Awareness Training category, the mindshare of KnowBe4 is 11.8%, down from 29.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint’s ZenGuide is 5.2%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Awareness Training Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
KnowBe411.8%
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide5.2%
Other83.0%
Security Awareness Training
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2731362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Strategic Risk Management at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has provided comprehensive training with a structured approach
From my perspective regarding what can be improved or enhanced in KnowBe4, I would not be able to talk about pricing or areas that are outside my scope of visibility, but just from the quality of the offering itself, I think that it's a pretty good offering. There are no immediate problems, and they take care to consistently ask for feedback and implement it, so there are no major issues outstanding that I can immediately point to. There are some aspects of KnowBe4 that can be enhanced, specifically in the training feature, as 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. Most people today have some basic ideas on what passwords are and how to use them. I feel that 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, as it may frustrate someone if they're forced to do training on how to set a password. However, I think that the more complicated things they do about phishing, AI, and social engineering are very important, and the way they do it is very structured and good.
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

"We brought our risk score down from about 20 to 15, and now instead of clicking on a link, end users call our IT departments or help desk if they are not sure of a link, which is actually very helpful."
"The ability to have business leadership be aware of their users' security posture as well as any kind of security awareness training being pushed by cybersecurity insurance and underwriters is valuable."
"Most valuable for me are the interactiveness and format of KnowBe4; it has a realistic format—for example, when I'm taking the phishing simulations, the modules give me examples of the real phishing types that might be in my mailbox and how to deal with them."
"KnowBe4 has been quite useful for us as a mid-size company, providing a lot of information."
"The training platform of KnowBe4 is engaging and interactive because it is user-friendly and easy to navigate, offering a variety of training formats."
"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."
"Their customizable nature allows us to create scenarios that closely resemble real-world phishing attempts, making them highly relatable to our end users."
"KnowBe4 has a lot of high-quality content, and their interface is very user-friendly."
"Most valuable is the SSO integration with our AD, so the users can employ our federation service to log in."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"Sometimes I feel reluctant to log in because I know I will have to receive a reset link."
"An area for improvement in KnowBe4 is the repetitive content for users completing multiple training sessions."
"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."
"I don't find KnowBe4's real-time insights and analytics very useful because I found it a bit repetitive."
"I feel that the marketing of KnowBe4 needs improvement because many people need to know more about the types of cyber securities that exist."
"It does not have an easy way to sync your users and pull emails together."
"I would like to see Novo4 expand to other channels outside of emails to things such as text messages."
"As an exceptional product, they are relatively expensive, but it is worth it because compared to offline education with hired dedicated people, it would be much more expensive and not obviously more efficient."
"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

"It's about five dollars a seat per month."
"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 rate the product pricing as four out of ten."
"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."
"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
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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. For every login attempt, because my organization uses KnowBe4 with a large staff s...
What is your primary use case for KnowBe4?
We use KnowBe4 as a training platform where we have many training videos to watch and complete quizzes for my organization.
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 each entity to have their own statistics. Additionally, in the fake phishing part...
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 awareness, DMARC, and email security. Proofpoint's ZenGuide is used for the awareness co...
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 yet used CyberGuru extensively; it was just for testing purposes. The metrics we...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Proofpoint Security Awareness Training, Wombat Security Education Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

West Aurora Public School District 129
Carnegie Mellon University, Royal Bank of Scotland, City of Garland, Texas
Find out what your peers are saying about KnowBe4 vs. Proofpoint’s ZenGuide and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.