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MetaDefender Email Gateway Security vs Varonis Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 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

MetaDefender Email Gateway ...
Ranking in Email Security
32nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (12th)
Varonis Platform
Ranking in Email Security
17th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (8th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (6th), Data Governance (5th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd), Compliance Management (8th), Ransomware Protection (7th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th), Insider Risk Management (1st), AI Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of MetaDefender Email Gateway Security is 1.2%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Varonis Platform1.1%
MetaDefender Email Gateway Security1.2%
Other97.7%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

RM
Senior Information Systems Engineer at Liberty Pumps, Inc.
Helpful support, and useful dashboards
They offer a feature called SmartLink neutralization. I have tried it before. It seemed to work most of the time; however, I had a few users for whom it just wouldn't work. Whenever they click on a link, it stays on the MetaDefender page, saying that it's scanning it and never moves forward. I haven't tried it in a while since then. Since I can't turn it off on a per-user basis, I had to turn it off globally. I have certain exceptions for not doing the sanitization, and how to set those up is not intuitive. It would be useful if there were a better way of doing that. Using digital certificates is hard. It would be better if it used Windows Servers' built-in certificate management.
TarunKumar11 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Leadership Council at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Data governance has strengthened and automation now reduces risk and manual compliance work
Varonis Platform offers key features including data discovery, data classification, data analysis, governance, user and entity behavior analysis, also known as UEBA, which helps in ransomware detection, insider threat detection, and compliance reporting. It does a lot of automation from a remediation standpoint, as well as investigation and forensics. The number one feature that makes the biggest difference for my clients is visibility into unstructured data; that is the most difficult for organizations to achieve. They do not have a good understanding of where sensitive data resides, who has access to this data, whether this access is appropriate, and how data is being used. Varonis Platform provides visibility, governance, threat detection, and automated remediation around data. Varonis Platform is a great data discovery platform that provides visibility into sensitive data estimates and how it is being used. Clients have been able to reduce excessive permissions, strengthen their compliance posture, detect insider threats, and ransomware activity, which would otherwise be difficult and manual. Varonis Platform is deployed in my clients' organizations in a combination of all types. Many clients use Varonis Platform in a largely SaaS-based model since it is a data security platform consumed in this way, and many organizations still operate hybrid environments. As far as Varonis Platform is in a position to get the data source and identify systems, it can discover and classify more secure data. Deployment in most of our clients is cloud-based, connecting to Microsoft 365, AWS, or other SaaS applications such as Salesforce. In other environments, it is a hybrid deployment with SaaS and on-premises, including file servers, NAS devices, and AD servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of MetaDefender Email Security is the CDR. Customers purchase this solution specifically for data communication, as the other features can be obtained through other technologies that most customers already possess. Therefore, data communication serves as the foundation for the platform."
"The sanitization is very good."
"The most valuable feature is called summary reconstruction which is used to deliver encrypted files to users."
"This solution informs us about who's moving data, whether accidentally or on purpose."
"Overall, if you want to check your data from an initial point of view, Varonis Platform is the best use case you can consider."
"Technical support from Varonis is rated as nine out of ten."
"On the Varonis side, technical support is phenomenal. Their ability to explain is very good, and they seem to be very knowledgeable. When I get an alert that doesn't quite make sense, they dive in there and kind of take me through it. That's very useful and very good. There are some false alerts, but it is better to have a false alert than no alert at all."
"Varonis Platform has positively impacted my organization by providing clarity regarding data and permissions, improving visibility, security, and compliance."
"The solution ensures that users have not accidentally shared sensitive information with the wrong people or too many people."
"In my experience, the best features that Varonis Platform offers are data labeling, data classification, along with all the integrations and its easy-to-use platform."
"Varonis Platform is transparent and captures everything in the environment without impacting the performance. The tool helps us unify data feeds into a single reporting system."
 

Cons

"The DLP should be upgraded and has room for improvement."
"Although the number of AV engines is good, it could be better."
"They offer a feature called SmartLink neutralization. I have tried it before. It seemed to work most of the time; however, I had a few users for whom it just wouldn't work. Whenever they click on a link, it stays on the MetaDefender page, saying that it's scanning it and never moves forward."
"It would be beneficial if the reporting in Varonis Platform could use PDFs instead of Excel for better graphs, as the dashboards are really good, and it would be nice to have simplified dashboards in PDF for business reporting purposes."
"I would like it to have cloud integration."
"While Varonis Platform is powerful, the initial data scanning and indexing can take significant time in large environments."
"It is significantly complex."
"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."
"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords."
"The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components."
"Be prepared that when you implement the product, you will have to tune it as you go."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"According to our customers, the price of MetaDefender is high and it continues to increase by almost 15 percent each year."
"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."
"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."
"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."
"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?
Varonis Platform could be improved because when I used it, we had a significant issue related to the large volume of data on that file share. Although Varonis Platform helped us gain more visibilit...
What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?
My main use case for Varonis Platform is to monitor access to sensitive data across file shares, Microsoft 365, and SharePoint. The main objective is to identify overexposed data, reduce access ris...
What advice do you have for others considering Varonis Platform?
Varonis Platform receives a rating of seven out of ten. I chose seven out of ten because the user experience was easy, we could apply it and gain more visibility, but the performance of the solutio...
 

Also Known As

OPSWAT MetaDefender Email Security, MetaDefender Email Gateway Security, MetaDefender Email Security
SlashNext Complete
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

https://www.opswat.com/blog/how-one-of-the-largest-banks-in-taiwan-uses-opswat-metadefender-email-security-to-close-security-gaps https://www.opswat.com/blog/hapool-insurance-achieves-almost-100-reduction-in-email-threats-with-opswat https://www.opswat.com/blog/luzerner-psychiatrie-ag-stops-email-borne-malware-attacks-with-opswat-technology
Nottingham Building Society
Find out what your peers are saying about MetaDefender Email Gateway Security vs. Varonis Platform and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.