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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Proofpoint Email Protection 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps enhances security and efficiency, offering significant ROI with up to 60% savings and streamlined operations.
Sentiment score
6.5
Proofpoint Email Protection effectively reduced threats and costs, excelling in phishing defense, leading to significant efficiency improvements.
The biggest return on investment so far has been visibility, knowing what we have in our environment.
Cloud and data protection engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
As a small team, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps allowed us to manage systems with just one or two people.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
We have at least saved the costs we had from the Netskope solution this year.
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps support is praised for its responsiveness, though some users experience delays and resource access challenges.
Sentiment score
7.1
Proofpoint Email Protection's customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some report slow responses or portal issues.
Their customer service is pretty good, but it's frustrating to go through three or four channels before reaching the right person.
Cloud and data protection engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
The support is excellent, and the speed of response is commendable.
Solutions Architect at a university with 51-200 employees
There were instances where the engineers were knowledgeable and helpful, but at other times it felt like a ping pong game, with unnecessary transfers until the right person was found.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
I am familiar with the granular policy control feature of Proofpoint Email Protection, and I find their support excellent for modifying those policies.
Senior Cybersecurity Specialist at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers scalable, seamless integration, and reliable management for organizations of all sizes and environments.
Sentiment score
7.5
Proofpoint Email Protection excels in adaptability and scalability, serving both small and large enterprises with ease and flexibility.
For what I know about the log collector and how much data it can take in, it is super scalable and capable of handling high workloads.
Cloud and data protection engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very scalable, provided you have the right subscription.
Solutions Architect at a university with 51-200 employees
In my experience, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is good enough for small to medium businesses.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Proofpoint is scalable for multi-site organizations with thousands of users.
Products and solutions director at ITVikings
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is highly stable, reliable, and maintains performance with minor, swiftly resolved incidents.
Sentiment score
8.2
Users rate Proofpoint Email Protection highly for reliability and performance, with minor UI challenges and rare stability issues.
I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps.
Head of Security Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
I would assess the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps as stable
Network Engineer at Apexon
My impression on the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that it is very stable.
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps seeks enhanced pricing, integration, user interface, automation, and multi-cloud support, while improving insights and management.
Proofpoint Email Protection struggles with setup complexity, feature enhancements, pricing issues, and requires improved support and interface design.
For data loss prevention, it would be useful to be able to drill down into the kind of data being transferred over CloudApp.
Head of Security Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Defender typically connects to Entra ID, but we have local users on the cloud for database access, SSH, or RDS, and there is nothing produced by Defender regarding those local IAM users.
Network Engineer at Apexon
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps would benefit if Microsoft allows users to fine-tune false positives, enabling us to dismiss alerts or make adjustments so that such things don't trigger multiple times in the future.
Security delivery analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Proofpoint could expand its phishing detection capabilities to improve its efficiency.
Products and solutions director at ITVikings
More security could be implemented.
Logistics Manager at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
I may advise Proofpoint to adjust marketing solutions based on each country.
Manager, IT Director at Cakmak Avukatlik Ortakligi
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is seen as cost-effective for enterprises within Microsoft ecosystems, despite standalone pricing concerns.
Proofpoint Email Protection is considered costly, with pricing starting at $8 per user and varying by features.
The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is acceptable.
Solutions Architect at a university with 51-200 employees
My organization is currently revisiting pricing, but previously, the cost was a bit expensive, yet comparable to other solutions with similar functionalities and features.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
It's not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive, placing it in the mid-level range.
IT Architect at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees.
Products and solutions director at ITVikings
Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
Logistics Manager at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps integrates well, offering threat detection, management ease, shadow IT discovery, and robust security enhancements.
Proofpoint Email Protection offers advanced threat defense, user-friendly interface, and seamless Office 365 integration for comprehensive email security.
It provides excellent suggestions and options for configuration; for example, it can track suspicious files getting uploaded to cloud resources on Azure based on their signatures, generating alerts for those files.
Security delivery analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The product recommends things that need to be blocked and allows for dynamic configuration, which cuts down on potential issues that might arise from going through lists and understanding what needs to be blocked.
Partner & Chief Executive Officer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial.
Head of Security Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The main feature I find most effective is that Proofpoint Email Protection scans emails and quarantines the doubtful ones.
Logistics Manager at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
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.
Manager, IT Director at Cakmak Avukatlik Ortakligi
I appreciate that it's the industry leader, and its firewalling is very easy to manage and implement.
Senior Cybersecurity Specialist at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (3rd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (2nd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 1.8%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 7.1%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection7.1%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps1.8%
Other91.1%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

FV
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
Deployment has been seamless with insightful data categorization and enhanced control
The features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that I have found most valuable include the overall portal view, with bubble graphs which give us insight into what goes where in the categorization, nowadays with Generative AI but all kinds of categorization, collaboration, etc. That central view of the portal is very useful for us. The impact of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps on our organization's ability to assess and manage app related risks has been significant because we have more visibility. Therefore, we can add more control, and we have already done so. This was not possible in the old solution, in the old CASB solution with Netskope. We now can see on the spot, and we do that almost weekly, what the end users are utilizing, which cloud providers or cloud apps they're using. The visibility into OAuth apps provided by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very good. The visibility into risk and risk management of our organization's Generative AI apps is very nice, as you can choose the category Generative AI and then see exactly what traffic has been going to and from Generative AI in the cloud. This makes us very insightful on what is used within the company. We have some policies on blocking specific Generative AI, and we use within our company one particular AI part, which is CoPilot of Microsoft. In this way, we can see what the end users are using other than CoPilot, and that makes us more in control. The effectiveness of the integration of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps with Defender XDR and defending against SaaS attacks is very intuitive. It works immediately if we create a new policy or in Purview or in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, or when we make an app unsanctioned by blocking it, then it is almost immediately, or at least within a couple of hours, effective on all the endpoints where the EDR is running. This gives us much better control over things than before.
reviewer2500410 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cybersecurity Specialist at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Has provided reliable threat detection and simplified policy management
I do not have experience with Microsoft Purview products, but I know some Proofpoint products. I apologize, I do not have experience with the Purview one, but I do know the Proofpoint products. I'm not sure about the features of the Purview one. Compared to other products, Proofpoint's real-time threat intelligence makes it less noisy. They collect and share threat information effectively, which benefits all customers. I have seen a lot of improvements in Proofpoint's reporting and analytics compared to earlier days. As a leader in the market, I find the pricing for Proofpoint Email Protection is a little high. Their licensing models vary, and even the premium model adequately supports awareness campaigning, so I find it acceptable. Normally, they sell their products through resellers, not directly through AWS Marketplace. For us, we are clients of Proofpoint. I rate Proofpoint Email Protection a nine out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?
It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notifications are pretty good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
At the time of implementation, when the size of our organization was small, it was a more affordable product. Since all our productivity applications were on O365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps...
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

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Proofpoint Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.