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Proofpoint Email Protection 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

Proofpoint Email Protection
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Security Awareness Training (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Proofpoint Email Protection and Proofpoint’s ZenGuide aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Proofpoint Email Protection is designed for Secure Email Gateway (SEG) and holds a mindshare of 19.5%, down 22.3% compared to last year.
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide, on the other hand, focuses on Security Awareness Training, holds 5.7% mindshare, up 4.7% since last year.
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

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

"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by reducing the number of cyber email attacks we are receiving compared to the past."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The stability is good; there are no bugs or glitches, it doesn't crash or freeze, and it's reliable."
"The pricing is great, it has a nice interface, the features are very good, the stability is very good, and the solution is scalable."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the central location dashboard for viewing all the related information for risk."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's detection for true positives are great, false negatives or type two errors are very low, type one errors are acceptable and this capability is the one that allows the least amount of spam to enter."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization because when people know that we are using Proofpoint and they know we have set up a mailbox for protection, they forward issues to that mailbox and we search for them."
"The tool has improved our workflow by ensuring people receive only the emails they need for work rather than being inundated with hundreds or thousands of unnecessary emails daily."
"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

"It's scalable, but the devil's in the details — you have to know your email volumes."
"One major threat is QR code phishing, along with TOAD (Telephone-Oriented Attack Delivery). TOAD attacks don't include links, URLs, or attachments in emails. Instead, attackers try to trick you into calling them, often by offering something enticing like a 50% discount on football matches."
"I feel there is still room for improvement because many features are in POD and not yet available in the Admin Portal."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has a lot of false positives, and the infrastructure is a bit complex."
"Integration and filtering out who you want and don't want to have integrated ID could be improved."
"I believe if the GUI were more user-friendly for people using it for the first time, or if there were more training available for end users to share with them, that would be good."
"We find the cost to be prohibitive."
"The solution could be improved with the addition of PLP and email encryption features."
"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

"Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees."
"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."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"The solution uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products."
"received very good pricing, as we are also working with the Proofpoint spam appliances."
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893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
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 Business27
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise54
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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. Navigation can be concerning because Proofpoint Email Protection has different console...
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 Protection. The granularity in admin access is different, so each team has their own acc...
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

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
Proofpoint Security Awareness Training, Wombat Security Education Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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 Microsoft, Proofpoint, Mimecast and others in Secure Email Gateway (SEG). Updated: May 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.