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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Proofpoint’s ZenGuide comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 12, 2025

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
Ranking in Security Awareness Training
2nd
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) (3rd)
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide
Ranking in Security Awareness Training
4th
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 October 2025, in the Security Awareness Training category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 9.6%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint’s ZenGuide is 7.3%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Awareness Training Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection9.6%
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide7.3%
Other83.1%
Security Awareness Training
 

Featured Reviews

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…
EM
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

"Its main defense is to stop malicious emails from coming through. There is a sandbox environment where you can open malicious or suspicious emails to make sure that they're not malicious, instead of taking the risk of having your employees do it. This is definitely something that everybody needs nowadays, especially with the rise in cyber attacks."
"The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"I like all the features with Proofpoint, such as how it filters the spam and marketing mail, lost reality mail, blocks phishing attacks, blocks malicious attachments, and stops phishing links. Also it can defend against the business email compromise impersonation technique. It is a complete solution for all email attacks. It filters for the bad, malicious attachments. If there is any executable file, it can be deleted. It is a good, complete solution."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's initial installation is straightforward. It took us less than a day to complete the implementation."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the blocking capabilities, it blocks a lot of potential threats."
"The solution offers very good flexibility. You can blacklist or whitelist with ease."
"The archive feature is valuable."
"I would recommend Proofpoint Email Protection to others because it is useful, simple to use, and provides whatever is required."
"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."
"Most valuable is the SSO integration with our AD, so the users can employ our federation service to log in."
"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve by allowing more customization of the reports, such as exceptions and black-and-white lists."
"The initial setup is complex."
"I would want better spear phishing protection in the essentials package."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve the Mail Trace feature and make navigation easier."
"We'd like to have the ability to create more customized reports."
"It has too many screens. It is kind of a conglomeration of products. In other words, they built product A, product B, and product C, and they are yet to integrate them into a single administrative console. I would certainly like to see a more seamless administrative interface. I would also like to see them include more bang for the buck, by including features like email fraud protection, rather than making their product so piecemeal, where you are buying little pieces. I agree with the idea of having multiple tiers or layers, but maybe as small, medium, and large, as opposed to an a la carte menu."
"The incident reporting on offer needs to be improved. It's lacking right now. It should be on the platform somewhere."
"We would like to create reports for local IT leaders in a different way, more suitable for upper management."
"For running fake phishing campaigns, we are obliged to create specific campaigns for specific languages, and consolidation is not easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
"It is expensive."
"The price is reasonable."
"The licensing model for Proofpoint Email Protection is simple. It's based on the number of users. Price-wise, Proofpoint Email Protection is a five out of ten because it's a pretty expensive solution."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"They are competitively priced, but I have been forced to get quotes for other solutions now because they haven't been responding to requests to do the work that we would like them to do."
"received very good pricing, as we are also working with the Proofpoint spam appliances."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What needs improvement with Wombat Security Education Platform?
I do not have many recommendations for improvements for Proofpoint's ZenGuide right now. I am still fairly new to it, so I might find some recommendations as I use it more, but at the moment, I don...
What is your primary use case for Wombat Security Education Platform?
Our use cases for Proofpoint's ZenGuide involve training company-wide on security awareness, phishing, and running phishing simulations every quarter or so.
What advice do you have for others considering Wombat Security Education Platform?
I am not actually sure about the compliance enforcement capabilities of Proofpoint's ZenGuide, so I cannot comment on whether that has an impact. Based on my experience, I would rate Proofpoint's Z...
 

Also Known As

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Cofense PhishMe, 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 Proofpoint Email Protection vs. Proofpoint’s ZenGuide and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.