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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Retarus Email Security comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Digital Risk Protection (5th), Office 365 Protection (1st)
Retarus Email Security
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 16.7%, down from 20.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Retarus Email Security is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection16.7%
Retarus Email Security1.2%
Other82.1%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Siva_Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Email defenses have reduced phishing incidents and protect sensitive data across our enterprise
As things are evolving and threats develop in unpredictable ways, Proofpoint must adopt AI solutions and agentic solutions more aggressively and provide them to customers as part of service offerings. Inbuilt AI solutions would add more value and make Proofpoint a more premium choice for customers. With the help of AI solutions, agentic AI, and generative AI capabilities, the product would be more efficient than it currently is. Filtering false positives is highly challenging because it is impossible for humans to identify which emails are genuine and which are spam. Proofpoint should focus more on this area with back-end agents or other tools. Proofpoint should decide which emails are genuine and which are spam so it is not a challenge for end users. When receiving an email, end users should not have to determine whether to respond or not. Proofpoint should not release such spam emails and should strictly block such spam and spoof emails based on connection IPs. Currently, false positives occur in the product, and while this occurs in every product, it is an area where Proofpoint can focus on improving and reducing false positives. One email is enough for an end user to be deceived and lose money, so addressing this area is critical.
WAKKAS AHMAD - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Consultant at Mahle
Provides valuable reports that make it easy to take action
Our primary use case for this solution is protecting emails This solution has helped our organization by protecting our emails from various threats. It helped us get customized reports on all of the emails we received on the user side and other data. The feature I found most valuable was getting…

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 blocking significantly more phishing emails, and phishing is the main entry point into getting compromised, so I have more peace of mind knowing that more malicious emails are getting blocked."
"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by definitely lowering the amount of phishing or scam-type emails that our users were receiving, helping them focus more on their work rather than dealing with these types of fraudulent emails."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is very effective because they are very proactive, always ahead of the attackers, and were already detecting new kinds of attacks before customers thought about them."
"The solution scales well."
"They have customized security rules, mature rules, anti-virus protection, as well as email authentication similar to SPF, DKIM, and DMARC."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is the best solution from the perspective of email security."
"When those bad emails are kept out of the gate, and the user can just focus on the email that matters most to them, I think that is how much Proofpoint Email Protection is impacting the entire organization."
"The feature I found most valuable was getting details on the emails, being alerted once those emails got a bad reputation, and then being able to take action on those emails."
 

Cons

"The solution should add post-sales training."
"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."
"The product's deployment is complex and requires technical knowledge."
"The incident reporting on offer needs to be improved. It's lacking right now. It should be on the platform somewhere."
"I would like to see improvements in the transition from Proofpoint Protection Server to Proofpoint on Demand because Proofpoint Protection Server is not very user-friendly and requires logging into two portals for some features."
"Proofpoint should have better integration with complex environments that need more than one instance of Proofpoint, as there are issues with nested instances."
"It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market."
"I think Proofpoint Email Protection could be slightly more intuitive."
"This solution needs to improve the area of GUI as well as dashboards because they are very poor in terms of the current email security solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"It is expensive."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise62
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
To improve Proofpoint Email Protection, I suggest breaking down the URL into one versus three different GUIs. Regarding Proofpoint Email Protection's AI capabilities, I think its governance and...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
My main use case for Proofpoint Email Protection includes phishing emails, spam, URL isolation, and training. I utilize the email protect portal to ensure that none of our employees in any of the b...
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Also Known As

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint, Microsoft, Mimecast and others in Secure Email Gateway (SEG). Updated: October 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.