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Proofpoint Email Protection vs SonicWall Email Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
SonicWall Email Security
Ranking in Email Security
25th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 6.8%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Email Security is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection6.8%
Cloudflare One1.6%
SonicWall Email Security0.8%
Other90.8%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
Siva_Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Consultant at Infosys
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.
Swapnil Kulkarni - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at Ador Powertron Ltd.
Has consistently supported security needs for mid-sized teams with affordable deployment
I do not work with Cloud Secure Edge, CSE, or SMA apart from SonicWall NSA. I am not satisfied with phishing protection, as it falls completely under the email domain security. The customizable policy configuration does not help to tailor email security overall because our systems are not integrated with SonicWall Email Security. We are not using reporting and analytics because it requires completely different software. While all required features are available in SonicWall Email Security for SMBs and startups, we lack analytics features. They provide an option to purchase a complete separate product for analytics, but despite initially having purchased the paper license, due to technical limitations or changes, we cannot use that product. Now they require additional fees to access the analytics feature.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Enables me to work from two locations."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform removes the risk of exposing the applications to the public."
"Cloudflare Access is a stable solution."
"I'm very satisfied with the environment and the dashboard."
"The solution has different options that can be used to differentiate DDoS attacks."
"Cloudflare is by far the most effective solution that I have come across."
"The blocking feature is very good."
"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."
"We have noticed a huge improvement in productivity of the users by clearing up their inbox of malicious emails and spam, and it has also prevented and secured our environment on a daily basis, making the security team's job much easier."
"Out of these three, no other email gateway can be compared with Proofpoint Email Protection."
"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by reducing the number of cyber email attacks we are receiving compared to the past."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's advantage is that, when it's working properly, it tends to catch more threats as compared to other products."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it's a one-stop shop for email protection."
"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."
"The spam filter for email is good."
"The product is easy to manage in terms of configurations."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"SonicWall Email Security uses multi-layer cloud security."
"According to our customers, the product's most valuable feature is the ability to detect spam and reduce phishing emails."
"Setup was easy. It took about 30 minutes."
"We always get ROI from the product we are using; it is completely flexible and acceptable according to our security requirements over the last four years and currently."
"SonicWall Email Security has benefited the company by preventing attacks, protecting us from threats such as ransomware and phishing, and notifying the IT team when phishing emails have been blocked."
"Behind the reason we chose SonicWall for my company is it has excellent packet analysis of normal and SSL encrypted traffic, application intelligence visualization and control, multiple Gigabit Ethernet LAN and WAN ports, flexible configuration and redundancy options."
 

Cons

"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."
"The software has automated alerts, but the automated alerts are not available in the mobile app."
"The only limitation we have with Proofpoint Email Protection is when we implement it with Google Workspace."
"I feel there is still room for improvement because many features are in POD and not yet available in the Admin Portal."
"We have seen a reduction in phishing incidents with Proofpoint Email Protection, but not fully; it is not 100%, and there are still cracks within the walls of Proofpoint Email Protection that let this type of email in for various reasons."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Proofpoint Email Protection needs to enhance its capabilities for AI-related threats as it is primarily a rule-based solution."
"The solution can be expensive."
"They do not have an on-demand scan for the internal viruses and internal users, and they don't have a scan for the exchange server against viruses and spam as Symantec does."
"It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market."
"Other than that, really I think the features are perfect, but attachment controls are so important it hurts the usability of the product."
"The technical support from the company is not always very good at solving issues, but they offer access to a good community of users where problems are easily solved."
"The pricing could be improved."
"SonicWall Email Security could improve by making the file blocking and the release feature easier to use"
"The platform's control panel needs enhancement."
"The after-sale support needs improvement. They don't have representation in my country."
"Updates could be released more frequently."
"Overall, this is a solution that provides good security but at a very high cost."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"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 uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"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."
"It is expensive."
"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
"The cost is cheaper than Sophos. I would rate it as five out of ten."
"Our customers purchase the solution's yearly license."
"We have a two-year license subscription and the price is very high."
"The overall price of SonicWall Email Security should be reduced and there should be an option to purchase one or two licenses more instead of their current policy of bulk increases only. There should be more flexibility in the licensing model. Each license cost approximately $33 annually."
"When compared with Cisco, it is very well priced. Cisco is very expensive."
"The platform offers a yearly license."
"I rate the application’s pricing a five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise59
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
I am not informed about the pricing, setup costs, or licensing as it is handled by a different team. I come from a te...
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
For improvement, the dashboard of Proofpoint Email Protection needs some enhancement. Currently, we are using multipl...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
In our environment, we are using Proofpoint Email Protection for inbound email protection as a primary gateway, while...
What needs improvement with SonicWall Email Security?
Policy deployment could be time consuming and represents an area for improvement in SonicWall Email Security.
What is your primary use case for SonicWall Email Security?
SonicWall Email Security was used for security purposes, which aligns with the product's core function.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
Dell SonicWALL Email Security Platform, SonicWall Hosted Email Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Star Kay White, Locala Community Partnerships
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint Email Protection vs. SonicWall Email Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.