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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Sophos Phish Threat comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

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
6.5
Proofpoint Email Protection effectively reduced threats and costs, excelling in phishing defense, leading to significant efficiency improvements.
Sentiment score
4.8
Sophos Phish Threat provides ROI by educating users, reducing ransomware incidents, and enhancing organizational security through training.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Proofpoint Email Protection's customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some report slow responses or portal issues.
Sentiment score
6.1
Sophos offers excellent customer support, praised for responsive, expert service and enhanced by Cyberoam staff integration, often resolving issues efficiently.
I am familiar with the granular policy control feature of Proofpoint Email Protection, and I find their support excellent for modifying those policies.
They call whenever you have an incident and keep calling to assist until you solve the issue.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Proofpoint Email Protection excels in adaptability and scalability, serving both small and large enterprises with ease and flexibility.
Sentiment score
6.1
Sophos Phish Threat is highly scalable, offering seamless user additions and effective performance across various organization sizes with cloud support.
Proofpoint is scalable for multi-site organizations with thousands of users.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Users rate Proofpoint Email Protection highly for reliability and performance, with minor UI challenges and rare stability issues.
Sentiment score
7.3
Sophos Phish Threat is stable, reliable, with minimal issues reported, but some users suggest potential for improvement.
 

Room For Improvement

Proofpoint Email Protection struggles with setup complexity, feature enhancements, pricing issues, and requires improved support and interface design.
Sophos Phish Threat needs improvements in pricing, security, user interface, training, integrations, current simulations, and language options.
Proofpoint could expand its phishing detection capabilities to improve its efficiency.
More security could be implemented.
I believe they still need to improve by consolidating some portals, as currently, you have to log in separately to a few of them.
While you can segment by department or other criteria, you can only export the report as a CSV which then requires manual organization in Excel.
 

Setup Cost

Proofpoint Email Protection is considered costly, with pricing starting at $8 per user and varying by features.
Sophos Phish Threat's tiered pricing is competitive, with annual subscriptions preferred, covering user numbers and firewall integration.
Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees.
Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
The cost of Sophos Phish Threat is very reasonable for customers as they charge based on usage only.
 

Valuable Features

Proofpoint Email Protection offers advanced threat defense, user-friendly interface, and seamless Office 365 integration for comprehensive email security.
Sophos Phish Threat excels with ease of use, effective training, scalable deployment, detailed reports, and strong technical support.
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.
I appreciate that it's the industry leader, and its firewalling is very easy to manage and implement.
The main feature I find most effective is that Proofpoint Email Protection scans emails and quarantines the doubtful ones.
The integration with Sophos Central benefits us for the management of the phishing campaign by being very user-friendly.
 

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)
Sophos Phish Threat
Ranking in Security Awareness Training
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
14
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 Sophos Phish Threat is 4.3%, down from 5.1% 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%
Sophos Phish Threat4.3%
Other86.1%
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…
Shaun Gordon - PeerSpot reviewer
Identifies vulnerable employees through customized simulations
Sophos Phish Threat effectively identifies susceptible employees. It depends on knowing my staff. For example, if I receive an email claiming my Facebook account is compromised, I immediately recognize it as suspicious, as I don't have Facebook. If I know my staff use LinkedIn, I utilize the LinkedIn simulation. Similarly, if they bank with Absa, I use the Absa simulation. There isn't a single 'one size fits all' approach. Sophos Phish Threat ensures users do not click on dodgy emails or dodgy links within an environment.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
 

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 Sophos Phish Threat?
Sophos Phish Threat is a good product, but it has some limitations. We prefer Spanish language content, and the video selection has limitations. The catalog is very small compared with products suc...
What is your primary use case for Sophos Phish Threat?
I had experience with other products before KnowBe4, specifically we had Sophos Phish Threat for three years, but the catalog of training, video, and simulated phishing has some limits. Last Februa...
What advice do you have for others considering Sophos Phish Threat?
I rate Sophos Phish Threat eight out of ten due to some limitations, specifically the limited training catalog and the need for more trainings in local languages, particularly Spanish. A bigger cou...
 

Also Known As

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Cofense PhishMe, Proofpoint Digital Protection
Phish Threat
 

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 Email Protection vs. Sophos Phish Threat and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.