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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
5.2
Proofpoint Email Protection reduces phishing emails, enhances efficiency, decreases incidents, and saves time and costs for organizations.
Sentiment score
4.8
Sophos Phish Threat provides ROI by educating users, reducing ransomware incidents, and enhancing organizational security through training.
The ideal situation would be to have all these portals combined into one unified dashboard.
Information Security Architect at Loews Hotels
The time required for email investigations and responses has changed with Proofpoint Email Protection's visibility and automation.
Sr Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
If you implement these kinds of solutions in your security stack, the first beneficial thing will be that you will not suffer any malware, and you will not face attacks, which ultimately leads to financial benefit.
Senior Security Engineer at DCIPHERS IT SOLUTIONS (P) LTD
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Proofpoint Email Protection is valued for prompt, expert support, despite occasional inconsistencies, with users generally satisfied.
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.
Senior Cybersecurity Specialist at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Even the engineers have been helpful, and if we open a case, they get back to us right away.
Information Security Analyst at a government with 11-50 employees
We always contact them if we need support, whether it's for setting up features or technical support, which is very responsive.
System Administrator at Tutt Bryant Group
They call whenever you have an incident and keep calling to assist until you solve the issue.
Supervisor, Infraestructura Information Technology at Refineria Dominicana de Petroleo
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Proofpoint Email Protection offers top-rated scalability for large enterprises, supporting seamless onboarding and handling large email volumes efficiently.
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.
Products and solutions director at ITVikings
The solution provides a graphical representation and dashboard view showing how many threats are getting blocked on a daily and monthly basis.
Information Technology Team Lead at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Proofpoint Email Protection is considered to be highly scalable, designed for large enterprises, with a cloud-based architecture that offers an enormous number of options, including multi-organization support and high-volume email handling.
Senior Solution Delivery Lead Cybersecurity at International Olympic Committee – IOC
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Proofpoint Email Protection is stable and reliable, with minor issues addressed quickly, and users rate its stability highly.
Sentiment score
7.3
Sophos Phish Threat is stable, reliable, with minimal issues reported, but some users suggest potential for improvement.
If Proofpoint Email Protection has an outage, we are either not receiving emails or not blocking the right threats.
Senior Security Engineer at Cloudflare
Regarding the stability and performance of Proofpoint Email Protection, I have not experienced any crashes, downtimes, or performance issues.
Cyber Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Proofpoint Email Protection is very stable and reliable, as it remains accessible at all times without issues, ensuring that data is available in real time.
Principal Consultant at Infosys
 

Room For Improvement

Proofpoint Email Protection users criticize its complexity, slow performance, high cost, and seek better AI features and support.
Sophos Phish Threat needs improvements in pricing, security, user interface, training, integrations, current simulations, and language options.
The older legacy user interface just took a little to work with, and the new unified interface, as it was able to do more and more of the functionality of the old one, the product just got easier and easier to use.
Sr Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
In addition to the UI improvements, I would appreciate an increase in the speed of the tasks being processed on the pod.
Security Specialist at a leisure / travel company with 10,001+ employees
There are pros and cons to that, but I would suggest maintaining a good balance between security protection and operational impact.
Senior Security Engineer at Cloudflare
The catalog is very small compared with products such as Terranova or KnowBe4.
Supervisor, Infraestructura Information Technology at Refineria Dominicana de Petroleo
 

Setup Cost

Proofpoint Email Protection is pricier than competitors but offers robust security, typically costing $2-$5 per user monthly.
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.
Products and solutions director at ITVikings
Given my other experience with other vendors, I think they are a bit on the high end and a bit on the pricey end for the email security functionality that we were using.
Sr Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Although it is a bit costly compared to Mimecast, Defender, and Cofense Vision, it is efficient and strong in security, so I do not mind the cost because I will not reduce my security risk.
Senior Solution Delivery Lead Cybersecurity at International Olympic Committee – IOC
The cost of Sophos Phish Threat is very reasonable for customers as they charge based on usage only.
Senior Information Security Analyst at channelnext
 

Valuable Features

Proofpoint Email Protection offers advanced threat detection, seamless integration, and a robust dashboard to enhance security and operational efficiency.
Sophos Phish Threat excels with ease of use, effective training, scalable deployment, detailed reports, and strong technical support.
Without Proofpoint Email Protection, most of these emails would have come through, slipped through Exchange, gotten into the user's mailbox, and created a lot of trouble for the organization.
Cyber Security Engineer at IT Naturally
Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by ensuring we are not at risk of a breach through email.
Release lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
TAP alerts, where Proofpoint Email Protection scans emails and sends alerts, provide the ability to review suspicious emails and validate them in a sandbox environment.
Infrastructure Analyst at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
The integration with Sophos Central benefits us for the management of the phishing campaign by being very user-friendly.
Supervisor, Infraestructura Information Technology at Refineria Dominicana de Petroleo
 

Categories and Ranking

Proofpoint Email Protection
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
94
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)
Sophos Phish Threat
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Security Awareness Training (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Proofpoint Email Protection and Sophos Phish Threat 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 21.1%, down 21.8% compared to last year.
Sophos Phish Threat, on the other hand, focuses on Security Awareness Training, holds 4.4% mindshare, down 5.3% since last year.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection21.1%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36519.9%
Mimecast Email and Collaboration Threat Protection17.1%
Other41.9%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Security Awareness Training Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sophos Phish Threat4.4%
KnowBe416.3%
Riot7.4%
Other71.9%
Security Awareness Training
 

Featured Reviews

AshishKochhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Team Lead at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Advanced email protection has blocked targeted attacks and reduces manual threat handling
I feel Proofpoint Email Protection is overpriced. I cannot say that the security level being provided does not justify the cost, but when comparing the similar level of security with other applications or security systems, it is overpriced. If Proofpoint could provide offers or discounts for customers who are already using the product or for new customers implementing it, along with some free services or add-ons, that would be helpful in terms of financial expense. Proofpoint Email Protection has recently introduced AI functionality in terms of data security capabilities and protecting AI assistance from targeted attacks. This is important since everything is now related to AI. The solution is doing threat detection and real-time threat detection and response pretty well. There are a few things I would like to see improved. Sometimes Proofpoint Email Protection takes time to analyze the workflow and the nature of the email. In this age of AI, the solution should analyze an email on the first receipt and determine whether it should pass or be marked as spam without checking previous data. Another improvement would be to have a more user-friendly dashboard. Additionally, if Proofpoint could add the same features in BCP as part of email protection in BCP, it would be helpful since I currently have to take a different add-on for BCP, and integrating it would save costs. I cannot say that threats have increased or decreased with Proofpoint Email Protection because it depends on the mail flow. The solution captures and filters out all threats, and the email threats vary every day depending on how many users are receiving how many emails per day. Today there might be 1,000 emails, tomorrow 5,000, and the day after 500. Proofpoint Email Protection does its job by scanning all emails and threats are reduced to some extent. Since I am aware that virus definitions are updated every day, I cannot blame Proofpoint Email Protection if they take time to determine the nature of an email being received. There are sometimes emails that are false positives, and Proofpoint Email Protection is a bit strict in analyzing false positives, sometimes stopping emails that are actually required. It analyzes the previous nature of an email and if a template looks like an informational template or related to spam, it blocks it because it looks similar to one blocked earlier. However, the template might actually be required. If I receive the same template today that is also blocked by Proofpoint Email Protection, that particular template might be useful and should not be blocked. In such cases, I have to raise it as a false positive stating that this is something in use or my users use and should be released. When AI starts doing its work, it analyzes the email from a sender with a particular template and releases it, but if the same email and template come from another sender, it blocks it according to the policies.
JL
Supervisor, Infraestructura Information Technology at Refineria Dominicana de Petroleo
Customer support excels with timely responses and valuable assistance
Some of the best features with Sophos Phish Threat are good, but it has some limits. For instance, if you send an attachment to target the user with a macro, it doesn't work very well because by default Outlook disables opening macro files. Word macro files open in read-only mode. It has some false positives, such as when the user opened the file. We had good experience, and based on our three years of use, the users responded well. The videos are animated, and users prefer them, similar to our other applications for training in other areas. The integration with Sophos Central benefits us for the management of the phishing campaign by being very user-friendly. We used the customizable phishing emails with Sophos Phish Threat. We customized the template and modified it so we can phish our users. They are very customizable. The pricing and licensing for Sophos Phish Threat is good compared to other products.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
7%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise43
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?
I do not handle the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Proofpoint Email Protection, but I think it's a bit pricey compared to other solutions, even though we found no competitor with comparable...
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
Some of the old portal features of Proofpoint Email Protection are missing in the new portal, so some of the settings could be modernized. The TRAP mail gateway product of Proofpoint Email Protecti...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
Proofpoint Email Protection is primarily used for anti-spam purposes. As other companies receive a lot of malware, phishing emails, and unwanted bulk email, Proofpoint Email Protection stops unwant...
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, 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 Microsoft, Proofpoint, Mimecast and others in Secure Email Gateway (SEG). Updated: February 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.