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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Symantec Advanced Threat Protection 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 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Symantec Advanced Threat Pr...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
24th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 3.2%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection3.2%
Symantec Advanced Threat Protection2.1%
Other94.7%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

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.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber SecOps Principal at Dotcom Security
Provides end-to-end antivirus protection and has good stability
Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control. It can integrate with other Broadcom solutions, such as Symantec Messaging Gateway and Symantec DLP. If you want to send an email, it gets scanned through endpoint protection and DLP. We get all Symantec functionality in a single pane.

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's initial installation is straightforward. It took us less than a day to complete the implementation."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a strong and reliable solution for defending against advanced email threats, especially phishing and targeted attacks."
"Before deploying Proofpoint Email Protection, we were frequently attacked by phishing and DDoS, and after deploying it, attacks have been reduced by up to 80 percent and phishing has been completely eliminated, so it is working very efficiently."
"Its anti-phishing functionality is the most valuable. Certainly, the biggest problem I have is phishing."
"Using Proofpoint Email Protection definitely helps with reducing the SOC Analyst workloads."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted our organization's protection and has maintained security very well."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the central location dashboard for viewing all the related information for risk."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by advancing our email security posture."
"This is a good solution, and whatever our requirement is, all of the features are there."
"They have a very simple and easy implementation; they have been around for a long time, and they have been very easy to deploy, support, and manage."
"It has certainly helped out our audit efforts because we each stay compliant in terms of various security standards."
"Overall, the product supports everything already feature-wise, because it has email protection, monitoring detection, network intrusion detection, and advanced threat protection."
"The Application Control code and the easy integration are valuable features."
"What I like most about Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is its notification capability."
"The great advantage in using this product is it creates multiple services."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control."
 

Cons

"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve by allowing more customization of the reports, such as exceptions and black-and-white lists."
"Integration and filtering out who you want and don't want to have integrated ID could be improved."
"The solution could be improved with the addition of PLP and email encryption features."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"I feel there is still room for improvement because many features are in POD and not yet available in the Admin Portal."
"We find the cost to be prohibitive."
"It's scalable, but the devil's in the details — you have to know your email volumes."
"I would want better spear phishing protection in the essentials package."
"I think SonicWall and McAfee are better solutions."
"Symantec appliances need improvement. The whole appliance environment is a robust system and it needs a massive amount of storage space. If you have to increase or speed up the background storage it's a pretty complicated process. The scalability and sizing is critical, and if you do it wrong you run into issues pretty quickly."
"The administration interface needs a lot of improvement. It should be UI-based and simple."
"It's a strange situation where the infrastructure of the consumer or customer is behind some kind of firewall and they have always used some kind of customized proxy. In this situation, the ATP has a very tough time to pass the information to the cloud and back. To fix, it requires a more elaborate and complex configuration for that particular case."
"Not ideal for advanced threat protection."
"It should be able to collect information if the agent is disabled."
"There are some ‎features that would add value to this product. One of them would be a graphical presentation of threats that the system has encountered."
"They could enhance the solution to work across all devices, including Android, iOS, and Mac, and make it more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
"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."
"We sell annual licenses for this solution."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection has an average price."
"Symantec Advanced Threat Protection's pricing is comparable."
"The pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
"The price is quite expensive."
"Pricing is good. It is nice to have a great product at a fair price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Outsourcing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise62
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise13
 

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 sec...
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
ECI
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint Email Protection vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,322 professionals have used our research since 2012.