We performed a comparison between Proofpoint Email Protection and Symantec Messaging Gateway based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Email Security solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Cisco Secure Email Cloud Gateway has allowed our users to be able to concentrate on the emails that they do receive. Previously, our users had to deal with nine million additional emails across the organization, which is nearly 1,000 emails per user to have to deal with a month. That's a massive amount for our staff to deal with and probably several hours of their time. We have a lot of clinical staff, being a hospital. We want to make our staff as productive as possible. By removing a lot of that spam and phishing type emails, this allows them to do their job."
"Anti-Spam and Advanced Malware Protection are the most valuable features... and we also have the option to block Zero-day attacks."
"The filtering is definitely better at catching both spam and malicious messages, and there's a lot of extremely granular ability for setting up rules. You can do it the way you want to. The Microsoft solution tends to be pretty limited in how it allows some of that to be done."
"It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. There are a lot of things that you cannot handle on the graphic interface, like message filters. For this, you need to go to a lower level where you have more power, like command line interface. So, this solution has the best of both worlds. There are not a lot of bells and whistles. It is more practical with access to most features that you can configure."
"There is a huge return compared to if we didn't have a gateway appliance, as far as blocking malicious emails."
"The added value of it is that every migration to a new version is initiated by the Cisco version itself, so that is a bunch of work that you don't have to do on the Cisco ESA system on-premise. As it becomes a safe platform, you don't need to invest anything in your own data center or in your upgrade path."
"I love the Advanced Malware Protection feature. It works very well... The appliance has more security such as SDF, DKIM, DMARC, and encryption."
"The solution is very configurable. It has enabled us to configure some specific filters to stop emails that general configurations didn't stop. It's a powerful solution. It can analyze a lot of emails simultaneously, with no problems of capacity or system load."
"It's a mature product. It does a good job in detection."
"The most valuable features of Proofpoint Email Protection are the performance from being on the cloud."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's initial installation is straightforward. It took us less than a day to complete the implementation."
"Proofpoint is the main tool for blocking spam because it denies the connection altogether."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is stable enough and does its job of virus, malware, and email scam detection. Setting it up is not too complicated."
"The setup was easy."
"Provides better control over emails, especially those sent via Office 365 on the cloud."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the central location dashboard for viewing all the related information for risk."
"The most valuable features of Symantec Messaging Gateway are advanced content filtering, malware, and antivirus defense."
"I like that it's simple and easy to configure, deploy, and manage. The reporting function has all the features we're looking for, and we are fine with that."
"It is a solid and stable product."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
"It has very good capabilities for managing malware."
"The solution is stable and the performance is good."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway is stable and scalable. Installation is easy, and the deployment and maintenance can be done by one administrative person."
"What I like most about Symantec Messaging Gateway is its usability. I also find its interface very friendly. The solution has a very good interface."
"We have been struggling in the last month with Cisco encryption and with the S/MIME encryption. I don't know if it is an issue on our side or if these features of the solution are not working very well."
"They can do it better with web links, with the URLs. They have a technology called Outbreak but it doesn't work as well as we would like."
"The interface is dated. It has looked pretty much the same for 15 years or so. It would be helpful to be able to do everything from one spot. The centralized quarantine and reporting are completely separate from policy administration."
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky."
"I use the search all the time. Sometimes, it is hard to search for things and things are hard to find. People come to me all the time, saying, "This email didn't get through." Then, I go searching and don't find it on the first search. You have to think about alternative searches. I don't know if there is an easier way that they could help to find things. I don't know how they could simplify it, because now everybody else is using the cloud and everything is coming from Office 365, or whatever. It is just not the same environment from years ago where everybody had their own server and you could search easier."
"The configuration UI should be made more intuitive. Currently, it takes a while to understand how to do the basic configurations."
"The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."
"I would like more functionality and how to use it for Level 2 type staff. The biggest issue is it needs to be easier to use and navigate."
"Some use cases haven't been dealt with yet."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's interface is confusing and could be improved."
"The largest complaint that we hear from our customers is that there is no local support."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve by allowing more customization of the reports, such as exceptions and black-and-white lists."
"The false positives are an issue."
"The incident reporting on offer needs to be improved. It's lacking right now. It should be on the platform somewhere."
"Integration for reporting needs to be improved, it's too complex."
"The solution's server console and cluster dashboard have been the same for four years so need to be upgraded."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway can improve detection because most of them are false negatives or false positives that we are trying to troubleshoot. Additionally, we are having routing problems and they are somehow connected to DNS issues."
"What needs to be improved in Symantec Messaging Gateway is its local partner support, as it's not as technical. The support my company gets from the partner isn't good. Vendor support is good, but local partner support isn't. I'm happy with Symantec Messaging Gateway as a solution, but the problem is with its partner support. To me, Symantec Messaging Gateway is a complete solution, but it can be very difficult to search the web for resolutions to issues or problems you experience from it. If this could be improved or resolved in the next release of Symantec Messaging Gateway, then that would be good."
"Messaging Gateway's advanced malware detection could be improved."
"They really need to create a good package that competes with Microsoft."
"It is a nice product but is not user friendly in terms of the graphical interface. It is poor and is not rich in terms of the human interface."
"What's lacking when you compare it with Proofpoint and other threat protection solutions is that it does the basic stuff, but we need more advanced threat handling."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
"The biggest problem is it's an on-prem product and we're trying to get out of having equipment in data centers."
Proofpoint Email Protection is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 22 reviews while Symantec Messaging Gateway is ranked 16th in Email Security with 8 reviews. Proofpoint Email Protection is rated 8.6, while Symantec Messaging Gateway is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Proofpoint Email Protection writes "Flexible, very secure, and offers excellent technical support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Messaging Gateway writes "Easy to set up with good patching and reliable performance". Proofpoint Email Protection is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, Fortinet FortiMail and Agari, whereas Symantec Messaging Gateway is most compared with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Fortinet FortiMail, Barracuda Email Security Gateway and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Proofpoint Email Protection vs. Symantec Messaging Gateway report.
See our list of best Email Security vendors.
We monitor all Email Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
