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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Trellix Advanced Threat Defense comparison

 

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
110
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Trellix Advanced Threat Def...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
22nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 3.4%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Trellix Advanced Threat Defense is 1.9%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection3.4%
Trellix Advanced Threat Defense1.9%
Other94.7%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
PP
RSSI at SDIS49
Ensuring long-term reliability while seeking internal email management enhancements
Prisma is a commercial name of the firewall now, but we don't work with the cloud product. Only our company is using it and we do not recommend it to customers. For us, it's transparent because it's a cloud product, so we don't really know the version as it's always updated. We have not had any problem, but it's difficult to report on what's going on because some days they can wash out perhaps 100 mails, and then it's difficult to say how many attacks you have reached. The right email has been washed out and then nobody has complained. We do not use the Threat Visualization feature; as we are in MX, the mail is washed out before it is in the mail inbox of the user, thus avoiding any problem requiring a reservation. In fact, there is no integration with existing security frameworks. The only problem we can have is that as we have no API interface, there is no inspection of internal mail. I rate Trellix Advanced Threat Defense a nine out of ten.

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 has massively improved the attack surface and has limited a lot of user compromise events."
"In the pros, we can see strong protection against phishing, spoofing, and malware threats, and good email filtering accuracy and threat visibility."
"Using Proofpoint Email Protection significantly reduces the number of threats I need to guard against; within a month, my organization sends and receives over 1 million emails, achieving 99.99% protection against phishing and spam, and handling around 5 to 10 million emails monthly while assigning a project manager for ongoing review."
"I have witnessed a positive impact of Proofpoint Email Protection on my organization, having worked for one of the world's largest organizations that uses Proofpoint consistently for email security."
"It was easy to set up."
"The tool has improved our workflow by ensuring people receive only the emails they need for work rather than being inundated with hundreds or thousands of unnecessary emails daily."
"The targeted attack protection that we use has been great, as has the email filtering and the rules that we have set for Proofpoint."
"The most valuable features are the business email compromise protection and targeted attack prevention."
"Its greatest strength is the DXL client which can rapidly disseminate attack information to all clients via the McAfee Agent instead of going through the ePO server."
"It was easy to set up initially."
"The product is expensive, but it is better than the rest of them in the industry."
"It is very scalable."
"The fact that in 10 years, we have had no problem is the most valuable feature for us; it's really a washing machine, but the only problem we face is that it's difficult to report on this product."
"The most valuable features are the administration console and its detection and response module."
"Provides good exfiltration, and is an all-in-one product."
"The features I find most valuable are: the management, the ability for automatic remediation of threats and it can successfully detect a threat, and to act upon it."
 

Cons

"For Proofpoint Email Protection, when it comes to support, there are times when they do not meet the SLAs for support, mostly on Fridays."
"The setup requires expertise. It needs someone with experience on managing it, and I would rate the implementation as needing someone experienced."
"I would want better spear phishing protection in the essentials package."
"Proofpoint Email Protection can be improved by using more AI-powered features."
"Filtering false positives is highly challenging because it is impossible for humans to identify which emails are genuine and which are spam."
"You only receive one model in Proofpoint Email Protection and the other ones you have to purchase at a high price. There should be more available with the solution and additional models should be less 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."
"While ingesting the logs into our SIEM tool, most organizations don't have the capability to buy the email gateway as it is quite an expensive one."
"The initial setup was industry standard complex. It takes awhile and has a lot of planning involved. It could be simplified with product redesign."
"Some of our customers have mentioned the lack of a tool that would allow for remote capabilities without being attached to the internet."
"We'd like them to be better at dealing with script threats."
"Make the ATD appliance a part of the whole product offering and take the whole thing onto the cloud."
"It was not complex, but there are things to look out for, because it's an intense product. It scans intensely and there are major obstacles to overcome if it scans while users are using a network, then it is not a good thing."
"I would like to see future versions of the solution incorporate artificial intelligence technology."
"The support on their side is not readily available. It takes a while."
"This product does the job, but it is not flexible enough to do new environments yet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has comparable pricing."
"It is on a yearly basis. Their floor for SMB doesn't matter. The user count is 100 users and below at $2,500 a year. Its cost is higher than other solutions. It is probably about 20% to 30% higher than what you would get with Microsoft. There are no additional costs. All costs are factored in. It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"Our licensing fees for this solution are approximately one million dollars per year."
"The product is expensive, but it is better than the rest of them in the industry."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
The downside is I feel the vendor support is a little lacking and should be more responsive. The technical support is not up to the mark.
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
I am leading this security domain, and my L1 and L2s have been using Proofpoint Email Protection and other modules of Proofpoint Email Protection for more than three years.We are currently working ...
What needs improvement with McAfee Advanced Threat Defense?
I would like to see an API interface for internal email and control of outgoing email to make it closer to 10. It's necessary; today we have an MX interface, and it would be interesting to have an ...
What is your primary use case for McAfee Advanced Threat Defense?
We are working with Palo Alto products, specifically firewalls. We are only using Palo Alto Firewalls and not Cortex. With FireEye and Trellix, we only work with ETP now because the NDR function wh...
What advice do you have for others considering McAfee Advanced Threat Defense?
Prisma is a commercial name of the firewall now, but we don't work with the cloud product. Only our company is using it and we do not recommend it to customers. For us, it's transparent because it'...
 

Also Known As

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
McAfee Advanced Threat Defense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
The Radicati Group, Florida International University, MGM Resorts International, County Durham andDarlington NHS Foundation Trust
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint Email Protection vs. Trellix Advanced Threat Defense and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.