Symantec Messaging Gateway Reviews

We primarily use the solution for security - to protect us from malware and to have anti-spam, content filtering. It's for that initial inspection of email before it gets into our environment.

The solution is stable and the performance is good. 

Technical support, under Symantec, was good.

They were great at keeping up with patching.

The product could scale.

The initial setup wasn't too difficult. 

Having the control center in just one place was difficult. Now that they are moving to the cloud, it will be less of an issue. 

The solution is slightly outdated. The version that we have now is due to the fact that the company hasn't moved up to the latest version. They're on 10.6 and the latest version is 10.74 or something like that. They were four versions behind.

The biggest problem is it's an on-prem product and we're trying to get out of having equipment in data centers. The company wants the reliability that the cloud offers. That's the main justification for leaving that product. I know they offer a cloud solution, however, when you have Microsoft having it as part of a package and you're already kind of paying for something, it makes sense to move over, rather than have two solutions doing the same thing in one company.

I worked for the company that I'm working at now, for 19 years, however, I was gone for six years. In that 19 years, I had about 10 years where I was using Symantec Messaging Gateway. 

The stability is good. It's not buggy or glitchy. It works well. The performance is good.

I haven't messed with it in six years, and prior to that, there were not really any issues. It was a pretty good product, and they kept up with security patches. I noticed that we have a product that looks for vulnerabilities. If it's alarming, Symantec will come back and say, "No, we're good, we don't have that code in our product." They seem to have been pretty good with that.

It was pretty easy to scale. You just added more scanners. The one downside was you could only have one control center unless you wanted to manually keep two different control centers at two different data centers, and configure them the same. 

That said, you'll never 100% have them alike. That's the one downside is that you're stuck with, no matter how you scale your scanners, in the DMZ, and you still have that one control center inside. That's how we deployed it. If we lose that data center, we lose that control center. There are some white papers out there now on how to make that change to a different control center, so it is possible, however, it's been a long time since I've looked at that.

We have about 15,000 end-users on the solution currently. 

Technical support was fine when it was Symantec. It might have changed since it was bought out by Broadcom. I can't speak to that.

We're moving over to Microsoft Defender P2.

I'm on a project now, however, the hardware's old as we bought it originally back when you bought the appliance from Symantec. Due to the fact that the hardware's old, and since the company's already paying for Microsoft, we've decided to just go full-on with the Defender P2 license, and pull that old hardware, and take the Symantec Messaging Gateway out. The goal is to get everything into the cloud. 

The initial setup isn't too complex. That said, there are some challenges when you start stacking on different policies and stuff like that.

I didn't know the pricing when we bought it, and that was a long time ago. I can't speak to the exact costs. 

We are currently on the oldest version that's supported. It might be around version 10.

We primarily use it as an email gateway for security. We use it for blocking spam.

Protect us form spam & virus emails' attack. 

The solution overall is quite good.

The solution is a leader in anti-spam email products.

The performance is great. You can block 99% of spam emails. It's very effective.

The solution runs quite well.

The setup is pretty simple.

The issue with the solution has more to do with China than the product itself. Since it was purchased by Broadcomm, we've found there's been a general slide in terms of the local services we have access to and we are considering replacing them.

In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature. We'd really like clustering as an option.

If you have installed the two messaging gateways, you cannot use the high-availability features of the two products. There needs to be higher availability. Other products provide a cluster feature, however, Symantec for the most part does not offer this.

I've been using the solution for about ten years now. It's been a decade.

The solution is very stable. We don't have issues with glitches and there aren't really any bugs. I've never experienced it crash or fail. It's reliable.

We haven't needed to scale it, so I can't speak to the solution's level of scalability. It's not something we've attempted to do.

We have about 80 people in our organization using the product.

I haven't opened a ticket from the technical support for a long time. We haven't really needed the support from assistance, to be honest. I can't really speak to their level of service at this time.

It was ten years ago, and I was at a different organization, however, I do recall that we used Fortigate at that time.

I also currently use Symantec's Mail Security for Exchange. I use that for my emails alongside the Messaging Gateway.

The initial setup isn't complex. It's quite straightforward. I find it quite simple, as I have a decade of experience using it under my belt.

Deployment to my virtual machine only took about 30 minutes.

I hand over the maintenance to another team.

I handled the deployment myself. I have a wealth of experience with the product. I don't feed outside help from consultants or integrators.

If you would like to enable Symantec's Content Encryption, it's considered an extra feature. You need to buy it separately. I personally just have the anti-spam, antivirus and Premium Content Controller. These features are at no additional cost. New users just need to be aware that certain premium features will need to be purchased.

No.

We're just an end-user and customer. We don't have a special business relationship with the company.

I have the solution running on my virtual machine.

The solution is a really good product as far as email security is concerned.

I'd recommend the solution.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We primarily use this solution to encrypt outgoing emails to the recipient. That is why I bought the solution from Symantec Messaging Gateway. 

The encryption screen messages are very good. No one can hack the emails.

The solution is excellent at blocking spam.

Recently, I've had some problems regarding their support. The tech was acquired by Broadcom. Since then, the support part is very bad right. They really need to improve this aspect.

They have updated the version of the Messaging Gateway and the new features they are adding the need to be re-evaluated. They have done some changes on the policy.

We've been using the solution for two years.

I've noticed lately that the solution can be buggy.

I have observed a few updates that have bugs. Right now, the solution is not updated due to some bugs that are coming from the updates. Currently, the company will not pay for the box from the software. That's why virtual appliances are not updating.

We've been in touch with technical support and we find that, since the Broadcom takeover, the support is lacking. They're very bad and not helpful at all. We've found that the support team is not able to provide full service to us any longer. When they were just Symantec, before the acquisition, they were quite good.

I also use McAfee, however, McAfee not working at 100%. Symantec has gone back to 99.9%. Everyone says "our product is at 100%", however, it is not possible. That's due to the fact that everyday hackers are busy finding new ways to breach security. 

I like both solutions. I've used them both for the last few years.

The initial setup is pretty straight forward, however, you need to get the policies right. That part is complex. You need some guidance from support teams, or you need to read some articles or admin guides that can be found on Google.

Deployment took about 30 minutes.

I handle the maintenance on my own. It doesn't require a lot of personnel to manage it.

We used an integrator to assist us with the implementation. They were very helpful and we were satisfied with their level of knowledge.

We're Symantec customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

The deployment of the solution is just virtual. We have acquired virtual appliances and we have projects ongoing on the machines.

The product itself is quite good, however, Broadcom needs to step up its support.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Symantec Messaging Gateway is used for email security.

The most valuable features of Symantec Messaging Gateway are advanced content filtering, malware, and antivirus defense.

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.

In a future release, if dynamic variables in content filtering was added it would solve a lot of problems. If we could be able to use some variables or handle the content filtering policies somehow dynamically, such as comparing today's date to a date in the content header of an email. If it was more dynamic list checking instead of static rules we usually adjust on clients.

I have been using Symantec Messaging Gateway for approximately three years.

Since Symantec Messaging Gateway is a Linux-based solution it is stable.

Symantec Messaging Gateway is highly scalable.

The technical support from Symantec Messaging Gateway is good.

I rate the support from Symantec Messaging Gateway a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup of Symantec Messaging Gateway is straightforward.

I strongly recommend on-premise email security solutions. I'm strictly against cloud email security solutions, they are very problematic. There is cloud congestion for every kind of cloud-based software and the managed services are very hard to deal with for cloud-based solutions. On-premise solutions are easy to deploy and to troubleshoots. For cloud solutions, downtimes are the most prominent issue we witness. It is really difficult to be a part of cloud-based solutions since it is out of your control.

No one just wants their emails to be blocked or connection failures in their daily lives. That's why the on-premise solutions are the fastest and more manageable solutions.

Some aspects of this solution are going to expire because of the Broadcom acquisition.

I would highly recommend this solution to others.

I rate Symantec Messaging Gateway a nine out of ten.

We use it as a perimeter gateway where it scans for spam. We use all the features and configure all the features, like malware and content filtering. But most of the requests come for content filtering, where we need filters based on some specific words or subjects or based on the reports that come from government agencies.

It helps us by protecting us from spam, and it also checks for viruses.

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.

Support could be better. What's also 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.

I have been dealing with Symantec Messaging Gateway for about seven or eight years.

We have used it for many years, and I never faced any issues. Even if it crashes, let's say the VM itself rebooted or something, then it does Linux basic things and it comes back online.

We have a couple of nodes extended at the moment, and so far, we haven't had any issues with configuration, replication, or when the firmware is updated. It works fine.

Technical support was good before they moved to Broadcom. After it went to Broadcom, the support quality degraded.

It was deployed before I started working on it, but I feel like it was easy.

I would recommend this solution. I would tell potential users that it's simple and easy to configure, deploy, and manage.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Symantec Messaging Gateway a seven.

We use it for content filtering and malware protection.

Symantec Messaging Gateway is stable and scalable.

Installation is easy, and the deployment and maintenance can be done by one administrative person.

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.

We have been using it for a month.

It is stable because we use a physical appliance.

The scalability depends on how much you are willing to pay. You always have to pay if you have to scale the product or increase the number of machines. We have about 1,000 fixed users for Symantec Messaging Gateway.

Installation is easy, but we needed some configurations, so it took a week.

For the deployment and maintenance, we have one administrative person.

We implemented it ourselves using remote assistance from our supplier.

The cost of Symantec Messaging Gateway is too expensive in general. However, the appliance also includes the price of the license in the same bundle.

I haven't been using it for very long, and in my short experience, it has been a good product. I would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

We use the solution for its advanced virus protection, phishing and other features.

I have been using the solution for 1 year now.

It is a solid and stable product.

It is a scalable product. We have deployed it for organizations with 200-5000 users.

The support is really great.

I have used Sophos Email other than Symantec Messaging Gateway.

The setup is pretty much straight forward.

We did the deployment of the product ourselves and it was a quick one.

Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans. 

It's a bit expensive but they have licensing models to meet customer needs. 

It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email.

I would recommend this product.

I rate Symantec Messaging Gateway an eight out of ten.

I've been using Messaging Gateway for ten years.

Messaging Gateway's advanced malware detection could be improved.

Messaging Gateway is stable.

Messaging Gateway is scalable.

I've had no problems with Symantec's technical support.

The initial setup was easy.

I would recommend Messaging Gateway to other users and rate it nine out of ten.