We performed a comparison between Barracuda Email Security Gateway and Microsoft Defender for Office 365 based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Barracuda comes out on top in this comparison. Our reviewers agree that Barracuda is powerful and fairly priced. In addition, it has excellent customer support.
"The most valuable feature of Barracuda Email Security Gateway is the complete capabilities it provides. Additionally, the phishing security and sandbox features are effective."
"Before this solution, we didn't have any separate feature for protecting our emails. We used to only have a firewall but now we have email security. It has a graphical interface and we can see the log every time. We can see that the performance is fine."
"Eliminating inbox clutter creates an opportunity to be more productive instead of wasting time manually sorting through spam."
"The spam filtering, in particular, is very important for us. We have a large volume of emails each month, something like 200,000, and Barracuda filters about 85 percent of the spam, malware, and phishing that comes in. It prevents our users from receiving this content on their computers."
"There are plenty of features, such as sandboxing capabilities with zero threat protection. It has all the leading email security appliances compared to other solutions."
"It is a really good product with a lot of features. It is responsive, updated, and modern. It is easy to use and has an easy interface for non-IT users. Its dashboard is also quite fine. It is also quite flexible and has an API at the backend."
"With the cloud service, one of the nice things about Barracuda is the quarantine service. It gives the ability for our users to go in and check what has been quarantined, and then connect with our IT staff to release anything that should be fine so that we can test it before we release."
"This solution has helped to significantly reduce the amount of junk email that we receive."
"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"Spam is not always detected, and it should be more automated. We have seen that some emails are allowed by these emails, which are then stopped by Microsoft."
"The deep scanning feature needs to be improved."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway can improve reporting and anti-spam. The anti-spam engine is not working well. We are seeing a lot of problems where spam is going through the gateway. Additionally, access privilege should be given to the IT support, because they don't have a lot of privileges. We are forced to give our IT support administrative access in order to clear and deliver emails and this should not be happening."
"The pricing is a little bit high, and it is causing the company to rethink renewal. If they could lower the pricing, that would be ideal."
"The downsides of the solution stem from the fact that it is an expensive product, and one may see too many false positives when using it, making them both areas where improvements are required."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway should include ATP in the next release."
"We still have critical threats coming into our environment and delivered to our users. When we compare it with other solutions, these other solutions can already detect those threats."
"The DMARC security is somewhat weak and could be strengthened."
"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should improve the troubleshooting tools. It's unclear whether the device is blocked at the firewall level or at the device itself. The granularity needed for troubleshooting is currently lacking. From my perspective, Microsoft should address this issue to benefit many users who likely share the same sentiment."
"The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."
"The visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
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Barracuda Email Security Gateway is ranked 2nd in Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with 51 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is ranked 1st in Email Security with 41 reviews. Barracuda Email Security Gateway is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Barracuda Email Security Gateway writes "Robust email protection with advanced features such as effective spam filtering, virus and malware defense, phishing protection and high scalability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 writes "Allows for easy reporting of problems, valuable anti-phishing, and anti-malware support". Barracuda Email Security Gateway is most compared with Fortinet FortiMail, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Cisco Secure Email, Trend Micro Email Security and Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade, whereas Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Mimecast Email Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Cisco Secure Email and Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration. See our Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 report.
We monitor all Secure Email Gateway (SEG) 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.