Fortinet FortiMail and Abnormal Security reviewers are generally happy with the solutions' email security capabilities. FortiMail is praised for its customizable filtering options, and reliable performance, while Abnormal Security stands out for its behavioral AI engine, advanced threat protection, and strong protection against phishing attacks. FortiMail users highlight the lack of advanced features as areas for improvement, whereas Abnormal Security users mention the need for better integration options and interface usability. Both products offer competitive pricing and satisfactory customer service.
The summary above is based on 44 interviews we conducted recently with Fortinet FortiMail and Abnormal Security users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"Defender enables us to secure all 365-related activity from a single place. It gives us visibility into everything happening in Outlook, protecting us against phishing and other email-based threats. Defender helps us detect any suspicious behaviors."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"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."
"The initial setup was easy."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"It does some really cool stuff that other tools aren't doing. We found it to be really effective, and the AI/ML functionality is really what differentiates them."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"What I like about Abnormal Security is that it notifies me if any of my partners or suppliers are experiencing a security breach by analyzing their database and identifying potential cyber threats."
"One of the things that I love about them is that the setup and installation are super easy. All you do is give them access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, and through APIs, they are able to do their work. They are doing all this through APIs, so you do not have to install the software and take a month to get it all set up to even see the value of the solution. You could be up and running in less than an hour."
"After implementing FortiMail, the spam, and malicious emails we receive have significantly reduced, making it much simpler to manage."
"Clean user interface and good sandbox."
"This excellent email gateway minimizes spam, inspects suspicious emails and isolates infected attachments with little administrative effort."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's ability to prevent phishing attacks."
"Fortinet FortiMail is a complete product addressing mail security concerns. It helps to know spam subscriptions and create restriction policies."
"It has a very high level of security through special licensing with solutions like FortiGuard, sandboxing solutions in the cloud, and URL rewriting solutions."
"Its performance is very good and it is stable."
"When combining this solution with other Fortinet products, such as FortiGate, it integrates well and provides a comprehensive protection package."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"There is room for improvement in terms of reporting."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"We noticed that from time to time, Microsoft's stability does have problems. Sometimes the service goes up and down. Sometimes they change without prior notice."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting."
"When we're working on something as engineers, and we find an idea or a method of doing something that would be greatly improved by doing it another way, there should be an ability for me to click the ideas button, type in an idea that I have, and submit it to a product review team or developers to have them think through the process a little bit more."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"I, as such, do not have anything that I do not like or would like to add, but you could argue that because they are doing it API-based, there is a chance that something could slip through temporarily before they are able to pull it out. In theory, it could happen just because of the nature of the system. They are not in line with the delivery of the mail. They are kind of asynchronous, which is a pro as well as a con. If it is synchronous, then I know it would always stop them, but because it is asynchronous, things could get through temporarily or because of some system issues on the Microsoft side or their side. It is the nature of the beast, but it is a little bit of a con."
"The biggest room for improvement would be the deployment. It will be hard for someone who doesn't understand the interface to deploy. If you understand it, you can find your way around the problems."
"A room for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is that it only has a hardware version. I also didn't find the solution scalable, so that's another area for improvement."
"My customers frequently ask to have detailed documentation for FortiMail and FortiWeb as they have in FortiGate. What they currently have is not enough."
"Fortinet FortiMail's pricing could be improved."
"High Availability needs improvement."
"Fortinet FortiMail's technical support team has shortcomings and needs improvement."
"The tool needs to improve its pricing policy. Also, it needs to be more user-friendly. I would want it to improve email security as well."
"It would be nice if we could manage the solution from the cloud so I could handle things off-site if necessary."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Abnormal Security is ranked 10th in Email Security with 8 reviews while Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 5th in Email Security with 57 reviews. Abnormal Security is rated 9.6, while Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Abnormal Security writes "Provides comprehensive email security management, effective in detecting a wide range of email threats". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiMail writes "Good GUI and configuring security policies is easy but the pricing needs improvement". Abnormal Security is most compared with Mimecast Email Security, Egress Intelligent Email Security, Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Avanan and Barracuda Email Protection, whereas Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Cisco Secure Email, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Proofpoint Email Protection and Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration. See our Abnormal Security vs. Fortinet FortiMail 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.