We compared Fortinet FortiMail and Microsoft Exchange Online Protection across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Fortinet FortiMail is highly praised for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and smooth compatibility with other Fortinet products. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection offers seamless integration with Windows, a central alert console, and real-time monitoring of suspicious URLs.
Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiMail requires enhancements in integration, user management, and documentation. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection could offer more training and enhance its security features. Users also requested better encryption, gray email management, and integration with non-Microsoft platforms.
Service and Support: Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable. While some users found Microsoft support to be helpful and responsive, others experienced slower response times.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Fortinet FortiMail is described as relatively easy and can be completed within a few hours or up to 14 working days. It is flexible and can be tailored to specific needs, although it may require help from technical professionals. Users had varied experiences setting up Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, ranging from easy to difficult. It may necessitate dedicated personnel for maintenance.
Pricing: Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable. Some users said Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is expensive, but others considered it reasonable.
ROI: Fortinet FortiMail provides enhanced email communication, decreased spam, stabilized collections, and altered expenses. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection has proven to be a profitable investment.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiMail and Cisco Secure Email have distinct features and functionalities. Fortinet FortiMail is known for its simple setup, user-friendly interface, and effective email filtering. It can be customized and seamlessly integrated with other Fortinet products. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is praised for its seamless integration with Windows and useful features like URL holding and threat management. At the same time, users say it could improve in areas such as pricing, documentation, and security features.
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"The initial setup was easy."
"Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"Defender for 365 is a comprehensive cloud-based solution. The value of the cloud is that you aren't alone. Threat intelligence and analytics are shared in the cloud. We don't have to find the solution alone. If you face an unknown threat with traditional solutions like Trend Micro and Symantec, you need to open a case and send your information to them to analyze forensically and identify the source of the attack."
"Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"It has a very high level of security through special licensing with solutions like FortiGuard, sandboxing solutions in the cloud, and URL rewriting solutions."
"Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are its performance and security."
"It can block a lot of fake emails."
"One major benefit of the Fortinet FortiMail product is its ease of management."
"FortiMail is extremely flexible and very easy to learn. Compared to other email security products that we've tried, it is mainly the ease of configuration that makes FortiMail valuable to us."
"The biggest implementation my team has done for Fortinet FortiMail was for more than five thousand people, and the most valuable feature was its anti-spam feature."
"The most valuable features of this solution are anti-spam, sender reputation, and antivirus."
"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."
"Online Protection's most valuable feature is its admin interface."
"It is easy to configure, easy to use, easy to add exclusions, easy to track, and easy to add anything else if you want."
"The initial setup of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection was easy."
"The threat management feature includes policies and alerts that are valuable."
"It is scalable."
"You can use the product to create special accounts."
"We use the solution to receive emails. We do not use the calendar function as our clients are slow adaptors to the latest features."
"I like the product's ZAP feature."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"Microsoft sometimes has downtime, and we'll get several incidents coming in back to back. We have a huge backlog of notifications, many of which may be false positives. However, there might be serious alerts, so we can't risk dismissing all of them at once."
"Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"The solution is user-friendly to a degree but the dashboard needs improvement."
"I think they need to look into it and improve their signatures. This will help with blocking incoming spam emails."
"FortiMail's dashboard is somewhat complex and could be made simpler."
"Fortinet FortiMail could improve general user management. There are no password policies for users."
"Online support sometimes takes up to a week to get back to you."
"It's difficult for me to talk about areas for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail because I'm the general manager of the company and I'm an engineer with knowledge about the solution, but I'm not deeply involved in its implementation. As I mentioned previously, Fortinet FortiMail is also being used within the company, and I'm happy with its functionality, but sometimes, attacks pass and avoid the Fortinet FortiMail filters, but those could be very sophisticated attacks. There could still be an improvement in the filtering feature of the solution, though the security of Fortinet FortiMail is okay for me because I believe you can't implement one hundred percent security in any solution. The initial setup for the solution also needs improvement. The setup is supposed to be simple, but then the customer starts to complain that some of the false positive emails are reaching quarantine, so my team has to configure it again. There have been instances when Fortinet FortiMail rejects valid emails because some of the service partners of the customer have not been configured accurately, so the system considered valid mails as attacks to be quarantined, so aside from improving the filters, there should also be an improvement in the categorization of emails in the server. My team has to modify the configuration so that valid emails could pass and for Fortinet FortiMail to correctly filter the SPAM traffic. A feature that could be added to Fortinet FortiMail in its next release is advanced AI, so it can analyze and decide accurately on which mail is valid and which mail is SPAM."
"The infrastructure could be improved."
"The logging information is sometimes not clear or easy to understand."
"When you're using a Microsoft product solution, you can scale it, but if you're not, there are limitations."
"We would like the solution to have more in-built intelligence in the way that it reviews potential security risks, rather than our team constantly having to update the policies."
"The management interface of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) could be intuitive."
"Microsoft 365 Defender and EOP policies are stable with the proper license. However, with the basic policy, it's hard to say it's stable due to configuration limitations."
"The tool's classification for bulk email is cumbersome."
"It doesn't protect against everything. We do need protection for, for example, endpoints."
"Our company faces difficulty with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) because it's too big, clunky, and difficult for a small client to implement quickly and easily."
"Online Protection has an issue in that it doesn't provide an option to stop impersonation."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 5th in Email Security with 57 reviews while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is ranked 3rd in Email Security with 34 reviews. Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiMail writes "Good GUI and configuring security policies is easy but the pricing needs improvement". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) writes "An effective email security solution that provides DLP, Safe Attachment, and Safe Links". Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Cisco Secure Email, Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Fortinet FortiMail Cloud, Proofpoint Email Protection and Trend Micro Email Security, whereas Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Cisco Secure Email, Mimecast Email Security, Barracuda Email Security Gateway and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Fortinet FortiMail vs. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) report.
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