Fortinet FortiMail vs Proofpoint Email Protection comparison

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12,858 views|10,247 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
Fortinet Logo
6,822 views|4,504 comparisons
93% willing to recommend
Proofpoint Logo
2,085 views|1,560 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 5, 2023

We compared Fortinet FortiMail and Proofpoint Email 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. Users describe Proofpoint Email Protection as a convenient all-in-one solution that offers effective defense against phishing attempts.

  • Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiMail requires enhancements in integration, user management, and documentation. Proofpoint Email Protection could make its interface clearer and simplify admin management.

  • Service and Support: Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable. Proofpoint Email Protection’s customer service is described as responsive, professional, and knowledgeable. However, there are some concerns about availability.

  • 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. Proofpoint Email Protection can be set up in a relatively short amount of time. Some users found it simple, while others mentioned that it requires technical skills.

  • Pricing: Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable. The opinions on the cost of Proofpoint Email Protection vary, with some users finding it costly while others find it reasonable.

  • ROI: Fortinet FortiMail provides enhanced email communication, decreased spam, stabilized collections, and altered expenses. The opinions on the cost of Proofpoint Email Protection vary, with some users finding it costly while others find it reasonable.

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. Proofpoint Email Protection provides effective email protection and strong threat-detection features. However, it needs to simplify its user interface and administration.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiMail vs. Proofpoint Email Protection Report (Updated: January 2024).
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us.""The risk level notifications are most valuable. We get to know what kind of intrusion or attack is there, and we can fix a problem on time.""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.""Our customers are satisfied with Defender for 365 because Microsoft products are easy to use and customize to meet the client's needs. Everything is in one place, so we can adjust policies as needed for phishing, DLP, ATP, or any other security features that our clients want to apply.""The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pros →

"Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are its performance and security.""I like the anti-spam and security features of Fortinet FortiMail, and that its features complement each other.""The integration with FortiSandbox is good, and something that we utilize often.""The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's ability to prevent phishing attacks.""The anti-spam feature is very valuable.""One major benefit of the Fortinet FortiMail product is its ease of management.""The number of false positives is minimal.""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."

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"It's very good at identifying threats.""The archive feature is valuable.""Proofpoint Email Protection offers an additional layer of protection compared to other brands like Microsoft, Mimecast, and Barracuda. While these major companies excel at detecting malicious attachments, the solution goes further by analyzing the context of emails, allowing for more nuanced decision-making.""The solution blocks malicious emails containing viruses and malware and reduces them out of spam.""The setup was easy.""It was easy to set up.""URL scanning and online relay service are the most valuable features of Proofpoint Email Protection.""Proofpoint Email Protection is a good product, and its most beneficial feature is the Threat Response Auto-Pull. I also like that it's an integrated email security solution."

More Proofpoint Email Protection Pros →

Cons
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend.""The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement.""Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab.""You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers.""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.""One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get a lot of information on integrations with such apps for security and authentication.""This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products.""There is room for improvement with the UI."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Cons →

"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.""The support could be faster because we've been receiving complaints from customers, they say that when they raise a ticket, it doesn't take 24 hours to respond, sometimes the support responds after three days. This is a lot of time.""It would be nice if we could manage the solution from the cloud so I could handle things off-site if necessary.""Online support sometimes takes up to a week to get back to you.""I think they need to look into it and improve their signatures. This will help with blocking incoming spam emails.""The solution's pricing is flexible and can be adjusted for African utility companies. Microsoft often offers special pricing formulas for African governments and organizations and it is similar to Fortinet FortiMail. In my country, government institutions receive discounted pricing from Fortinet FortiMail.""Improving the upgrade process, making it more user-friendly, and simplifying the management of hardware components could enhance the overall user experience and appeal of Fortinet's email security solution.""The only drawback to this solution is that the firmware is frequently updated, and each update results in downtime."

More Fortinet FortiMail Cons →

"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.""Proofpoint Email Protection's interface is confusing and could be improved.""It's scalable, but the devil's in the details — you have to know your email volumes.""Sometimes it detects false positives.""The accessibility of Proofpoint Email Protection, particularly access to product trials, could be improved. It's hard to get a trial for Proofpoint Email Protection, and many customers prefer not just to do the POC or demo but try the product out.""I would want better spear phishing protection in the essentials package.""The solution's server console and cluster dashboard have been the same for four years so need to be upgraded.""The incident reporting on offer needs to be improved. It's lacking right now. It should be on the platform somewhere."

More Proofpoint Email Protection Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's a user-base subscription."
  • "From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
  • "Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
  • "For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
  • "The solution saves money so we have seen a return on investment."
  • "Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The licensing model for this solution is better because it is based on the box and not the number of users."
  • "It is an expensive product."
  • "The annual cost is $55,000."
  • "Pricing is straight-forward and renewable without complicated pricing structures."
  • "Pricing is based on initial license purchase and use volume."
  • "In the future I would like it if there's a possibility to lower the price of the bandwidth and UTM. It is quite expensive."
  • "This is a good solution and value for the money."
  • "If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
  • More Fortinet FortiMail Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
  • "The price is reasonable."
  • "Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
  • "The licensing is basically $8/user."
  • "It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
  • "Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
  • "The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
  • "Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it expensive."
  • More Proofpoint Email Protection Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.
    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various… more »
    Top Answer:The product must provide better malware detection. The detection algorithms don't perform the way I hope they would.
    Top Answer:FortiMail possesses notable strengths, and one key feature is its store-and-forward concept.
    Top Answer:It could benefit from enhancing its functionality, especially in terms of advanced filtering. Introducing features such… more »
    Top Answer:The product is costly. I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high… more »
    Top Answer:The whole configuration management piece of the product requires some work, as it is one of the areas where the tool has… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    MS Defender for Office 365
    FortiMail
    Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Cofense PhishMe
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect organizations against advanced threats in their email, collaboration, and productivity environments. It combines the power of Microsoft's threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to provide real-time protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other malicious attacks.

    With Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations can safeguard their email communication by detecting and blocking malicious links, attachments, and unsafe email content. It employs advanced anti-phishing capabilities to identify and prevent sophisticated phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information or compromise user credentials.

    This solution also offers robust protection against malware and ransomware. It leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze email attachments and URLs in real-time, identifying and blocking malicious content before it reaches users' inboxes. Additionally, it provides advanced threat-hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to proactively investigate and respond to potential threats.

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 goes beyond email protection and extends its security features to other collaboration tools like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. It scans files and documents stored in these platforms, ensuring that they are free from malware and other malicious content. It also provides visibility into user activities, helping organizations detect and mitigate insider threats.

    Furthermore, this solution offers rich reporting and analytics capabilities, providing organizations with insights into their security posture and threat landscape. It enables security administrators to monitor and manage security incidents, track trends, and take proactive measures to enhance their overall security posture.

    As cyber attacks become more sophisticated, it is crucial for email security solutions to offer multi-layered protection. Fortinet's proven email security platform, FortiMail, is a comprehensive multi-layered threat protection solution designed to secure users from the full spectrum of email-based threats, which includes zero-day threats, credential impersonation, spam, phishing, malware, and business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

    Fortinet FortiMail offers a variety of deployment models to best fit your organization’s email security needs. On-premises, private or public cloud, or hybrid email environments can be deployed and managed in-house by your team or managed by Fortinet’s data centers. FortiMail also employs virtual machines that provide robust scalability options and flexible deployment of email security infrastructure.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Fortinet FortiMail provides your organization with the following benefits:

    • Eliminate message-based threats by using FortiMail’s advanced inspection capabilities before they can harm your users.
    • Flexible licensing ensures that you don’t have to create a license for each user as you scale your network upwards.

    • Achieve regulatory compliance with sophisticated messaging content archiving, quarantining, and routing tools.
    • Stop spam before it takes over your messaging system and network resources, ensuring that your messaging performance remains optimized.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Some of Fortinet FortiMail’s top features include:

    • Spam and malware prevention: FortiMail employs advanced techniques and technologies, such as outbreak protection, impersonation detection, content disarm and reconstruction, and sandbox analysis to provide users with high-performing antispam and antimalware tools designed to prevent unwanted bulk email, ransomware, and other targeted attacks.
    • Powerful data loss prevention: Identity-based email encryption and archiving help prevent the loss of sensitive and important information and ensure that your organization adheres to compliance with corporate and industry regulations.
    • Automatic updates: Receive dynamic updates from the FortiGuard subscription services that automatically upgrade your antispam and antivirus functionality using intelligence gathered by Fortinet's dedicated global threat research team.
    • Seamless integration: Integrations with other Fortinet products and external third-party components enable companies to enhance their security by sharing indicators of compromise (IoCs) across a unified security system.
    • Easy email management: Gain full visibility over real-time email traffic with Fortinet FortiMail’s intuitive dashboards, rich reporting features, centralized quarantine tools, and end-user controls. Control email traffic with the solution’s full mail transfer agent and mail-handling capabilities. The solution’s quick-start setup wizard greatly reduces the complexity of deployment and management.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Fortinet FortiMail stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful anti-virus tool and its robust spam protection capabilities.

    Flamur P., head of security management at Ipko Telecommunications, writes, "Fortinet FortiMail has a lot of valuable features. It works great. It also has an antivirus feature. Support for Fortinet FortiMail was also great when my team wanted to block some geographic IPs, but couldn't figure out how to do it. The support team provided clear communication on how to resolve that issue. Another valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is spam filtering which tells you how many spammy emails you've received. Based on my current use cases, I'm happy with Fortinet FortiMail."

    Proofpoint Email Protection is a machine learning email gateway that catches both known and unknown threats. Through Target Attack Protection, emails will be analyzed and potentially blocked from advanced threats while users gain visibility around these threats. The technology can also classify various types of email and can be deployed both on premises or as a cloud service. In addition, users can tag suspicious emails to help raise user awareness and track down any email quickly.

    Proofpoint Email Protection offers Advanced BEC Defense, which can precisely detect and block different types of emails, even if they don’t involve a malicious payload, such as business email compromise (BEC). Email Protection, which is powered by NexusAI, is a sophisticated detection technique developed to stop a variety of kinds of email fraud from affecting compromised accounts. It’s specifically designed to analyze message components, such as the sender’s IP address (including reputation and x-originating IP), the message header, and the message body. Using machine learning and AI, it will then determine if that message is a BEC threat.

    Benefits of Proofpoint Email Protection

    Proofpoint Email Protection is a favorite for organizations looking to utilize their cybersecurity budget accurately, and provides the user with incredible visibility. While preventing email fraud, the technology can also detect and block advanced malware as well as identifying possible risks.

    Email Protection offers many benefits, including:

    • Email warning tag - Raise user awareness and reduce the risk of possible compromises by automatically tagging suspicious emails.

    • Gain granular control of unwanted email - Gain control over low-priority emails through granular email filtering, which can pinpoint gray mail, like newsletters and bulk mail.

    • Multi-layered detection - Defend against continuous evolving threats with reputation and content analysis. Email Protection offers a dynamic classification of various emails, including malware, spam, phishing, imposter threats, and bulk email.

    • Smart search - Track down an email based on dozens of search criteria in seconds. Smart search also provides the ability to trace where emails came from.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Proofpoint Email Protection enables business continuity capabilities through their machine learning, AI-powered email gateway. With its innovative approach toward detecting, analyzing, identifying, and blocking advanced threats, users can gain unique visibility into their business data environments. Users especially like the ability to block spam, as well as the business email compromise protection.

    An anonymous reviewer who is a principal consultant at a tech company, notes, "Proofpoint is the main tool for blocking spam because it denies the connection altogether."

    Sridhar R., a security professional at Qatar Computer Services WLL, writes, "The most valuable features are the business email compromise protection and targeted attack prevention."

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
    Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
    Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider17%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Government14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization44%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Retailer12%
    Healthcare Company12%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization25%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise24%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise54%
    Large Enterprise28%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise32%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise34%
    Large Enterprise46%
    Buyer's Guide
    Fortinet FortiMail vs. Proofpoint Email Protection
    January 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiMail vs. Proofpoint Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 5th in Email Security with 55 reviews while Proofpoint Email Protection is ranked 1st in Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with 44 reviews. Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.6, while Proofpoint Email Protection is rated 8.4. 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 Proofpoint Email Protection writes "A reasonably priced product that offers protection to emails, along with spam filters". Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Cisco Secure Email, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Fortinet FortiMail Cloud and Trend Micro Email Security, whereas Proofpoint Email Protection is most compared with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Cisco Secure Email, KnowBe4 and Barracuda Email Security Gateway. See our Fortinet FortiMail vs. Proofpoint Email Protection report.

    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.