We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiMail 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: Fortinet FortiMail comes out on top in this comparison. Our reviewers agree that Fortinet FortiMail is reliable, high performing, and fairly priced. In addition, it has excellent customer support.
"This excellent email gateway minimizes spam, inspects suspicious emails and isolates infected attachments with little administrative effort."
"Fortinet FortiMail is a complete product addressing mail security concerns. It helps to know spam subscriptions and create restriction policies."
"When combining this solution with other Fortinet products, such as FortiGate, it integrates well and provides a comprehensive protection package."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The GUI isn't hard to use. When we do a demo and explain the features of Fortinet products to our customers, they understand very quickly. They can easily manage their systems without us."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's ability to prevent phishing attacks."
"Technical support is great. They're available 24/7 and their response time is typically within the hour."
"It has a very high level of security through special licensing with solutions like FortiGuard, sandboxing solutions in the cloud, and URL rewriting solutions."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"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."
"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."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiMail should allow more flexibility with the content rules."
"The solution could be improved by providing a virtual machine facility with a complete set of options in the VM setup."
"I think the security of the product could improve."
"The solution is user-friendly to a degree but the dashboard needs improvement."
"Sometimes it takes a little bit too long to determine if an email is good or not. If they could shorten that time span, it'd be so much better. It does delay our email, which does not make users happy. That said, I would have to say we have not been blacklisted for quite a while now."
"They should add a lot of threat-intelligence feeds from different sources - not only from one source (FortiGuard)."
"I think they need to look into it and improve their signatures. This will help with blocking incoming spam emails."
"Such kinds of things, raised from the point from the objective actually, we are using Fortinet FortiMail. We don't find any kinds of challenge or difficulties, but Fortinet FortiMail is more efficient and more effective for us. I don't know for other client, but for us, Fortinet FortiMail is very effective Like, for instance, if it is possible, let's say some kind of high threat is actually encountered if it could be possible to SMBs in our smartphone, or mobile apps, kinds of thing, if Fortinet FortiMail is available to monitor the thing using from our mobile phone from our smartphone. If such kinds of things are truly included, it will be more or good for us."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could improve by giving customers information on techniques to prevent threats. For example, information about best practices on how to protect their own devices against hackers and scammers, such as educational information or training. This would help others have a better understanding of cyber security. Additionally, there can be more security features added."
"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 custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"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."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"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."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 5th in Email Security with 54 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is ranked 1st in Email Security with 41 reviews. Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Defender for Office 365 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 Microsoft Defender for Office 365 writes "Allows for easy reporting of problems, valuable anti-phishing, and anti-malware support". Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Cisco Secure Email, Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Fortinet FortiMail Cloud and Proofpoint Email Protection, whereas Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Mimecast Email Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Barracuda Email Security Gateway and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Fortinet FortiMail vs. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 report.
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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.