Barracuda Email Security Gateway Reviews

Our customers use this solution for screening.

Customer support is the solution's strongest point.

Some customers experience issues with integration.

Our organization has integrated this solution for the last six years.

I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

We have 12 customers using the solution.

I used the support ticket and the response was perfect.

Positive

Our engineer manages the implementation and maintenance.

The solution's pricing is exceedingly high, and it continues to increase. Many-a-time, customers do not renew the solution due to the high price. I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten.

Overall, I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Barracuda protects you from spam and email-based threats like phishing. It also provides backup and web security. We have around 600 users.

My current company had no product before Barracuda. We get a lot of added value from the various things it does, ranging from advanced threat protection and spam filtering to protection from viruses and email spoofing. It also features cloud-to-cloud backup.

The feature that sets Barracuda apart from other solutions is the Office 365 cloud-to-cloud backup.

The UI could be a little cleaner and require less clicking around in different modules. They give the illusion of a single pane of glass, but as you click around to different products, you're actually being transferred into a different system.

I've never seen Barracuda go down. It seems like a highly stable product.

Barracuda is fully scalable. It's an enterprise solution that can handle a few hundred boxes to millions.

Over the past decade and a half, I have used various products. I worked with Mimecast, targeted threat protection for seven of the last 12 years, and used ATP for four of the previous seven.

In the last 12 months, I went to Barracuda because they have an online backup system for our Office 365 tenant as an add-on. It's a package that you get with spam protection, and it's cost-effective. Barracuda offers a suite of services similar to what Mimecast includes and backup retention, which is crucial for the Office 365 environment.

Setting up Barracuda is straightforward. I usually pay a nominal fee for their deployment services, and they help us get off the ground. You can deploy in under two hours. I got deployment included for free, but I think it's normally something like $2,500 or something. My entire team is three people, so it doesn't take a lot of effort to maintain.

We're paying around $49,000 for a year for 600 users.

I rate Barracuda Email Security Gateway as a solid nine out of 10. Their spam protection is excellent, but the UI could be better. Their ATP and threat protections are great. I would give them a 10, but the UI requires just enough extra clicks to annoy me.

When you're setting up Barracuda, make sure you're asking all the right questions about setting up your DMARC and DKIM. You need to plan to take advantage of the whole product instead of a small portion of it.

We use Barracuda Email Security Gateway and also provide it for our customers to reduce incoming spam. It provides security for email delivery from our customer sites and also our sites. Most of our clients, who get a lot of spam, manage their own email server, but they do not have a dedicated spam filter or email security gateway. As a result, they get a lot of spam. Because of this, they end up searching for a solution that they can use. They do not want to buy a dedicated solution. Instead, they want to use a subscription option.

In our VM, we provide a subscription model. People are server scraping to us for incoming and outgoing purposes. 

This is an on-premise solution in our data center. We provide it to our remote customers as a hosted service.

This is a virtual appliance installed within a server. The VM is installed within the Hyper-V Server.

Remotely, we receive email from specific servers. We allow it outbound by using an IP address. If there is an email server delivering more email than the accepted value, then Barracuda Email Security Gateway utilizes the maximum connections per IP address in 30 minutes. By default, the recommended number is 50, but we customize it according to our requirements, e.g., having an email server handling more than 1,000 email boxes and sending 200 to 500 emails within 30 minutes. Sometimes, there is an emergency requirement where they want to send their 2,000 to 3,000 EGM-related or marketing-related emails, then we customize the value. We increase it to 2,000 or 3,000 so they can deliver those emails within a minute from their server through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway. 

From a front-end security point of view, Barracuda Email Security Gateway instantly reduced our spam. That is the main benefit that we are getting together with our customers. It instantly reduced spam emails or emails with a bad reputation from SpamCop and RBL. Those emails instantly get blocked by the Barracuda Email Security Gateway and not a single email is delivered to its destination. 

Every client gets their own administration panel, where they can add their users' emails and create accounts for administering their domain. This provides flexibility for the customer.

There are many customizable options:

• Attachment filtering, where we are filtering attachments according to our requirements. 
• IT-based configurations, where we allow domains. We are blacklisting domains that we do not want to pass through. 
• Rate Control feature, where we have the user license for 10,000 incoming and outgoing emails. Therefore, 10,000 users can use this device.

The client has the option to blacklist or whitelist any email address or domain based on the sender and recipient filters. If they want, they can restrict any IP addresses so email won't be received from those IP addresses. 

Another interesting feature of Barracuda Email Security is the content filtering. If there is any word or sentence that we or our customers want to block, then we can add that thing in Barracuda Email Security Gateway. The content contained in the email will not be delivered or received by the recipient. Maximum customization options are available. 

The solution has to improve in a very specific way. When we allow our customers to send or scan email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, we are permitting their email server IP address, but not any domain. One of our customers has an email server where they are hosting five domains within their server. They are sending and receiving email through that server by using Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Therefore, we allow their IP address to send email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, then we declare MX for receiving email on behalf of our customers. After receiving the email, we deliver it to the specific IP address of the customer. Since we are only allowing the IP address, if an incident happens within a customer's email server or an email server gets compromised, then it starts sending spam. That creates a huge problem for the solution as it allows all emails because the customer's IP address is allowed to relay email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway. 

Barracuda should add an option where it can add multiple domains, such as abc.com, bbc.com, and cbc.com. Therefore, this domains' emails will be allowed and other domains' emails will not be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Whereas, if you allow the IP address, then any of the domain's emails will be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. That is the drawback that I have observed. So, Barracuda should work on this.

We have been using it for more than seven years. We are using Barracuda Email Security Gateway to provide hosted security solutions for our customers.

In the last seven years, we have faced three major problems: One is security related and the other two are service functionality related. One of these happened this year. There was a bug within Barracuda Email Security Gateway where the antivirus system scanner was getting hung. We contacted the Barracuda Email Security Gateway support service who worked for a couple of days to make this stable. After that, it was fine.

I forgot that I changed the administrator password a year and a half ago. Then, I came to the office one day and was trying to log into my administration portal, but I gave the wrong password because I forgot it. Somehow, I was not able to remember the password. I tried giving several passwords, and then suddenly I put in the old password. So, I logged in by using the old password on this device. Then I thought, "What have I just done?" I am logged out again and put in my new password. I have logged in. I am again logged out, then put in the old password and was logged in. This was a problem. 

I contacted Barracuda's support team and raised a ticket about how both the old and new passwords were working for the admin account, as this was a security concern. Because if the admin account is compromised, that would be a direct security concern. Barracuda Email Security Gateway support team got involved. They logged into the solution, taking necessary steps. Then, the old server was made obsolete and did not work anymore.

We sent out a message that we are concerned about it. For example, if any customers using the physical or virtual appliance have an admin password that is tagged or an administrator has left their company, then the new administrator should change the password or the old administrator can gain access by using the old password. 

"How to remedy this security hazard?" That was our question. They said, "There are some cashing-related problems that did not propagate properly." Now, it is okay and functioning properly. 

Our main objective is reducing spam and delivering email accurately. That has been our objective. By using Barracuda Email Security Gateway, we are achieving this.

Scalability depends on the ability of the system. 

The scalability in Barracuda Email Security Gateway works separately in other platforms. If you think about virtualization technology, that works another way. You can make it scalable. If you have a 1,000 VM capacity in a virtual infrastructure, you can scale it by adding other nodes, physical hosts, memories, hard disks, etc. You can have a 2,000 capacity by keeping other infrastructure or servers online. Barracuda Vx300, Vx400, Vx600, Vx800, and Vx900 have their own capacity. For example, Barracuda Vx600 has a 10,000 users capacity. Whereas, Vx800 has a 22,000 user capacity and Vx900 has a 30,000 user capacity. Therefore, if you want to scale out, you need to buy a new version.

If we want to use the capacity for 22,000 users, we would need to purchase the license for the Barracuda Vx800 model, then download and install it. So, there is an option for backing up our existing solution in the Barracuda Cloud. After moving the backup to the Barracuda Cloud, we can restore the backup to another device and the configuration is done instantly. While Barracuda is not 100% scalable, it does give flexibility to restore your old configuration.

The support is divided in many ways. When we first generate a support case, it is accepted by their initial support teams on the front line, where the Level 1 technical guy takes the support case. If they are able to do anything, they do. Otherwise, they hand it over to their senior teams. That is the process that happens. 

When we get support from Europe or America, we instantly get proper support. During a recent support experience, it was admitted by their US team who acknowledged a problem, but the subcontinental teams did not acknowledge that they had a problem. 

Overall, their support is good. I would rate them as seven out of 10.

Neutral

The initial setup is very simple. If you purchase an appliance or physical device, then you can just power it up in your data center. You then add the domains: one default domain and one public IP address. After that, you can handle it however you want. You can add new domains or allow other IP addresses for relaying emails. That is pretty simple. 

On the virtual end, you must download the virtual instance from their website if you support Hyper-V, VMware, or other virtual clouds. So, you can download the VM and import it to your hypervisor. After providing your IP address and setting up your password, it will run instantly. The rest of the process remains the same as the physical device setup.

After the download, if you have the VM, then it will take a maximum of two hours to make it go live.

We do the deployment ourselves. We download it from the Barracuda website portal, then we have our own server where we deploy it.

We are a service provider. We calculate our CapEx, OpEx, and ROI. While it is not returning the way we expected, it does get returns. 

For corporate customers or a single organization who have one to five domains and are using Barracuda Email Security Gateway, the concern is not the investment or money. The concern is security. They are thinking about their email security. In comparison to other products, I think Barracuda is giving them proper value.

This is one of the major points for integrating this solution in any organization. Barracuda Email Security Gateway needs to make it a bit more tolerable for customers because it is increasing every year. They should create a plan for reducing the cost. 

I have observed that the price if I purchase from an American/European site, a European vendor, a European distributor, or Barracuda distributor in the European, Canadian, or American regions online, they are selling the virtual Vx model license for less than subcontinental distributors. For example, there is only one distributor in our country, so the price depends on them. Nobody can purchase a physical appliance license from other regions, while anybody can purchase a virtual appliance license from another region. Therefore, the virtual appliance license in Europe, America, and Canada are lower than our regional price.

We did not evaluate any other vendors. We just chose Barracuda Email Security Gateway.

Research what you are looking for and why you want to use it, determining: 

• How critical is your email solution? 
• How is your organization thinking about security? 
• How is your company assigning value to email? 

If it is important or critical, then you can try the trial version of Barracuda Email Security Gateway Cisco IronPort, or any email security that is in the market. After that, you get the experience of a 30-day trial. This is very convenient for users or customers to make a decision on what platform they will use. 

If they have security concerns, they will not think about the money. However, if their company is an SME or needs to maximize their productivity regarding their investment, then they will want to get maximum productivity from that device to justify the investment. Therefore, they will need to think carefully about the email security gateway that they will use.

Everybody has their own perceptions in the security field. If anyone wants to use any security gateway for their email security purposes, then they need to decide which one they want, their objective, and what they want to achieve. 

I would rate the overall solution as nine out of 10.

All our Office 365 emails will first go through Barracuda. It checks for any EXEs and the like, checking the email contents to allow or stop those. We also use the solution for archiving and backups.

From a security point of view, Barracuda Email Security improved our mail environment. Other than that, its backups are valuable.

The dashboard's UI could be improved to make changes to the blocklist. We currently have to go into the mail and check the list and the dashboard, and it would be better if we could directly block particular domains or emails instead.

I've used this solution for almost four years.

Barracuda has been stable till now.

We have 100 users using Barracuda Email Security Gateway.

Barracuda's technical support is fine.

We used to have FortiMail, and we migrated to Barracuda. Barracuda is much more effective than FortiMail. Barracuda handles spam better.

An integrator handled the initial setup.

We find the solution's pricing okay.

Our management wants to migrate to E5 from E3 and says we don't need Barracuda Email Security. However, we are unsure if E5 will have the same features as Barracuda.

I recommend Barracuda, and from a security point of view, I would rate it a nine out of ten. It didn't let any EXEs or phishing emails through.

Our primary use case for this solution is spam filtering. It extracts messaging for us. Thanks to Barracuda Email Security Gateway, I have seen increases in productivity and functionality in terms of spam reduction and filtering against different threats, which is a benefit by default.

The things I find valuable are how it is easy to maintain and its seamlessness. I cannot say it's better or worse than any other solution, but I have no issues with it as it does what it needs to do.

I have noticed that it takes a little time to get familiar with after deploying and some tweaks need to be done as things come up.

I have been using this solution for three years.

We've had a couple of issues pop up over the three years but they were resolved within 15 minutes. One issue that wasn't critical took around a day to resolve.

I would rate the scalability of this solution a 10, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Currently, there are about 175 users of this solution in our company.

I would say that their customer service is quite good. You will always be able to get someone on the line whenever you call. 

I would say the initial setup was super simple and quick. It takes a couple of hours to deploy. After that, you're up and running. 

I would say that this solution is more expensive than the competitors.

I would rate this solution a 10, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Barracuda Email Security Gateway has been fine for our use case.

We primarily use the solution for email security.

The solution is largely stable. 

It can scale. 

Overall, it has been working fine without issue. 

The message tracking and messaging logs have proven to be quite useful. 

The initial setup can be a little bit complex.

When we implemented Barracuda three years back, although the deployment went smoothly, we also needed to implement some changes regarding the configuration, which were affecting the stamp control rate. Some options were not so easy to remember and we had to search for directions.

For example, if I want to change the mail flow settings, there are two different options available in Barracuda. If I apply a change on one option and didn't change the configuration on the other option, the mail flow doesn't work. Yet the second option is always hidden. I always need to search for it when I need to change some mail flow settings.

I've used the solution for more than three years. 

The product is stable. Sometimes some spamming issues occur, however, we manage to control those after making some changes.

We have a model that supports 5,000 users. We currently have 3,500 users. We have room to scale. 

The solution does work fine with a large number of users. 

I administer the solution and provide troubleshooting and issue resolution as required. The support from Barracuda is pretty good overall when I reach out. 

Neutral

I have an experience with Barracuda Email Security, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Defender.

The initial setup and implementation process is complex. It is not exactly easy.

I'd rate it 2.5 out of five in terms of ease of setup.

The pricing is moderate. It was neither cheap nor expensive. 

I'd rate the cost 3.5 out of five in terms of affordability.

We're a Barracuda customer.

We are using virtual appliances, not the cloud version of the solution. That said, we do plan to move to the cloud. 

While we are not planning to change Barracuda, we are planning to improve Barracuda after purchasing the cloud solution. Our plan is to enhance our email security when we integrate our appliance with the Barracuda Cloud solution.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. Some of the exposed emails were not blocked by our Barracuda clients. Although we have engaged the principal, and they helped troubleshoot and tweak some configurations, it's still an issue. We still face some exposed emails delivered to our management level.

I'd advise potential new users that if they plan to implement Barracuda, they should find someone knowledgeable in implementations. They need someone who will follow best practices and understand procedures laid out in the documentation. After configuration and implementation, there may still be some fine-tuning required. 

Barracuda is similar to FortiMail. There is a cloud component that acts like a sandbox. The email enters, and you can open a suspicious attachment to see if it's malicious. If you find that it's malicious, you can block it and send it to Barracuda's on-prem device.

The on-prem device looks for other details like URLs and particular types of content. If everything looks okay, it's forwarded to the SMTP server and the user. We have around 20 to 30 users.

I like Barracuda's cloud sandbox feature. 

Barracuda's spam database isn't on par with its competitors. Users complain about the spam email they're receiving, and we report the issue. Barracuda said they are going to update their system to block the malicious email we received, but we're still getting the same spam. The signatures are not in their database. They need to update their spam signatures because spam is bypassing Barracuda.

I have been working with Barracuda for almost three years.

Barracuda is quite stable.

Barracuda scales as well as FortiMail. You can scale up based on the number of users per box and the email receiver.

Barracuda provides solid support, but they have a different model. They open the terminal, check the issue, and then tell us the problem. 

Barracuda is just like Kaspersky or FortiMail. The initial setup is seamless. They provide the box, and we must mount and configure it according to the customer's environment. It takes about a day or a half-day if you're familiar with the Barracuda environment.

I can easily configure it because it's so typical. When I configure any box, I go over the features. For example, I will first configure the SMTP server if I want to create an inbound flow. I look for that feature and configure it. The fundamentals don't vary much between devices. Some options might be different, or the features may have another name. There may be some additional features that FortiMail has, but Barracuda doe not. It varies from device to device, but the basic configuration is the same.

I rate Barracuda Email Security Gateway six out of 10. Based on my experience, we are recommending FortiMail or Barracuda because we find these two solutions the most stable. FortiMail has fewer issues with spam.

The solution is primarily for email security. For example, if an email comes through, we need to know what sort of email it is. We have enabled the SPF and the DMARC on it. We've also enabled those security elements so that it has some threat prevention before any unsolicited email comes to our gateway. This basically does all the filtering, before we actually receive an email. There are a number of undeliverable emails we get in our inboxes. In that event, if we are not able to see these emails, we can always log onto the Barracuda Gateway to actually see the emails to say whether they're valid or not. If the authenticity of the email is revealed, we are able to release them.

All of it has been quite useful. All features it provides on the cloud environment are very, very useful, including the antivirus that is enabled on it. 

It also has a threat management tool on it. It does a self-scanning so that it actually does zero-day tolerance. It's able to look at other Barracuda databases and is able to find the latest data and protect the network. There are a number of features that it has that we actually use to protect our network from email.

The setup is straightforward. 

Barracuda itself should be actually working on their DMARC setup. There is a little bit of downtime in terms of that. There are some times when legit emails are trapped on Barracuda and we are unable to get that information unless we actually log on to the network to find out. The good thing is that we get logs now and you can schedule the logs and you'll be able to see the logs in the event. The user gets to see the logs. In the event you don't receive the email, so you can schedule it for every hour or whatever schedule is important for the organization.

We set ours at one hour and in the event, if there's an email that didn't reach you, you'll get a notification after an hour to say, okay, this email was trapped and you are able to self-release it with the user's login, or IT can release it.

I can't think of any other features that are needed. 

I've used the solution from 20016 or 2017 onwards. 

It is very reliable and stable at the same time.

We have between 45 and 50 users.

It is pretty easy to scale. In the event that you want to increase the number of users, you can always do so. All you have to do is buy additional licenses. 

In the event that you need technical support, the support team is always available and they'll probably respond to you in an interval of an hour or two.

If there is a need for escalation, they normally do that. They do give you a call. Once you log a ticket, they give you a call and if they are unable to resolve it at a particular time, they'll give you a timeline as to when it's going to be fixed.

Setting up the solution is simple and straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

The only thing to do is set up some protocols. You set up some protocols, you go and get some policies enabled, and you can choose whatever policy you want and you enable it on your exchange and that should kick you off. All you do is point your gateway to Barracuda instead of your exchange, and you'll be able to get your email through.

Deployment doesn't take long. It probably takes a day or two, depending on how you want to configure it. You don't really have to do much. It is just that the protocols are already out there. All you do is tick whatever you want and it gets deployed. You set your parameters.

Maintenance is done by the support team. It's cloud-based; we don't really have to do maintenance on our end unless we have a device on our end. We don't have a device on our end. In the event that we have user changes, we do it in-house. For example, if a newbie has joined the organization or somebody is leaving, we make administrative changes.

We did an in-house setup. We buy it from the retailer and the retailer gives us access to the vendor there, the actual supplier. Then we have that privilege too, in the event that if we get caught out for some reason, we are able to liaise with the vendors directly, the suppliers, and we are able to log calls, et cetera, and they're able to sort out issues. We have that kind of support.

It's pay-per-user licenses. We pay around 5,000 Fijian dollars for probably 50 users. The pricing is pretty good for the type of support they give us. We are not looking at anything more expensive than what we're currently paying.

Globally, it's used pretty extensively and it's regarded as one of the top three packages.

We are end-users.

I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm using.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. We are happy with the product.