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Abnormal Security vs Barracuda Email Protection comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Abnormal Security
Ranking in Email Security
12th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (6th)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Security Incident Response (6th), Office 365 Protection (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Abnormal Security is 3.2%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.3%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Email Protection2.3%
Abnormal Security3.2%
Other94.5%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

ChrisBrown5 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Information Technology Technical Services at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Automated threat detection that protects against corruption with minimal intervention
Abnormal Security is valuable because it features an automated scoring tool that doesn't require much intervention from our team. It enhances threat detection capabilities by making the process automated and is easy to scale to our entire environment. Additionally, it protects us from being business email compromised, which is invaluable for maintaining our security.
Xavie Simons - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at Procter & Gamble
Improved email security has reduced spam, simplified encrypted mail, and strengthened user trust
The best features Barracuda Email Protection offers include good spam filtering and very good sandboxing of all links, as well as good encryption. It also has integrated logging for user management of their own spam. It has better filtering technology, so few are false positives as well, with excellent anti-spam engines and logging. It is extremely easy to install, configure, and set up, and there is excellent message tracking for folks that say they have not received an email they were expecting. Integrated logging and user management make my daily work easier because it is very easy to log in and to manage this tool, hence making it a very good tool for email protection. It also has excellent, easy-to-add designated users as site administrators, and it is competitively priced. It has a user-friendly portal, strong cloud-based features, and no additional maintenance cost, along with responsive support. Barracuda Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by handling encryption better than any other tool I have used before, which has increased our email protection significantly. Our security has also increased from forty percent to sixty-five percent, especially when dealing with all the threats that come through emails. It has been a great tool because we can handle email delays and delays on file scanning. When our partners are happy, we are very happy, and it has helped us have less time chasing bad emails. The fast implementation of encrypted mail keeps employees working with less interruption since they are happy, satisfied, and secure.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It protects us from being business email compromised, which is invaluable for maintaining our security."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"I would recommend Abnormal Security."
"Abnormal Security's AI capabilities are what we like most, as they can categorize and classify the emails, and based on the context of the email, understand if it's a graymail, a bulk mail, or a phish."
"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."
"I like Abnormal's threat protection with auto-remediation, but I also love its abuse mailbox feature, which automatically responds to the end user. That feature has a super-valuable security component and helps improve the user experience."
"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Essentials are it's a trusted name and is rated very high on review sites. It blocks high percentages of spam and junk email and it's in the cloud. They have hardware appliances, but this is in the cloud. The solution is very effective at blocking malware and blocking spam and this is what we are looking for. There's not a whole lot of complexity, you want a solution that is very good at blocking out all of the unwanted emails."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft. If someone deletes something in Office 365, we can get it back within Office 365, but it's difficult. Barracuda is much easier. There is a lot less management needed using Barracuda. The management becomes much easier for Office 365 and it's no longer on-prem, so there are fewer hours managing on-prem devices, servers, and things of that nature. We don't have network appliances anymore for the backup of our information."
"Barracuda Email Protection has positively impacted my client's organization by reducing almost 50 to 60 percent of phishing emails, making it more secure and allowing us to feel safe from phishing incidents."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"I don't see any other email security solution that stacks up against them."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
 

Cons

"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"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 pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"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."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"For Abnormal Security as a product, I would say probably somewhere around a seven, as there are some other areas where they can improve to achieve a higher rating."
"There could be more selectable options and more granular selections available."
"Considering it integrates with Azure, I would like to be able to effectively set up policies where people are by default included in certain settings."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"They can still improve."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"Regarding the price, I find it pretty expensive. It is not even reasonable; it is pretty expensive because we are dealing with the South African market and our currency is not as powerful as the dollar."
"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Barracuda Email Protection is that it is a bit high."
"The customer service and support could be improved if the support were available directly in Europe. Currently, the support is often managed from India, so we sometimes need to wait due to the time zone difference. It would be quicker and better if the support were provided by European staff."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing appears fair, and they demonstrate a genuine willingness to work with us on it."
"Abnormal Security, on the other hand, provides the same level of functionality for just over $60,000 – that's half the price!"
"Overall, we'd certainly prefer lower pricing, but Abnormal Security doesn't seem unreasonable compared to similar offerings in the market."
"The license is based on the user count, so the number of users that have an email address in the organization."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"We pay annually. They never charged us for anything else. And they were quite a bit under that $20,000 mark. It was $19,074. And they've been pretty good about not skyrocketing the price or anything like that. It has gone up. It's gone up to $24,000 in 2020."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"The product is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Abnormal Security?
I find the pricing to be favorable, but I did not disclose the exact cost.
What needs improvement with Abnormal Security?
Ease of use is important, and Abnormal Security's responsiveness and ability to deliver solutions when issues arise are crucial. However, there is always room for improvement, as achieving a perfec...
What is your primary use case for Abnormal Security?
The main use case for Abnormal Security is as a spam filter and for mail hygiene. This use case is for the finance industry.
What do you like most about Barracuda Email Protection?
Barracuda Email Protection is easy to deploy and maintain. It doesn't require a specialized resource to manage this tool.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Email Protection?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Barracuda Email Protection is that it is a bit high. However, when I look at the service and the features, I am satisfied with it.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Protection?
Considering it integrates with Azure, I would like to be able to effectively set up policies where people are by default included in certain settings. For instance, for email quarantine, I can't se...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Foot Lcoker, Xerox, Liberty Mutual, Mattel, Boston Scientific
ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about Abnormal Security vs. Barracuda Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.