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Avanan 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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Avanan
Ranking in Email Security
22nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (41st)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Security Incident Response (6th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Avanan is 2.2%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.8%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Email Protection2.8%
Cloudflare One1.6%
Avanan2.2%
Other93.4%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
Robert Melendez - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President Information Technology at Makeready
Enhances email security and has a very simple and easy-to-use UI
Spam protection is the most valuable feature. We have implemented the tool to enhance our email security. It helps prevent phishing attacks. The anomaly detection capabilities are baked into the security platform. The product integrates wonderfully with Microsoft 365. It's built right on a cloud platform and works almost natively. The solution has a very simple and easy-to-use UI. The tool appears extremely powerful and has a good solid feature set. It catches things that are bad for my environment. The user interface is good the way it is. If the solution continues down that path, I see no problems with the way it is going. It feels like a mature product.
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

"Cloudflare Access is part of the Zero Trust philosophy."
"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."
"It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it."
"Enables me to work from two locations."
"I'm very satisfied with the environment and the dashboard."
"It is a stable solution."
"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."
"Cloudflare is simple to use."
"Avanan has been an everlasting security solution for our email and messaging applications."
"Easy to use for non-technical users."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its effectiveness; when scanning incoming emails for threats it can, in an automated fashion, quarantine suspicious attachments."
"If we look at four to five years ago, we had close to six or eight people click a link in an email per month. Now, we are probably down to about five or six clicks a year, if not less."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its Anti-Malware solution for Office 365, and box.com."
"I like Avanan's SmartDLP module. It's seamless, and the administrative overhead is low. We aren't a very sophisticated operation. We just want to reduce our exposure, so we find ThreatCloud helpful. Avanan's acquisition by Check Point was beneficial for them."
"Spam protection is the most valuable feature."
"The customizable rules allow you to change aspects."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"Threat Protection feature is a good tool and a very efficient tool."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"We found Barracuda to be more efficient, easy to use, and customizable."
"The most valuable aspect includes attempts to spoof or compromise domains from external sources."
"The main benefits Barracuda Email Protection provides for us are saving time and money because we don't run into any kind of attack or disruption in the mail service that we may face, including ransomware attacks."
"The most valuable feature is the gateway."
 

Cons

"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."
"They don't have a person to provide support for customers using the solution under their free plan."
"Feedback could be enhanced."
"Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions."
"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"Familiarization with performance for new teams may take a long time."
"Being cloud first and because we are in the movie business, we use a lot of Macintoshes. So, there is absolutely no reason for us to have Active Directory whatsoever. However, if you are using Office 365, you must have Active Directory in order to reset passwords. Even though we have a single sign-on provider, we must have Azure Active Directory for Office 365, which is really stupid. As a cloud application, you would think that I don't need Active Directory, which I don't need for anything else except Office 365. We have one server inside that space to help us manage Active Directory just for Office 365. This is a very sore point, but it is what it is."
"They need a little bit of improvement in AI logic, as sometimes, it quarantines frequent mailers as spam or suspects."
"Sometimes it seemed like the allow list wasn't working. I've created many allow list rules however, they still seem to be blocked; the same is true with the blocked list rules."
"The cost is higher for SMEs, however, the pricing and billing criteria can be lessened to accommodate more willing customers."
"In Avanan, the email channel is one of the channels where data leakage happens, and they need to consider it from a DLP perspective."
"The customer service team could come up with clear tutorials on how to use this platform to help new teams."
"There are some things that they can't remediate. The honest thing is nobody can right now because of the nature of how some of the secure email platforms work."
"Regarding the threat protection feature in Barracuda Email Protection, it does not help to manage threats or sophisticated threats."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"Customers chose a different product after experiencing a problem when they upgraded the firmware, which caused the system to restart multiple times during working hours."
"I wish the interface of Barracuda Email Protection could have worked in a more responsive way, as sometimes I feel it is slow or laggy when I try to interact with it."
"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."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"Sometimes, in some cases, this might end up with their teams being unfocused or a bit thin and stretched and super busy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"Having the flexibility and modeling to do the pricing that best fits the needs of the organization is incredibly ideal. That is what Avanan does. They know exactly how many users are using it, etc. We can tune the invoicing associated with how we are using the product so we can charge it back to the shows appropriately."
"The product is not the cheapest in the market."
"Avanan’s price is comparable to Barracuda."
"The pricing of Avanan is reasonable."
"Good pricing arrangement as an SaaS offering."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"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 price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Email Protection?
I would say the price for Barracuda Email Protection is very nice; the solution is not expensive.
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 defa...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
No data available
Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
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 Avanan vs. Barracuda Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.