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Avanan vs Barracuda Email Protection comparison

 

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

Avanan
Ranking in Email Security
16th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (28th)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (2nd), Security Incident Response (7th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Avanan is 2.9%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Barracuda Email Protection3.3%
Avanan2.9%
Other93.8%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Sherif Fouad - PeerSpot reviewer
Group ICT Manager at a mining and metals company with 501-1,000 employees
Have raised concerns about scanning engines and automation while continuing to rely on layered protection strategies
Incident response is something that requires more development from Barracuda's side. Regarding room for improvement for Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response, for the product, developing or improving the scanning engine is important, but it's a bit tricky. I know that they are working on it heavily. The difference between Barracuda and Sophos is Sophos focused heavily on cybersecurity while Barracuda tried to increase their product portfolio. Sometimes, in some cases, this might end up with their teams being unfocused or a bit thin and stretched and super busy. However, there is room for improvement. The product is great. The teams that are supporting are great. But there is always room for improvement. Even if you have a product that you would give a rating of 10 out of 10, there is always room for improvement. The day we stop improving is the day we die. Regarding the scanning engine, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response has a very good feature where you can create automated flows for how to handle specific emails that are detected as incidents. This needs a bit of an improvement. That's the only component of Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response that I believe requires improvement.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of installation and the AI capacity of the product are valuable."
"Email Attachment Protection detects any insecure files and quickly blocks them to prevent the spread of viruses to other secure documents."
"When we don't understand some functionalities, the customer support staff responds fast to our calls and provides immediate action."
"It is simple to deploy this platform and interact with the set features."
"The threat detection tools enable us to ascertain malware and phishing messages across the email network infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its Anti-Malware solution for Office 365, and box.com."
"Email inspection has saved many employees from spam attacks and viruses from unauthorized sources."
"Email encryption enhances end to end security of any data before it passes through the networking system."
"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"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."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."
"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
 

Cons

"There are times when we have false positives."
"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 user experience must be improved."
"The system response in a slow computing device affects performance when sending and receiving emails."
"It is complicated for new users unfamiliar with the modern cloud networking infrastructure."
"Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments."
"It should also offer a quick backup in case any email is wrongly quarantined or deleted to ensure no data loss."
"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."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"The product must enable bulk user management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Avanan’s price is comparable to Barracuda."
"Good pricing arrangement as an SaaS offering."
"The product is not the cheapest in the market."
"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 pricing of Avanan is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"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."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Avanan?
Spam protection is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with Avanan?
Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments. Barracuda provides backup and retention of emails and Microsoft 365’s backup and retention services. I've brought this up with the vendor. They told me t...
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?
Their list price is too high, but in India, the selling price is affordable at around $10 per user per year. Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers t...
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

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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.