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Barracuda Email Protection vs Google Vault 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

Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Archiving
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (10th), Security Incident Response (9th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Google Vault
Ranking in Email Archiving
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Email Archiving category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 15.1%, down from 18.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Vault is 4.6%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Archiving Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Email Protection15.1%
Google Vault4.6%
Other80.3%
Email Archiving
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Rahul Gill - PeerSpot reviewer
GWS/M365 Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Has supported data retention and export tasks while leaving room for greater automation and feature expansion
If we can have more APIs open for Google Vault, that would be great, and instead of doing it manually, it would be better to do it programmatically. I think there is an API available with Google Vault, though I'm not certain about it. I have never used Vault programmatically, but if APIs exist, then it's beneficial, and if there aren't any, we should have the capability for programmers to create some sort of scripting so they can fetch the data. I assess the export feature in Google Vault in terms of ease and efficiency as quite efficient because most of the data we want to see is available in MBOX and PST formats. If possible, I would want to see Google Vault support additional formats such as iCal, iCad, or CardDAV, which are for iPhone users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."
"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 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."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"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."
"Overall, I would rate Google Vault a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features are automatic document and email retention."
"What I appreciate about Google Vault is that one of the best features is the ability to use retention policies; it covers mail, chat groups, calendars, sites, Drive, and Google Voice, and the data will remain in Google Vault even if it gets deleted by the user accidentally or intentionally."
"Google Vault acts as a great method for retrieving files from Google Drive and Gmail."
"In my opinion, the search functionality is the best feature. With Google Vault, we can quickly search for any email within Gmail accounts. And then we can get further information, such as if you want the full header or want to know any extra details about the emails."
"You can retrieve any type of data; for example, if a user accidentally deletes data, as an admin with access to Google Vault, you can easily restore the deleted data."
"Search feature is valuable for our customers."
"Data retention is very valuable to us."
 

Cons

"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."
"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 platform's pricing needs improvement."
"Barracuda Email Protection can be improved by enhancing the reporting feature."
"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."
"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"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."
"Compared to Microsoft, they have more features in terms of compliance and retention policies."
"The knowledge base is not as in-depth as it should be."
"It would be nice if Google would let us download the data in different formats."
"eDiscovery could be improved with additional information and an easier way to retain it."
"Compared to Microsoft, they have more features in terms of compliance and retention policies."
"Google Vault lacks speed."
"Customer service has been a bit lacking."
"For us, customer service has been a bit lacking, probably with a rating of a five out of ten."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"The product is expensive."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"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."
"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."
"If you have Google Enterprise, then Google Vault is free to use."
"Google Vault is a cheaply priced product. Monthly payments are to be made towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no extra costs apart from the licensing costs attached to the solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"Last year, the price was randomly increased and our customers were really facing a challenge around this. Google launched new pricing under different plans, where formerly there were only three plans, and now there are four, each with their own separate usage allowances. I think it's good, though. The basic plan is now the Business Starter plan, and many customers find this plan very convenient and minimal in price. Overall, the pricing for all the plans is good."
"The pricing is fairly cheap."
"Google Vault comes as part of a package deal for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I think the costs of Barracuda Email Protection are acceptable because I am selling another software license for anti-spam, and I have no problem with that product.
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Vault?
There is no setup cost; it's only the pricing which one needs to pay upon subscribing to Google Vault services.
What needs improvement with Google Vault?
If we can have more APIs open for Google Vault, that would be great, and instead of doing it manually, it would be better to do it programmatically. I think there is an API available with Google Va...
What is your primary use case for Google Vault?
A few use cases for Google Vault involve using it for custodian purposes where we have to store their mails, calendars, and mostly the mails, which we have done as a custodian process in order to s...
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Broadcom, Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital, Globeflight, Maven Wave, McClatchy, NII Holdings, Safetec, Sheboygan County
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Google Vault and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.