Barracuda Email Protection vs Google Vault comparison

Barracuda Networks and Google are both solutions in the Email Archiving category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while Google is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.5. Barracuda Networks holds a 15.1% mindshare in EA, compared to Google’s 5.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Google users who would recommend it.

Barracuda Email Protection

Read 19 Barracuda Email Protection reviews

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648 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google Vault

Read 13 Google Vault reviews

1,914 Views
345 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Barracuda Email Protection

Google Vault

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

Google Vault and Barracuda Email Protection compete in data protection and email security. Google Vault is more cost-effective, while Barracuda Email Protection offers superior security features.

Features: Google Vault provides robust email archiving, compliance management, and powerful search capabilities. It enables data retention and supports data export. Barracuda Email Protection features advanced threat detection, email filtering, and AI tools for impersonation protection. It also offers a user-friendly interface and strong integration with Microsoft 365.

Room for Improvement: Google Vault could enhance support options and expand its feature set beyond basic compliance functions. It might also benefit from improved user guidance during set-up. Barracuda Email Protection could improve policy customization flexibility, reporting capabilities, and integration with security awareness platforms for comprehensive user education.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Google Vault is easy to deploy within Google Workspace, benefiting from seamless integration, although support is limited to online resources. Barracuda Email Protection offers flexible deployment options and excellent customer support, enhancing user experience and satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: Google Vault is budget-friendly with good ROI through cost-effective compliance features. Barracuda Email Protection has higher costs but provides high ROI due to its advanced security functionalities and comprehensive protection features.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Email Protection vs. Google Vault Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Google Vault

February 2026

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Helped 881,665 peers since 2012

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

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Security (12th), Security Incident Response (9th), Office 365 Protection (4th)

Google Vault

Ranking in Email Archiving

4th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

eDiscovery (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Email Archiving category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 15.1%, down from 27.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Vault is 5.5%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Archiving Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Barracuda Email Protection	15.1%
Google Vault	5.5%
Other	79.4%

Email Archiving

Featured Reviews

Sherif Fouad

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.

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Rahul Gill

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The archiving and search features are very good."

"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 is straightforward to set up."

"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."

"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."

"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."

"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."

More Barracuda Email Protection pros

"Overall, I would rate Google Vault a ten out of ten."

"The audit part of the tool is the most useful for me."

"My impression is that the initial setup process is not that difficult."

"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."

"It is a very stable solution...It is a very scalable solution."

"The most valuable feature of Google Vault is its reliability."

"Data retention is very valuable to us."

"Google Vault acts as a great method for retrieving files from Google Drive and Gmail."

More Google Vault pros

Cons

"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."

"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."

"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."

"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."

"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."

"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."

More Barracuda Email Protection cons

"My personal opinion is that Google Vault could improve if they could have a similar version to Microsoft 365 where you can have an eDiscovery manager account. With this, you can separate a regular person from an organization and just transfer the specific files."

"So, when doing a search, perhaps in some instances when you use terms, the information is not very precise in the sense that I'm not getting what I'm looking for. And in some instances, the information, not all the time, but in some instances, it might not be accurate. For example, when doing a search, if you use too many terms, it might not return any results."

"The price of the solution could improve and the search could be easier."

"The knowledge base is not as in-depth as it should be."

"Customer service has been a bit lacking."

"Although it does a good job of searching through data and exporting it, I feel that Google Vault should have more export options available to the user. As a reseller, our customers demand a lot from their Google products, and exporting is one area where there's a lot of improvement needed."

"One thing I've noticed is that it splits the data files into multiple parts, like the PFT files. For example, when there is a large data size of any account, the backup process splits it into many files. This can be confusing and not very efficient when trying to manage the backups."

"It would be nice if Google would let us download the data in different formats."

More Google Vault cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."

"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."

"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."

"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."

"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."

"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 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."

More Barracuda Email Protection pricing and cost advice

"If you have Google Enterprise, then Google Vault is free to use."

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

"Google Vault comes as part of a package deal for us."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	3

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Vault?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 26% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 17% of the time

Mimecast Advanced Email Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 12% of the time

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 9% of the time

Abnormal Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 4% of the time

More Barracuda Email Protection Competitors

Microsoft Purview eDiscovery vs Google Vault

Compared 59% of the time

Barracuda Cloud Archiving Service vs Google Vault

Compared 9% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Google Vault

Compared 5% of the time

Proofpoint Intelligent Compliance Platform vs Google Vault

Compared 5% of the time

Mimecast Mailbox Continuity vs Google Vault

Compared 4% of the time

More Google Vault Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection

January 2026

Download Barracuda Email Protection product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Vault

January 2026

Download Google Vault product report

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response

No data available

Overview

Barracuda Email Protection provides advanced security with features like AI protection and cloud-based spam blocking, making it essential for managing email risks effectively.

Barracuda Email Protection stands out with its robust malware detection, ease of use, and seamless integration with Microsoft 365, serving enterprises by simplifying email threat management. Despite its efficient spam filtering and straightforward setup, users seek improvements in email encryption, third-party vendor integration, report details, and more streamlined performance. Organizations leverage its AI capabilities for phishing detection and employee training, allowing for automated operations and comprehensive threat protection. Its archiving, search, and hands-off management are crucial for companies lacking extensive security resources, ensuring persistent email access and secure practices.

What are the key features of Barracuda Email Protection?

Cloud-Based Spam Blocking: Reduces unwanted emails effectively.
Impersonation Detection: Identifies phishing attempts seamlessly.
Malware Detection: Protects against malicious threats.
AI Protection: Enhances security with intelligent analysis.
Microsoft 365 Integration: Ensures smooth operation within existing systems.
Customizable Rules: Allows tailored security protocols.

What are the main benefits and ROI of Barracuda Email Protection?

Time Savings: Automates and streamlines email management processes.
Email Security: Maintains domain reputation by reducing spam and threats.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides a unified approach to email threats.
Central Management: Simplifies oversight with a unified console.
Reliable Support: Offers technical assistance and guidance.

In finance, healthcare, and large enterprises, Barracuda Email Protection is deployed for its reliable email archiving and retrieval, supporting compliance and data integrity. Industries benefit from its AI-powered phishing detection and employee training tools, enhancing operational security and reducing risk exposure.

Barracuda Networks

Google Vault lets you retain, hold, search, and export data to support your organization’s archiving and eDiscovery needs. Vault supports:

Email messages
Chats in classic Hangouts with history turned on and Google Talk chats that are on the record
Google Groups
Files in Google Drive and Team Drives
Conversations in Hangouts Chat

Vault is entirely web-based, so there's no need to install or maintain any software. Vault is included with G Suite Enterprise, Business, Education, or Drive Enterprise edition. (Compare editions) Or you can buy Vault licenses for an additional $5 per user, per month.

Google

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

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Google Vault

February 2026

Free Report: Barracuda Email Protection vs. Google Vault

Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Google Vault and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

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