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Barracuda Email Protection vs Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Email Security (10th), Security Incident Response (10th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Microsoft Purview Communica...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
GRC (16th), Digital Risk Protection (11th), Microsoft Security Suite (32nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Corporate Compliance solutions, they serve different purposes. Barracuda Email Protection is designed for Email Archiving and holds a mindshare of 12.4%, down 20.7% compared to last year.
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance, on the other hand, focuses on GRC, holds 1.2% mindshare, down 1.6% since last year.
Email Archiving Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Email Protection12.4%
Mimecast Email and Collaboration Threat Protection15.4%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36515.1%
Other57.1%
Email Archiving
GRC Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance1.2%
RSA Archer5.9%
MetricStream3.2%
Other89.7%
GRC
 

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.
CP
System administrator
Facilitates compliance and records management but needs user-friendly enhancements
The features I appreciate the most in Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance include the ability to build cases, give them dates, and find them based on the notes that I left behind. The importance of Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance building taking into account critical regulations from around the world is very significant. It helps us stay up to date. While I don't need the functionality, Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and security platform environments, including AWS and GCP. It takes into account critical regulations from around the world. It helps us stay up to date with what's going on. We can show compliance in real-time. It's very easy to pull records. The time it saves is very useful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft."
"The investment in Barracuda Email Protection is quite good for us because we see the value of money on it, as we are saving a lot with Barracuda Email Protection, going from paying close to 300,000 to now sitting at 100,000."
"I don't see any other email security solution that stacks up against them."
"This is one of the easiest, safest, and most secure solutions for security and email archival."
"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."
"With Barracuda Email Protection, the features I find most valuable are spam filtering, as it is primarily used for spam protection."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"Customer support is excellent."
"Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance helps with extra collaboration and ensures communication is within the framework."
"The features I appreciate the most in Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance include the ability to build cases, give them dates, and find them based on the notes that I left behind."
"The time it saves is very useful."
 

Cons

"Barracuda Email Protection can be improved by enhancing the reporting feature."
"The product must enable bulk user management."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"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."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"Sometimes, in some cases, this might end up with their teams being unfocused or a bit thin and stretched and super busy."
"Monitoring and compliance for web applications could be improved."
"Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance can be improved by having more tutorials available for those who aren't used to using this platform."
"Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance can be improved by having more tutorials available for those who aren't used to using this platform."
"The product should incorporate more automation with the help of AI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"The product is 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 solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise13
No data available
 

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?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I have not seen any higher costs. I find that Barracuda Email Protection has a very good licensing model, providing capable features at a very good and...
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 needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance?
I was talking with some engineer from Microsoft about how we can audit our web page. They create or add to Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance that part, the Layer seven of the OSI model, to...
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance?
Overall, I rate Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance at a nine. I highly recommend it to anyone due to its robust system and valuable resources for IT security, risk assessment, and data mana...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance?
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is a bit expensive, $500 per license, but it is cheaper compared to products like ComplyAd, GeoComply, and ComplyAdvantage.
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Mimecast, Barracuda Networks and others in Email Archiving. Updated: May 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.