Barracuda Email Protection vs Sophos Email comparison

Barracuda Networks and Sophos are both solutions in the Email Security category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.8, while Sophos is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0. Barracuda Networks holds a 2.5% mindshare in Email Security, compared to Sophos’s 2.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Sophos users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Barracuda Email Protection and Sophos Email compete in the email protection domain. Barracuda Email Protection has an advantage in ease of deployment and customer support, while Sophos Email stands out with advanced features and higher ROI.

Features: Barracuda Email Protection offers robust spam filtering, data loss prevention, and a user-friendly experience with easy configuration. Sophos Email provides advanced threat protection, detailed reporting, and real-time threat intelligence to suit complex security needs.

Room for Improvement: Barracuda Email Protection could improve its reporting features and enhance integration with other security solutions. Additionally, its initial pricing might not suit larger enterprises prioritizing extensive features. Meanwhile, Sophos Email's deployment can be complex, and occasionally users experience false positives in threat detection, which could be refined. Improving the simplicity of integration with existing infrastructure is another area for enhancement for Sophos.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda Email Protection is known for quick deployment and responsive support, making it favorable for businesses seeking ease of use. Sophos Email, although more complex to deploy, offers comprehensive support and a thorough onboarding process to manage its advanced features effectively.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda Email Protection is often cost-effective with a lower initial setup cost, providing a quick ROI for smaller businesses. Conversely, Sophos Email requires a higher upfront investment but delivers substantial long-term value and higher ROI, particularly for enterprises focusing on comprehensive security measures.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Email Protection vs. Sophos Email Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Sophos Email

February 2025

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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

Microsoft Defender for Offi...

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 13.1%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.5%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Email is 2.3%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Security

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja

Head of Department of Network Communications at Eko electricity

Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis

The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.

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LeeMiles

Director, Information Technology at St Albans High School For Girls

Very good threat protection, spam filtering, and cloud backups

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 set up a global setting. Users must go through an induction session where I guide them in configuring quarantine alerts rather than having default settings based on group membership. This seems like an oversight since they already use Active Directory details. They should assign policies based on group membership, which configures these settings by default.

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NaveedAli

Senior manager IT infrastructure at Machine Learning 1 Limited ·

Provides good identity proxy features, but sandboxing and spam control features could be improved

Sophos gives you a feature set to manage your on-premises firewall on the cloud. I just integrated my on-premises firewall into the cloud, and I can manage the tool through the cloud as well if needed. I recommend using Sophos Email as a proxy. For email gateways, I advise choosing mature products with rich feature sets, like Trend Micro or CrowdStrike. The solution's integration with other tools is very simple. I easily integrated Sophos Email with my Active Directory. My organization needs a WAF with a limited feature set, which we use through Sophos. Purchasing additional WAF will be costly, but I get sandboxing and WAF features free of cost with Sophos, which is included in the license. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."

"The product is not resource-intensive."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."

"The initial setup was easy."

"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."

"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."

"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 pros

"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."

"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."

"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."

"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."

"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."

"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 most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."

More Barracuda Email Protection pros

"I found the user interface friendly."

"The filtering capabilities are precious and far superior to others I've used. It's intuitive in what it pushes to quarantine, and users can quickly review, free, or delete items without needing an administrator, making it ideal for a multi-user environment."

"The deployment is very easy. It's quite straightforward."

"The solution's identity proxy feature is very good and reliable."

"The platform is scalable when installed on server-based systems."

"Endpoint and server protection are very effective."

"The tool is a good solution for protecting against email attacks and monitoring networks. It supports our compliance efforts and is easy to use and stable."

"The most valuable feature is its email security."

More Sophos Email pros

Cons

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could improve by giving customers information on techniques to prevent threats. For example, information about best practices on how to protect their own devices against hackers and scammers, such as educational information or training. This would help others have a better understanding of cyber security. Additionally, there can be more security features added."

"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's Mac functionality requires improvement to deliver the same level of protection found on Windows devices."

"There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."

"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."

"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."

"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."

"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 cons

"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."

"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."

"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."

"The product must enable bulk user management."

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

"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."

"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."

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

More Barracuda Email Protection cons

"Sophos Email has few improvements to implement, including the handling of incoming emails in the systems. It needs to add additional feature that helps in enhancing the scanning processes of these emails. While adding these features, it should work towards improving the current features also."

"The solution has not found a way to block certain kinds of phishing emails."

"Sophos Email needs to increase the number of promos."

"Sophos Email can improve security."

"A lot of legit emails get quarantined."

"Email installation could be more user-friendly so that it can be done without involving the partner"

"Email installation could be more user-friendly so that it can be done without involving the partner."

"Their technical support is slow to respond."

More Sophos Email cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."

"For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."

"The pricing has become expensive."

"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."

"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."

"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."

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

"The product is expensive."

"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."

"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."

"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

"It is an expensive solution. On a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price, I rate the pricing a seven."

"The product is cheaper compared to other solutions."

"Sophos Email is a little expensive for us, but it's necessary. We have a subscription and renew it every three years."

"The tool's pricing is medium."

"The pricing is affordable, so I’d rate it around a four out of ten on the pricing scale. We pay about fifty pounds a month, including hardware so that costs may differ without it."

"It falls somewhere in the middle—it's not excessively expensive nor very cheap."

"Licensing is paid on a yearly basis."

"The pricing is quite reasonable, with a fixed cost and no additional charges."

More Sophos Email pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?

Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?

I don't have detailed specifics on pricing, setup cost, or licensing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?

I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost.

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

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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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Sophos Email?

The solution's identity proxy feature is very good and reliable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos Email?

Sophos Email pricing is a bit high, especially since I purchase through a partner, and they sell it at a higher price...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Sophos Email?

Email installation could be more user-friendly so that it can be done without involving the partner. If made more use...

See all answers

Comparisons

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 14% of the time

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 7% of the time

Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 5% of the time

Mimecast Email Security vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiMail vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Competitors

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 23% of the time

Abnormal Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 5% of the time

Avanan vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 5% of the time

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 4% of the time

More Barracuda Email Protection Competitors

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs Sophos Email

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiMail vs Sophos Email

Compared 7% of the time

Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection vs Sophos Email

Compared 7% of the time

Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs Sophos Email

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Secure Email vs Sophos Email

Compared 5% of the time

More Sophos Email Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Office 365

March 2025

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 report

Download Microsoft Defender for Office 365 product report

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection

March 2025

Download Barracuda Email Protection product report

Buyer's Guide

Sophos Email

March 2025

Download Sophos Email product report

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365

Barracuda Essentials

Sophos Email Security

Overview

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect organizations against advanced threats in their email, collaboration, and productivity environments. It combines the power of Microsoft's threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to provide real-time protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other malicious attacks.

With Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations can safeguard their email communication by detecting and blocking malicious links, attachments, and unsafe email content. It employs advanced anti-phishing capabilities to identify and prevent sophisticated phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information or compromise user credentials.

This solution also offers robust protection against malware and ransomware. It leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze email attachments and URLs in real-time, identifying and blocking malicious content before it reaches users' inboxes. Additionally, it provides advanced threat-hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to proactively investigate and respond to potential threats.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 goes beyond email protection and extends its security features to other collaboration tools like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. It scans files and documents stored in these platforms, ensuring that they are free from malware and other malicious content. It also provides visibility into user activities, helping organizations detect and mitigate insider threats.

Furthermore, this solution offers rich reporting and analytics capabilities, providing organizations with insights into their security posture and threat landscape. It enables security administrators to monitor and manage security incidents, track trends, and take proactive measures to enhance their overall security posture.

Microsoft

The popularity of Microsoft 365 means criminals test and design their attacks to bypass its native security features. And that means you need additional layers of defense. With Advanced Threat Protection enabled, Barracuda uses multiple layers of detection, including signature, static, and behavioral analysis, along with CPU-emulation sandboxing to accurately detect and block zero-hour targeted attacks and ransomware.

Traditional email gateways use static rules and policies—reputation analysis, block lists, and malicious payloads—to determine if an email is malicious.

Barracuda protects your Microsoft 365 inbox against evasive threats with a powerful AI engine that learns the unique communication patterns within your organization through access to internal and historical emails. Once it understands what legitimate emails looks like for each user, it can detect anomalies that signal malicious intent. This context-based detection is more effective at blocking targeted attacks, which are designed to bypass traditional rule-based email security.

Barracuda Networks

Sophos Email is a comprehensive email security solution designed to protect organizations from advanced threats and data loss. It offers robust protection against malware, phishing attacks, and spam, ensuring that only legitimate emails reach users' inboxes.

With advanced threat intelligence and machine learning algorithms, it can detect and block sophisticated attacks in real-time. Additionally, it provides encryption and data loss prevention capabilities to safeguard sensitive information.

The solution is easy to deploy and manage, with a user-friendly interface and centralized control. Sophos Email offers seamless integration with popular email platforms, ensuring uninterrupted communication while maintaining security.

With its comprehensive features and proactive approach, Sophos Email is a reliable choice for organizations looking to enhance their email security.

Sophos

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems

Del Monte Foods, Terra Verde, spicerhaart, RIVERLITE, Dataprise, SureBridge, Reed's School, Sayfol International School

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Sophos Email

February 2025

Free Report: Barracuda Email Protection vs. Sophos Email

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