Barracuda Email Protection vs Sophos Email comparison

Barracuda Networks and Sophos are both solutions in the Email Security category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.8, while Sophos is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.1. Barracuda Networks holds a 3.0% mindshare in Email Security, compared to Sophos’s 2.1% 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: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection vs. Sophos Email

May 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 July 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 12.3%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Email is 2.1%, down from 2.6% 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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Ahmed_Fahmy

Operations Technical Lead at IT Supporters

Provides a powerful and simple email protection with proven management benefits

Sophos Email is integrated with Office 365 and Google Workspace. It offers anti-spam functionality, which is easy to manage and comes with documentation on how to integrate it with Office 365 and Google Workspace. It provides a defense layer for email protection, scanning every incoming and outbound email for malware and spam. It can also function temporarily as an email solution if my vendor from Office 365 or Google Workspace is out of service.

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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

"Defender for 365 is a comprehensive cloud-based solution. The value of the cloud is that you aren't alone. Threat intelligence and analytics are shared in the cloud. We don't have to find the solution alone. If you face an unknown threat with traditional solutions like Trend Micro and Symantec, you need to open a case and send your information to them to analyze forensically and identify the source of the attack."

"It has significantly decreased my time to detection and response."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is its spam filter."

"The solution is very easy to use. All you have to do is to assign the license to the end-user and it's done. The customer will only have the feature activated, and the solution will monitor the emails to determine if they are a threat or not."

"The initial setup was easy."

"The good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."

"One of the best features of the tool is its capability to aggregate insights from different workloads, basically from the Office 365 and endpoints part."

"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Defender for Office 365 at a ten."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 pros

"The archiving and search features are very good."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."

More Barracuda Email Protection pros

"The solution protects users from phishing links and spam."

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

"I have found Sophos Email to be scalable."

"The anti-malware, risk scanning has been pretty spot on."

"I found the user interface friendly."

"Endpoint and server protection are very effective."

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

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

More Sophos Email pros

Cons

"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."

"Specifically, within Microsoft Defender for Office 365, I want it to improve the DLP capabilities."

"The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."

"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data."

"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."

"Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities."

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

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 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."

"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."

"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."

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

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

"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."

"I would like to see better integration with other products."

More Barracuda Email Protection cons

"There have been some issues with compatibility and effectiveness, particularly when integrating it with our firewall. The main challenge has been email protection, especially due to compatibility issues and difficulties with log access and email relay configuration."

"The installation of Sophos Email could be easier. It's a bit difficult because setting up the email virtually requires some bit of technical knowledge."

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

"Enhancing rule creation and customization features would provide users with greater control over their email security settings."

"Sophos Email could improve DLP features."

"The tool's integration becomes an issue when the internet connection is weak."

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

"Sophos Email can improve mail security."

More Sophos Email cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has become expensive."

"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."

"Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."

"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."

"It's a user-base subscription."

"Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."

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

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 pricing and cost advice

"Barracuda licensing model is good."

"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

More Barracuda Email Protection pricing and cost advice

"I rate the price of Sophos Email a four out of five."

"The solution is expensive."

"Licensing is paid on a yearly basis."

"The platform is inexpensive. It offers a cost-effective licensing model. We purchase its yearly license."

"The pricing could improve by having additional discounts. For example, when customers buy have more than 50 or more users, there should be additional discounts."

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

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

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

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

19%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

University

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

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...

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

Microsoft is quite affordable with a lot of features available for any size organization.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?

Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS recor...

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...

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What needs improvement with Sophos Email?

Sophos Email does not work with split delivery. If I have a domain with 100 mailboxes and want to protect only 50, it...

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Comparisons

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 13% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

Mimecast Email Security vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 5% of the time

Abnormal Security vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 5% of the time

Avanan vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Compared 3% of the time

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Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 18% of the time

Abnormal Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 8% of the time

Avanan vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 6% of the time

Mimecast Email Security vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs Barracuda Email Protection

Compared 4% of the time

More Barracuda Email Protection Competitors

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs Sophos Email

Compared 10% of the time

Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection vs Sophos Email

Compared 7% of the time

Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs Sophos Email

Compared 6% of the time

Fortinet FortiMail 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

June 2025

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 report

Download Microsoft Defender for Office 365 product report

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Email Protection

June 2025

Download Barracuda Email Protection product report

Buyer's Guide

Sophos Email

June 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

May 2025

Free Report: Barracuda Email Protection vs. Sophos Email

Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Sophos Email and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

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