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Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

Barracuda Networks and Microsoft are both solutions in the Anti-Malware Tools category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #56, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4. Barracuda Networks holds a 0.9% mindshare in Anti-Malware Tools, compared to Microsoft’s 9.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.
Barracuda Email Threat Scan...
Read 3 Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] reviews
  • 628 Views
  • 452 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Read 210 Microsoft Defender for Endpoint reviews
  • 32,692 Views
  • 7,192 Comparison Views
95% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] are complementary products catering to distinct security domains, with Defender excelling in endpoint security and Barracuda in email threat detection. Features: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides robust integration with Microsoft products, advanced threat intelligence, and automated investigation responses. Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] is effective at identifying hidden email threats, analyzing potential email risks, and offering detailed threat evaluations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint benefits from seamless deployment in Microsoft environments and broad support structures. Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] offers straightforward deployment in email security contexts with focused customer guidance.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers cost-efficient solutions, particularly advantageous for enterprises using multiple Microsoft services, delivering high ROI through its extensive capabilities. Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] involves investment in specific services but provides substantial value with precise email threat detection, ideal for targeted security objectives.

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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

Barracuda Email Threat Scan...
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
56th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Anti-Malware Tools category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] is 0.9%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 9.1%, down from 17.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Anti-Malware Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint9.1%
Barracuda Email Threat Scanner0.9%
Other90.0%
Anti-Malware Tools
 

Featured Reviews

JM
Juan Mata
Manager, Information Technology at Friendly House
A highly scalable and easy-to-learn product that blocks phishing and spam emails
The product must improve the features associated with creating a blacklist. Currently, to add a content block, I have to go to a different screen. It seems cumbersome. The solution sells Impersonation as a separate product. I don’t see why it cannot be in the same product like other vendors have.
Read full review
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Robert Arbuckle
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.
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 main benefit that I am getting from this solution is that it filters almost 95% of my spam mail. Some spam mails bypass Barracuda Email Threat Scanner, but when I add those domains or addresses to the filter list, they get blocked. Some users on my premises do not understand which mail attachments or links should be opened. By filtering with Barracuda Email Threat Scanner, we are not getting any type of phishing mails. So, our infrastructure is safer, and as an IT person, I feel relaxed."
"It was easy to learn the product."
"The most valuable feature of Barracuda Email Threat Scanner is the security it provides by delaying the delivery of suspicious emails until they can be reviewed inside the Barracuda control panel."
"The patch updates and version updates are very good. Those happen on an automated basis whenever I'm connecting to the organization network, either through LAN or through the VPN."
"The most valuable aspect lies in its automation capabilities, particularly within security automation."
"I like the simplicity of the portal and the integration with Microsoft Intune. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy to use and implement."
"The solution has good performance, I have not seen a problem."
"Integration is my favorite feature because it is easy to have all insights and all alerts in one platform."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that it is embedded into the Windows system. Additionally, the performance is good and simple to maintain."
"We are able to productively integrate with existing on-prem, hybrid, or cloud applications."
"You have endpoint security to keep your devices safe. That's the feature that we're interested in."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint pros
 

Cons

"If the price were lower, perhaps we could purchase our own."
"We had an incident last month where the PCs of one or two colleagues, who were outside of our factory and were using a defined network, got infected by some kind of malware. From their PCs, more than 1,000 mails were produced per hour, causing spamming on our mail server. Barracuda blocked the full mail communication. Only one to two accounts were compromised, and for that, Barracuda blocked all incoming and outgoing mails. It created a great problem for other users and our office activities. Our server was blocked for three days, which we did not expect. Technically, only one or two accounts should be blocked. When a domain or IP is blocked, communication becomes tough. It may be a configuration issue at our provider's end, where there was a mistake in configuring Barracuda. It could also be a problem related to Barracuda."
"The product must improve the features associated with creating a blacklist."
"I have accounts for administrators and corporate employees, but I also have accounts for students. I can't split these types of accounts. I need a separate configuration for both... I need to research how I can get alerts for only the administrative machines."
"The solution should be updated by Microsoft with new features from time to time."
"Windows Firewall is integrated with Windows Defender. Over the last few days, I have had a problem with defining a wildcard on Windows Firewall. For example, I wanted to pull out the connection of my program and install a software package with a lot of executable files. I wanted to prevent it from accessing the internet. I could not select executables by using a wildcard. I had to select a single executable with its full name."
"One thing that was lacking in Defender was web filtering. Its web filtering wasn't as comprehensive. Sophos was a little bit better than Defender for blocking URLs or installing programs."
"Microsoft Defender in the basic form is not very useful for managing the security environment. The free version is not capable of covering the needs of centralized management, EDR, and behavioral analysis. If you don't have the commercial version, you can't have centralized management and set up the policies and other things. Each client is a standalone installation, which is not useful for security in an enterprise model."
"I would like to be able to set up any kind of protection I want in the firewall, any IP address or any number."
"The anti-ransomware features need to be improved upon."
"What I think can be improved on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that the whitelisting abilities are pitiful, and the understanding of how you go about doing that by the support techs that you speak with is really bad, so that I think is an area where Microsoft Defender for Endpoint needs improvement; the understanding and support of that and what actually works is pretty buggy."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Barracuda Email Threat Scanner is provided by our IT service provider, who also provides all the support. The licensing fee that we pay to our provider is $200 per month, that is, $1 per user. There is no additional cost. Before taking the subscription from our provider, I researched the market for Barracuda. The cost is between $5,000 to $8,000 for three years. After that, the same cost is there for renewal. If you have 200 to 500 users, it is better to take a subscription from a provider. If you have more than 500 users, then you can own the Barracuda server through the cloud or on-premises deployments. It is costly for a lesser number of users. If you increase the usage or the number of users, then the overall cost decreases. They can reduce the cost of Barracuda Email Threat Scanner for a small number of users. We could not and would not have used this solution if we had not got the renting or subscription option."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The subscription is part of Windows, so we don't have to pay anything extra for this product."
"The price was a problem for me three years ago, but they improved their E3, E5, and a la carte licensing. In other words, you have to get all of E5. That used to be a problem because you had E3, Defender, and guardrails, but you needed an E5 license to get the management suite and the analytics. It's more flexible now. You can switch from a la carte to the entire suite when it starts to make sense. It's becoming more economically competitive to go that route."
"When customers haven't deployed the solution and don't have licenses, it can be expensive to start from scratch."
"I do not have to purchase antivirus solutions anymore because Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is integrated into Windows and comes free."
"There is no license needed, the solution comes with Microsoft Windows."
"There is not a license required for this particular solution."
"It is so expensive. It isn't cheaper than McAfee or other solutions."
"This solution is part of an enterprise license we have."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Performing Arts
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise92
 

Questions from the Community

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How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
See all answers
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
See all answers
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

Huntress Managed EDR vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] Logo
Huntress Managed EDR vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL]
Compared 21% of the time
CrowdStrike Falcon vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] Logo
CrowdStrike Falcon vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL]
Compared 15% of the time
TitanHQ SpamTitan vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] Logo
TitanHQ SpamTitan vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL]
Compared 14% of the time
Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] Logo
Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL]
Compared 11% of the time
VirusTotal vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] Logo
VirusTotal vs Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL]
Compared 9% of the time
More Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] Competitors
HP Wolf Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Logo
HP Wolf Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Compared 5% of the time
Symantec Endpoint Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Logo
Symantec Endpoint Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Compared 5% of the time
CrowdStrike Falcon vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Logo
CrowdStrike Falcon vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Compared 4% of the time
F-Secure Total vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Logo
F-Secure Total vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Compared 4% of the time
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Logo
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Compared 3% of the time
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Anti-Malware Tools
January 2026
Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] reportDownload Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] product report
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
January 2026
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint reportDownload Microsoft Defender for Endpoint product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Barracuda Networks
Microsoft
 

Overview

Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] offers a comprehensive analysis of email threats by integrating seamlessly into existing systems, providing a detailed threat assessment for enterprise-level security.

Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] is known for its precise detection capabilities and effective threat analysis, enhancing email security. It quickly identifies risks without affecting workflow, making it essential for businesses focused on safeguarding their communication channels. Its proactive scanning enhances security by identifying latent threats.

What features make Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] effective?
  • Comprehensive Threat Analysis: Thoroughly evaluates incoming emails for potential threats.
  • Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with existing email systems without disruption.
  • Real-time Alerts: Provides immediate notifications for detected threats.
  • Advanced Reporting: Offers detailed insights into threat patterns and vulnerabilities.
  • User-Friendly Interface: Designed for ease of use with minimal technical expertise required.
Why consider Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] for email security?
  • Increased Protection: Boosts overall email security by identifying hidden threats.
  • Cost Efficiency: Reduces potential financial impact by preventing security breaches.
  • Time Savings: Automates threat detection, freeing up valuable IT resources.
  • Enhanced Compliance: Helps meet industry-specific compliance requirements.
  • Business Continuity: Ensures uninterrupted business operations by preventing email-based attacks.

In finance, healthcare, and retail, Barracuda Email Threat Scanner [EOL] is often implemented to meet strict regulatory and security standards, mitigating risks linked to confidential client data breaches and transaction fraud. It aids industries in maintaining secure communications, essential to safeguarding sensitive information.

Barracuda Networks

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for organizations. It offers real-time protection against various types of cyber threats, including malware, viruses, ransomware, and phishing attacks.

With its powerful machine-learning capabilities, it can detect and block sophisticated attacks before they can cause any harm. The solution also includes endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities, allowing organizations to quickly investigate and respond to security incidents. It provides detailed insights into the attack timeline, enabling security teams to understand the scope and impact of an incident.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint also offers proactive threat hunting, allowing organizations to proactively search for and identify potential threats within their network. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft security solutions, such as Microsoft Defender XDR, to provide a unified and holistic security approach. With its centralized management console, organizations can easily deploy, configure, and monitor the security solution across their entire network.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a robust and scalable security solution that helps organizations protect their endpoints and data from evolving cyber threats.

Microsoft
 

Sample Customers

Entisys 360,
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Buyer's Guide
Anti-Malware Tools
January 2026
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