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Fortinet FortiMail vs Symantec Messaging Gateway 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

Fortinet FortiMail
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (6th)
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Fortinet FortiMail is designed for Email Security and holds a mindshare of 4.0%, down 5.8% compared to last year.
Symantec Messaging Gateway, on the other hand, focuses on Secure Email Gateway (SEG), holds 2.6% mindshare, up 2.5% since last year.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fortinet FortiMail4.0%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36511.4%
Proofpoint Email Protection8.2%
Other76.4%
Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Symantec Messaging Gateway2.6%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36527.6%
Proofpoint Email Protection21.0%
Other48.8%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

MOHAN SUKUMAR - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure email management improves through advanced filtering and dynamic virus scanning
Fortinet FortiMail offers capabilities like settings for mail delivery, mail filtering, spam controls, and email bursting prevention. It also allows for email forwarding, dynamic filtering, and scanning based on virus signatures. I can set varying levels of security. The tool is flexible and provides essential features for mail security and management.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
The product provides good content filtering options, but the false positive submissions must be improved
The tool is very stable. I rate the stability a seven out of ten. It's an on-premise application that runs on a virtual machine. It has dependencies on the hypervisor host that we're running it on. If it's not configured, the application can be influenced by it. Sometimes, there is a service stop error while the service is still running. Sometimes, the service just stops. Some policies do not act the way that we intend them to respond.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The key benefits of this solution are its user-friendly interface and clear instructions, as well as the wealth of online resources and helpful health community available for support. These features make it easy for users to navigate and utilize the solution effectively."
"The product helps users handle security challenges as it offers prefiltering options and does relatively good incident reporting."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is its fully detailed dashboard."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, allowing users to get around the solution easily. The integration capabilities in the solution are also very easy."
"The solution is very, very stable."
"Technical support is great. They are able to look at their patches and offer quick responses. We even have an account manager in the Middle East. They are very good."
"Fortinet utilizes specialized processing units, which network faster and sample more efficiently compared to others."
"FortiMail is a stable product."
"The solution is stable and the performance is good."
"It has very good capabilities for managing malware."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
"The solution is excellent at blocking spam."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the content filtering policies because the solution offers huge options for configuration, such as hardware manipulation, et cetera, and the dictionaries make the work easier."
"The solution is "set and forget". You pay for it and everything is done for you."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway has a good GUI, and it is very powerful in detecting viruses and spam."
"The setup is pretty simple."
 

Cons

"The support could be faster because we've been receiving complaints from customers, they say that when they raise a ticket, it doesn't take 24 hours to respond, sometimes the support responds after three days. This is a lot of time."
"The solution is user-friendly to a degree but the dashboard needs improvement."
"Sometimes, authentic emails get blocked by the solution's firewall."
"Header inspection and containerization, like on-prem premises sandboxing, need enhancement."
"The product's cybersecurity features could be better."
"It can be easier to configure or connect to the cloud to report on the attachments."
"ortiMail has some latency issues and sometimes takes time to receive emails."
"Sometimes, the tool flags legitimate incoming traffic as spam."
"It is a nice product but is not user friendly in terms of the graphical interface. It is poor and is not rich in terms of the human interface."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway can improve detection because most of them are false negatives or false positives that we are trying to troubleshoot. Additionally, we are having routing problems and they are somehow connected to DNS issues."
"Sometimes the solution picks up false positive for viruses during scans."
"What needs to be improved in Symantec Messaging Gateway is its local partner support, as it's not as technical. The support my company gets from the partner isn't good. Vendor support is good, but local partner support isn't. I'm happy with Symantec Messaging Gateway as a solution, but the problem is with its partner support. To me, Symantec Messaging Gateway is a complete solution, but it can be very difficult to search the web for resolutions to issues or problems you experience from it. If this could be improved or resolved in the next release of Symantec Messaging Gateway, then that would be good."
"The solution takes up a lot of memory."
"The biggest problem is it's an on-prem product and we're trying to get out of having equipment in data centers."
"They really need to create a good package that competes with Microsoft."
"It could be more scalable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing model for this solution is better because it is based on the box and not the number of users."
"It is a fairly priced product, considering what it does. The product offers good value for the money users spend on it."
"If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
"Fortinet FortiMail is a little bit expensive."
"Fortinet FortiMail has an annual license agreement."
"The annual cost is $55,000."
"Pricing is straight-forward and renewable without complicated pricing structures."
"The solution is reasonably priced compared to one of its competitors."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
"The cost of Symantec Messaging Gateway is too expensive in general. However, the appliance also includes the price of the license in the same bundle."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail?
Fortinet FortiMail is considered overpriced by Indian rupee standards. My organization is not profit-making, and academic pricing is required, but it may not be available for security products like...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
It can be somewhat difficult to prepare precise or very deep rules to improve security, though the product is very good.
What needs improvement with Symantec Messaging Gateway?
The solution takes up a lot of memory. The system becomes slow. The performance must be improved.
What is your primary use case for Symantec Messaging Gateway?
We use the solution to secure our data and emails.
 

Also Known As

FortiMail
Symantec.cloud, Symantec Email Security.cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Doric, Joblink Plus, Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta, PPB Advisory, Slater & Gordon Lawyers, Sydney Adventist Hospital Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiMail vs. Symantec Messaging Gateway and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.