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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
67
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) (12th)
 

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 3.5%, down 5.5% compared to last year.
Symantec Messaging Gateway, on the other hand, focuses on Secure Email Gateway (SEG), holds 2.5% mindshare, down 3.0% since last year.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fortinet FortiMail3.5%
Microsoft Defender for Office 3659.6%
Proofpoint Email Protection7.9%
Other79.0%
Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Symantec Messaging Gateway2.5%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36524.2%
Proofpoint Email Protection20.3%
Other53.0%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Abhimanyu Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Targeted email filtering has reduced spam and phishing and now saves significant investigation time
The best features of Fortinet FortiMail include its techniques and tactics, which are highly effective compared to other solutions such as Microsoft 365. Although Fortinet FortiMail may not be as advanced in some aspects, it is well recognized for its strong performance in handling spam and phishing. It performs thorough mail scanning and also offers a sandboxing feature that enhances protection. Fortinet FortiMail has had a positive impact on my organization by significantly reducing unwanted email activities such as spam and phishing. It provides accurate detection and generates results that often exceed what can be achieved through manual analysis. Since deploying Fortinet FortiMail, I have observed a reduction in investigation time by at least 20 to 30 percent.
Girish Vijay - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Manager IT at Carl Bechem Lubricants India Pvt. Ltd.
A stable and reasonably priced solution that performs well and has a very good malware database
Since Symantec merged with Broadcom, they might have lost some good technical engineers. Maybe that’s the reason why the product is performing poorly. When we have a good marketing and sales team, even though our product cannot perform, we will sell it at a high price because of the buzzwords. However, at the end of the day, the product should perform. Most of the products might not perform. Symantec is a very good product, but the services are basic. I rate the technical features of the product a nine out of ten. However, I would rate the services provided by the solution a six out of ten. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Troubleshooting is very simple because you can see where the email was not delivered and why it would be considered as spam."
"Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are antispam, antivirus, database, and data loss prevention (DLP)."
"Clean user interface and good sandbox."
"We found the initial setup to be mostly straightforward."
"The anti-spam features are valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is its fully detailed dashboard."
"FortiMail is extremely flexible and very easy to learn. Compared to other email security products that we've tried, it is mainly the ease of configuration that makes FortiMail valuable to us."
"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."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
"The most valuable features of Symantec Messaging Gateway are advanced content filtering, malware, and antivirus defense."
"The feature that I like the best is the fingerprinting concept."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway is stable and scalable. Installation is easy, and the deployment and maintenance can be done by one administrative person."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"It has very good capabilities for managing malware."
"The solution is highly customizable. You can make rules for domains and configure policies for spam or malware. Messaging Gateway is an on-prem solution, so it's useful for companies without a cloud presence."
 

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."
"Fortinet FortiMail can be improved in terms of its dashboard, which is small and not visually appealing, making deeper investigations difficult."
"Header inspection and containerization, like on-prem premises sandboxing, need enhancement."
"Issues with the current email search functionality."
"The web console management interface could be improved."
"It would be nice if we could manage the solution from the cloud so I could handle things off-site if necessary."
"The area that could use some improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is the integration process. I would like the integration to be easier."
"High Availability needs improvement."
"The solution takes up a lot of memory."
"The documentation could have more detailed examples of how to use the product in various situations. As more companies shift to the cloud, they could better integrate the on-prem and cloud versions through an on-prem client."
"They really need to create a good package that competes with Microsoft."
"We've had issues in the past where the user finds spam, and Symantec does not recognize it as spam."
"In a later release, it would be nice if the messaging gateway supported the cluster feature."
"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 product must improve the user dashboards."
"This product would benefit from better integration with Symantec Endpoint Protection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is based on initial license purchase and use volume."
"The annual cost is $55,000."
"We paid approximately $30,000 for the solution. It is less expensive than some other solutions. We have one license that carries all the features that we wanted."
"The licensing model for this solution is better because it is based on the box and not the number of users."
"It is reasonable."
"Fortinet FortiMail is a little bit expensive."
"Fortinet Fortimail has reasonable pricing."
"If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
"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."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
In my opinion, points for improvement for Fortinet FortiMail include sometimes the speed and fine-tuning the false positive problems, especially with the signed PDF attachments and the whitelist an...
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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.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.