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Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection vs IRONSCALES comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Hornetsecurity 365 Total Pr...
Ranking in Email Security
21st
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Office 365 Protection (6th)
IRONSCALES
Ranking in Email Security
18th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (18th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 12.9%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection is 1.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IRONSCALES is 1.9%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Asif Usmani - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable product that provides security and control over spam and phishing emails
I have a lot of control over spam and phishing emails. I can monitor and manage it from Hornetsecurity’s console. The live tracking system is valuable. We can track every incoming and outgoing email live. We can decide whether to block, release, or quarantine emails. We can also review the emails before releasing them. The product provides 99.9% coverage for email security.
Orion Trist - PeerSpot reviewer
Saved us a big deal by catching malicious links and attachments sent directly to our staff and has also been helpful for educating our staff
It has helped immensely because it has gotten rid of malicious links and malicious attachments that have been targeted at our different staff members. It has definitely protected us on more than one occasion. Their integrated approach of combining email security and employee awareness training is excellent because the training is a reminder for staff to continually be on their feet and look out for the ever-changing landscape. It also lets us know who has been trained, who hasn't been trained, and what they're like. It integrates a risk ratio for all our employees. Its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities are very important because I don't want to have to manage 24/7. Having the AI to do a lot of the work for me is invaluable. Its automated detection and response capabilities are excellent. It does a wonderful job. They provide all the stats on what it has done. It gives you information about how much time is saved and all that kind of good information. Its automated detection and response capabilities have massively decreased the time we spend manually reviewing email events. Since May, it has taken care of 170 hours. So, it has saved 88 hours per analyst. It is very good in terms of the customization of the automated detection and response capabilities. It is granular, and you can adjust it however you want. If it is too high, you can turn it down. If it is too low, you can turn it up.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."
"It has significantly decreased my time to detection and response."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"The initial setup was easy."
"Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection is an easy-to-use solution."
"Backup and restore are precious features."
"I have a lot of control over spam and phishing emails."
"The best part is, I rarely have to access the portal as everything is set up and tweaked the way I wanted it. But the feature set is incredibly granular and allows for deep levels of customization."
"For what was being offered with IRONSCALES, I feel like we got an incredible deal."
"The fact that it is set-and-forget is valuable. Once you turn it on, you very rarely have to micromanage it, whereas, with a lot of spam filters, you have to go in very often."
"The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through."
"The report function through Gmail is probably the most valuable feature. The next most valuable features are simulation and training."
"There is buzz around phishing awareness training. When I make a campaign, all of a sudden people in our organization are talking, thinking, and wondering about it. Therefore, it keeps people on their toes. That is perfect because it does exactly what we want it to do."
"Their anti-phishing platform is absolutely fantastic. The automated AI piece is amazing, and their technical support is fantastic."
"I would say the most valuable feature is what they call Themis. It's like a virtual analyst that uses the decisions that system admins make to generate a score for whether an email is legitimate, spam, or phishing. It gets better based on the decisions that we make over time. The automation piece is great as well. The integrated approach of email security combined with employee awareness training is excellent."
"AI-driven phishing detection and incident remediation are valuable. It saves time from having to do manual analysis and investigation, and we also get alerts for phishing emails."
 

Cons

"In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should be more proactive."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"Specifically, within Microsoft Defender for Office 365, I want it to improve the DLP capabilities."
"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."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"We are always looking for others tools to increase automation on tasks. There can be better integration with other solutions, such as PowerPoint and email."
"I guess I would say maybe quick access to training material for end-users. I know partners have access to this but I as an end-user do not have immediate access to new update information."
"The solution’s pricing is not reasonable."
"A reduction of 10% in pricing can be an improvement."
"The pricing is a little high compared to other products."
"I think the tool can continue to hone the product to ensure the detections are accurate."
"The tool supports 15 to 16 languages, but the content it uses in the training in Spanish has certain limitations."
"Its UI could be improved. My pet peeve with a lot of these cloud-based systems is that a lot of times, the interface for the management is a little clunky. If you live and breathe IRONSCALES all day long, you'll obviously know where everything is just from muscle memory, but the system is not designed for people to be in it all day long. You're only supposed to occasionally look at it. When things get moved around, it is not necessarily that intuitive. I'm an IT guy, and I can pretty much take the worst UI and figure it out, but the menus and the options in the interface could be a little cleaner graphically. If you have a quick problem that you want to resolve, it takes a little bit of digging in the admin console, whereas it should take a few clicks up front."
"Even though they have been continuously improving it, it is not 100% there. We have had a few incidents where legitimate emails were getting blocked, and we had to manually remove those emails from quarantine. It is 90% effective or accurate because, on rare occasions, some emails from customers were not getting delivered. In one or two instances, their emails got blocked by IRONSCALES, and we had to manually remove the emails from quarantine. I would like them to improve their algorithm to avoid flagging genuine emails as malicious. I would also like to be able to whitelist certain email addresses. I'd love to be able to whitelist a particular customer."
"I would love to see the indication of compromise and how the solution utilizes open source resources. It would be good to see that included in the paid versions. It would be a small addition but add a lot of value for clients."
"The only thing that I could say is that some of the reporting features could be better."
"The simulation and training piece could be improved by having more granularity in terms of scheduling how campaigns are run and allowing people to directly take the training rather than having to go through an official campaign. That's not available yet."
"In addition to integrated training, they should also have personalized training that you don't have to do as part of a phishing campaign or a simulation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"The product is expensive."
"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 solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."
"The pricing is acceptable and falls into the medium range, neither cheap nor overly expensive."
"I don't know about its pricing because I don't run the budget or pay the bills, but if it was extortionate, we probably would be looking to scrap it, and because we are not, I assume its price is okay."
"They are pretty much the same as all the other competitors in the market."
"IRONSCALES is an expensive solution."
"The tool is not very cheap, but it is affordable."
"Considering the value it provides, it is definitely worth the cost. We don't have to do manual analysis and remediation of phishing emails, which saves us a lot of hours. Its licensing is based on the number of users being supported and the number of email addresses being protected. I'm not aware of any additional costs."
"We pay $3000 plus a little more a year for the number of employees we have, and we're not even that big. The solution is at the higher end in terms of cost. It's not the most expensive product, but I would say it's worth the price if you have a high volume of email traffic. In our case, the solution has inspected over 162,000 emails between three and four months. It saved us a lot of time and money. It's a worthwhile investment because a bad actor only has to succeed once; we must defend against everything in our business. IRONSCALES offers a sense of security and confidence from being well protected."
"The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution."
"There is an installation cost. Since we have this as a managed service, we pay for licensing and the managed service itself. Other than that, there are no additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
25%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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...
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.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS recor...
What do you like most about Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection?
Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection is an easy-to-use solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection?
The pricing is acceptable and falls into the medium range, neither cheap nor overly expensive.
What needs improvement with Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection?
A reduction of 10% in pricing can be an improvement.
What do you like most about IRONSCALES?
The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IRONSCALES?
The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution. There are other solutions ...
What needs improvement with IRONSCALES?
I think maybe on the side of the awareness training, the tool can improve a little more information and have some oth...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
concordia, fraunhofer, mazars
Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Hornetsecurity 365 Total Protection vs. IRONSCALES and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.