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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Proofpoint’s ZenGuide comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 18, 2026

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

Proofpoint Email Protection
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Security Awareness Training (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Proofpoint Email Protection and Proofpoint’s ZenGuide aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Proofpoint Email Protection is designed for Secure Email Gateway (SEG) and holds a mindshare of 19.0%, down 21.8% compared to last year.
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide, on the other hand, focuses on Security Awareness Training, holds 5.3% mindshare, down 6.1% since last year.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection19.0%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36516.1%
Mimecast Email and Collaboration Threat Protection15.1%
Other49.8%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Security Awareness Training Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide5.3%
KnowBe412.7%
Riot7.4%
Other74.6%
Security Awareness Training
 

Featured Reviews

Siva_Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Consultant at Infosys
Email defenses have reduced phishing incidents and protect sensitive data across our enterprise
As things are evolving and threats develop in unpredictable ways, Proofpoint must adopt AI solutions and agentic solutions more aggressively and provide them to customers as part of service offerings. Inbuilt AI solutions would add more value and make Proofpoint a more premium choice for customers. With the help of AI solutions, agentic AI, and generative AI capabilities, the product would be more efficient than it currently is. Filtering false positives is highly challenging because it is impossible for humans to identify which emails are genuine and which are spam. Proofpoint should focus more on this area with back-end agents or other tools. Proofpoint should decide which emails are genuine and which are spam so it is not a challenge for end users. When receiving an email, end users should not have to determine whether to respond or not. Proofpoint should not release such spam emails and should strictly block such spam and spoof emails based on connection IPs. Currently, false positives occur in the product, and while this occurs in every product, it is an area where Proofpoint can focus on improving and reducing false positives. One email is enough for an end user to be deceived and lose money, so addressing this area is critical.
EM
Project Manager at Fives Syleps
Has helped run awareness campaigns and phishing simulations but needs better multilingual support and user-level tracking
They have made good improvements, but there are still some limitations. For example, we have many entities and want each entity to have their own statistics. Additionally, in the fake phishing part, there is not one type for one language per campaign, as we have many languages. For running fake phishing campaigns, we are obliged to create specific campaigns for specific languages, and consolidation is not easy. It helps us make awareness activities, but it is not easy to evaluate the cybersecurity score for each user. If I take one user and compare their status six months ago to today, I want to know if their maturity score has increased or not. Proofpoint's ZenGuide has some limitations in that aspect. This function would be very important if implemented. It gives global statistics which is good, but sometimes we want to focus on each user, going through the company and groups. I want to know what a user's level was six months or one year ago compared to today across different cybersecurity activities in Proofpoint's ZenGuide. This includes monthly awareness, cybersecurity training, fake phishing campaigns, communication, and reporting malicious or suspicious emails. I want to have one score combining all these activities for each user to determine their global level. Having multi-language fake phishing campaigns would be beneficial. Currently, it is just one campaign per language, making consolidation difficult. In the future, for one campaign, the template should correctly assign the language type depending on the language used by the user.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our clients have definitely seen an ROI; their level of breach and reporting of malicious emails from their user base actually went down by over 50% by using this product."
"The most valuable features are the business email compromise protection and targeted attack prevention."
"From a mail gateway perspective, I think Proofpoint Email Protection is one of the most complete options compared to others."
"Before deploying Proofpoint Email Protection, we were frequently attacked by phishing and DDoS, and after deploying it, attacks have been reduced by up to 80 percent and phishing has been completely eliminated, so it is working very efficiently."
"Overall, it is a good product, providing everything in a single dashboard where we can find all the information related to the risks involved within a suspicious email."
"I would recommend Proofpoint Email Protection to others because it is useful, simple to use, and provides whatever is required."
"The setup was easy."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has improved operational efficiency, simplifying our internal processes and consolidating what used to be four or five different portals into a single, seamless login experience."
"Wombat has given our users a heightened sense of security awareness, and as a result, the click rate on phishing emails has dropped significantly."
"I would definitely recommend Proofpoint's ZenGuide to others, as I think the branding and the ability to add your own branding on all different avenues, through the email communications, training, simulations, and everything, is probably the biggest advantage I've seen so far."
"Most valuable is the SSO integration with our AD, so the users can employ our federation service to log in."
"Proofpoint's ZenGuide analytics provides many useful reports that we can access on the dashboard."
 

Cons

"The disadvantage of Proofpoint Email Protection in comparison to other competitors is its cost."
"I have not noticed much change in operational efficiency after implementing Proofpoint Email Protection, but the process execution is light."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve by allowing more customization of the reports, such as exceptions and black-and-white lists."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is an expensive solution."
"Unfortunately, the whole product is going downhill right now, ever since they were sold to Thoma Bravo. We're constantly having problems with stability and the product in general."
"There are user interface complexities that require integration with a SOC team, which needs time and training."
"I think Proofpoint Email Protection could be slightly more intuitive."
"The email DLP portion could be a bit easier."
"For running fake phishing campaigns, we are obliged to create specific campaigns for specific languages, and consolidation is not easy."
"We would like to create reports for local IT leaders in a different way, more suitable for upper management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it expensive."
"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"The price is reasonable."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has comparable pricing."
"It is expensive."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"received very good pricing, as we are also working with the Proofpoint spam appliances."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise59
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
I am not informed about the pricing, setup costs, or licensing as it is handled by a different team. I come from a technical perspective.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
For improvement, the dashboard of Proofpoint Email Protection needs some enhancement. Currently, we are using multiple dashboards, and it would be beneficial if everything was integrated. A single ...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
In our environment, we are using Proofpoint Email Protection for inbound email protection as a primary gateway, while Microsoft 365 serves as the secondary gateway. In the primary gateway, it scans...
What needs improvement with Wombat Security Education Platform?
They have made good improvements, but there are still some limitations. For example, we have many entities and want each entity to have their own statistics. Additionally, in the fake phishing part...
What is your primary use case for Wombat Security Education Platform?
Proofpoint's ZenGuide is a solution that we have been working with for a long time. We use it each month for awareness, DMARC, and email security. Proofpoint's ZenGuide is used for the awareness co...
What advice do you have for others considering Wombat Security Education Platform?
We were trying to make comparisons between solutions to determine which would work better for our group. We have not yet used CyberGuru extensively; it was just for testing purposes. The metrics we...
 

Also Known As

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
Proofpoint Security Awareness Training, Wombat Security Education Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Carnegie Mellon University, Royal Bank of Scotland, City of Garland, Texas
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint, Microsoft, Mimecast and others in Secure Email Gateway (SEG). Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.