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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
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 20.9%, up 21.1% compared to last year.
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide, on the other hand, focuses on Security Awareness Training, holds 6.3% mindshare, up 2.9% since last year.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection20.9%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36521.4%
Mimecast Advanced Email Security16.5%
Other41.2%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Security Awareness Training Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide6.3%
KnowBe416.6%
Riot6.4%
Other70.69999999999999%
Security Awareness Training
 

Featured Reviews

IS
Threat Hunter at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Email protection has reduced phishing workload and keeps unwanted messages out of inboxes
A few things about how Proofpoint Email Protection can be improved include implementing artificial intelligence within their platform to start really understanding the organization that is using their product, what sort of emails they are expecting and if the emails that are being expected should be let in and if the emails that are not being expected should not be let in. I'll give you a further example for this. If someone just tries to send an email from a Gmail address, which is a free public service email service provider, then because anyone in the world can create a Gmail account, I think it is nice and good for Proofpoint Email Protection to actually first check and do a reality check if we have received an email from this address and look at the intent of the email to really see what the email is trying to do and then classify based on that. I still see there is a lack. Hence why I started this conversation with AI and hoping that Proofpoint Email Protection will bring AI in and to really start analyzing these emails, the intent, and whether they really fit the customer organization. We are a manufacturing company, so whether it really fits that profile. I would say if we can get a better user experience from Proofpoint Email Protection products, that would be good. For example, other service providers that provide secure email gateway have the functionality where you can split promotional and bulk email and have them sent to a separate folder. I think if we can have that sort of feature, that would be great where Proofpoint Email Protection just keeps the important emails in the inbox folder and move everything else that is not really business related into a promotional, spam, bulk folder. This is an improvement that I would really like to see. I give it an eight because I am expecting a lot more from Proofpoint Email Protection, more automations, more understanding of who their customer is, what sort of business they do, and what sort of email they are supposed to be receiving and letting through. I think the day when I really have only 1% of work to do and 99% is automated by whatever automation services Proofpoint Email Protection uses would be ideal. I think I have covered any other improvements needed for Proofpoint Email Protection pretty well right from AI to splitting emails based on priorities. I think I have given some pretty broad and good examples.
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

"The solution has very strong detection for most of the phishing and malicious emails received from the outside."
"Proofpoint Email Protection offers an additional layer of protection compared to other brands like Microsoft, Mimecast, and Barracuda. While these major companies excel at detecting malicious attachments, the solution goes further by analyzing the context of emails, allowing for more nuanced decision-making."
"I have seen a drop of about 90% in the number of phishing emails, malware, and other threats since using Proofpoint Email Protection."
"The stability is very good."
"They have customized security rules, mature rules, anti-virus protection, as well as email authentication similar to SPF, DKIM, and DMARC."
"The setup was easy."
"I like all the features with Proofpoint, such as how it filters the spam and marketing mail, lost reality mail, blocks phishing attacks, blocks malicious attachments, and stops phishing links. Also it can defend against the business email compromise impersonation technique. It is a complete solution for all email attacks. It filters for the bad, malicious attachments. If there is any executable file, it can be deleted. It is a good, complete solution."
"From a business perspective, the solution was very helpful as it speeded our business flow and increased email delivery."
"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."
"Proofpoint's ZenGuide analytics provides many useful reports that we can access on the dashboard."
"Most valuable is the SSO integration with our AD, so the users can employ our federation service to log in."
 

Cons

"It has too many screens. It is kind of a conglomeration of products. In other words, they built product A, product B, and product C, and they are yet to integrate them into a single administrative console. I would certainly like to see a more seamless administrative interface. I would also like to see them include more bang for the buck, by including features like email fraud protection, rather than making their product so piecemeal, where you are buying little pieces. I agree with the idea of having multiple tiers or layers, but maybe as small, medium, and large, as opposed to an a la carte menu."
"The scalability can be improved, and the solution can be optimized."
"Pricing for the platform could still be cheaper."
"Sometimes it detects false positives."
"I would want better spear phishing protection in the essentials package."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"You only receive one model in Proofpoint Email Protection and the other ones you have to purchase at a high price. There should be more available with the solution and additional models should be less expensive."
"The areas that have room for improvement in Proofpoint Email Protection include their cost of ownership, which is fairly high."
"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

"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"They are competitively priced, but I have been forced to get quotes for other solutions now because they haven't been responding to requests to do the work that we would like them to do."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
"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
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise21
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
In terms of pricing, it is okay compared to others. I would say it is normal. Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
I have not seen specific outcomes or metrics since implementing Proofpoint Email Protection, such as a reduction in phishing incidents or improved response time. Proofpoint Email Protection can imp...
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 Microsoft, Proofpoint, Abnormal AI and others in Secure Email Gateway (SEG). Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.