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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
109
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (2nd), 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 18.3%, down 21.4% compared to last year.
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide, on the other hand, focuses on Security Awareness Training, holds 5.2% mindshare, down 7.4% since last year.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection18.3%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36514.8%
Mimecast Advanced Email Security14.6%
Other52.3%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Security Awareness Training Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint’s ZenGuide5.2%
KnowBe411.8%
Riot7.2%
Other75.8%
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

"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has reduced the analyst overhead in responding to phishing incidents by several orders of magnitude."
"The solution offers very good flexibility. You can blacklist or whitelist with ease."
"We've observed that we have almost 99.9% control over our emails now in an easy to configure and easy to implement solution."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted our organization in a very fruitful way."
"The most valuable features are the business email compromise protection and targeted attack prevention."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization because it has done its job; the company we support does not have any sort of vulnerability attacks by having it in place."
"From the reports that we hear back from clients regarding Proofpoint Email Protection, they are noticing less spam and fewer phishing attempts in their email."
"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."
"Wombat has given our users a heightened sense of security awareness, and as a result, the click rate on phishing emails has dropped significantly."
"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

"One major threat is QR code phishing, along with TOAD (Telephone-Oriented Attack Delivery). TOAD attacks don't include links, URLs, or attachments in emails. Instead, attackers try to trick you into calling them, often by offering something enticing like a 50% discount on football matches."
"It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market."
"The price could be improved."
"As far as visibility goes, it is definitely attainable, but additional appliances must be purchased for Proofpoint. I would rate visibility at approximately 50 to 60 percent."
"The false positives are an issue."
"However, for the cons, it requires continuous policy tuning to manage false positives. A Proofpoint Email Protection engineer requires continuous policy tuning to manage false positives, which is a disadvantage."
"Proofpoint should have better integration with complex environments that need more than one instance of Proofpoint, as there are issues with nested instances."
"The support team was a bit slow."
"We would like to create reports for local IT leaders in a different way, more suitable for upper management."
"For running fake phishing campaigns, we are obliged to create specific campaigns for specific languages, and consolidation is not easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing depends on the customer's preference, offering options for an annual license or a monthly subscription. The cost varies based on factors such as the number of users and specific requirements. Overall, the pricing is competitive."
"The solution uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"The licensing model for Proofpoint Email Protection is simple. It's based on the number of users. Price-wise, Proofpoint Email Protection is a five out of ten because it's a pretty expensive solution."
"The price is reasonable."
"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%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise62
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
The downside is I feel the vendor support is a little lacking and should be more responsive. The technical support is not up to the mark.
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
I am leading this security domain, and my L1 and L2s have been using Proofpoint Email Protection and other modules of Proofpoint Email Protection for more than three years.We are currently working ...
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: July 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.