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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Retarus Email Security 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

Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
1st
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)
Retarus Email Security
Ranking in Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 18.3%, down from 21.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Retarus Email Security is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection18.3%
Retarus Email Security1.1%
Other80.6%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

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.
WAKKAS AHMAD - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Consultant at Mahle
Provides valuable reports that make it easy to take action
Our primary use case for this solution is protecting emails This solution has helped our organization by protecting our emails from various threats. It helped us get customized reports on all of the emails we received on the user side and other data. The feature I found most valuable was getting…

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 has reduced the analyst overhead in responding to phishing incidents by several orders of magnitude."
"Its anti-phishing functionality is the most valuable. Certainly, the biggest problem I have is phishing."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my overall security posture, making it easier for users to encrypt files right in the portal and send them to customers, and it is simple for customers to access those files without difficulty."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the central location dashboard for viewing all the related information for risk."
"It's detection of true positives are great, as it's cloud based it's very scalable and stable."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the dashboards and their visibility, easy configuration, and artificial intelligence, and additionally, the reports are very important and helpful."
"It's very good at identifying threats."
"Proofpoint Email Protection provides quite comprehensive protection."
"The feature I found most valuable was getting details on the emails, being alerted once those emails got a bad reputation, and then being able to take action on those emails."
 

Cons

"The solution can be expensive."
"I think Proofpoint Email Protection could be slightly more intuitive."
"I rate the technical support at a 3 out of 10, with 10 being the best."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve by reducing the price."
"There are user interface complexities that require integration with a SOC team, which needs time and training."
"The false positives are an issue."
"I have not noticed much change in operational efficiency after implementing Proofpoint Email Protection, but the process execution is light."
"Some of the old portal features of Proofpoint Email Protection are missing in the new portal, so some of the settings could be modernized."
"This solution needs to improve the area of GUI as well as dashboards because they are very poor in terms of the current email security solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it expensive."
"The price is reasonable."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"It is on a yearly basis. Their floor for SMB doesn't matter. The user count is 100 users and below at $2,500 a year. Its cost is higher than other solutions. It is probably about 20% to 30% higher than what you would get with Microsoft. There are no additional costs. All costs are factored in. It can be improved pricing-wise so that it is affordable for the SMB market."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"We sell annual licenses for this solution."
"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
No data available
 

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 ...
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Also Known As

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint, Microsoft, Mimecast and others in Secure Email Gateway (SEG). Updated: July 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.