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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
106
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), 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 June 2026, in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 19.0%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Retarus Email Security is 1.0%, 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 Protection19.0%
Retarus Email Security1.0%
Other80.0%
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 positively impacted my organization by blocking significantly more phishing emails, and phishing is the main entry point into getting compromised, so I have more peace of mind knowing that more malicious emails are getting blocked."
"A one-stop shop for email protection"
"They have customized security rules, mature rules, anti-virus protection, as well as email authentication similar to SPF, DKIM, and DMARC."
"The most valuable features are the business email compromise protection and targeted attack prevention."
"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."
"It's detection of true positives are great, as it's cloud based it's very scalable and stable."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is stable enough and does its job of virus, malware, and email scam detection. Setting it up is not too complicated."
"Overall, we've been happy with the product and the results we've gotten."
"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

"There have been a few cases where an obvious phishing email has not been blocked, but perhaps Proofpoint Email Protection was still learning and needed some extra time to figure out that the email was malicious."
"The false positives are an issue. There are many false positives that come in, which you report to Proofpoint."
"Sometimes it doesn't detect actual spam emails, and sometimes it catches normal emails."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has a lot of false positives, and the infrastructure is a bit complex."
"It became very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances, and I may advise Proofpoint to adjust marketing solutions based on each country."
"For Proofpoint Email Protection, when it comes to support, there are times when they do not meet the SLAs for support, mostly on Fridays."
"The largest complaint that we hear from our customers is that there is no local support."
"Proofpoint should have better integration with complex environments that need more than one instance of Proofpoint, as there are issues with nested instances."
"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

"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
"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."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"Annually, it costs us about $92,000. This is pretty much what it costs us. There is no additional cost."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
Information not available
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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%
No data available
 

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...
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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: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.