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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Sophos Phish Threat comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Proofpoint Email Protection effectively reduces spam and phishing with superior threat detection, saving time despite some usability issues.
Sentiment score
4.8
Sophos Phish Threat provides ROI by educating users, reducing ransomware incidents, and enhancing organizational security through training.
The ideal situation would be to have all these portals combined into one unified dashboard.
Information Security Architect at Loews Hotels
The time required for email investigations and responses has changed with Proofpoint Email Protection's visibility and automation.
Sr Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
If you implement these kinds of solutions in your security stack, the first beneficial thing will be that you will not suffer any malware, and you will not face attacks, which ultimately leads to financial benefit.
Senior Security Engineer at DCIPHERS IT SOLUTIONS (P) LTD
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Proofpoint Email Protection's customer service is generally praised for promptness and expertise, with some noting room for personalized improvements.
Sentiment score
6.1
Sophos offers excellent customer support, praised for responsive, expert service and enhanced by Cyberoam staff integration, often resolving issues efficiently.
I am familiar with the granular policy control feature of Proofpoint Email Protection, and I find their support excellent for modifying those policies.
Senior Cybersecurity Specialist at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
I rate customer support a three out of ten mainly because of the phishing attacks that are getting through.
Information Security Architect at Loews Hotels
Sometimes I get some really great responses and analysts, but sometimes when their cloud services have a failure, they are slow to respond and tell me about it, though they have been improving.
Consultant at Exelixis Inc
They call whenever you have an incident and keep calling to assist until you solve the issue.
Supervisor, Infraestructura Information Technology at Refineria Dominicana de Petroleo
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Proofpoint Email Protection is praised for scalable, adaptable solutions for diverse enterprises, despite some pricing concerns.
Sentiment score
6.1
Sophos Phish Threat is highly scalable, offering seamless user additions and effective performance across various organization sizes with cloud support.
Proofpoint is scalable for multi-site organizations with thousands of users.
Products and solutions director at ITVikings
Proofpoint Email Protection is a scalable solution that very much fits our capacity requirements.
Consultant at Exelixis Inc
Proofpoint Email Protection is quite scalable.
Threat Hunter at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Proofpoint Email Protection is highly stable and reliable, with minimal disruptions and rare downtime, despite some interface complaints.
Sentiment score
7.3
Sophos Phish Threat is stable, reliable, with minimal issues reported, but some users suggest potential for improvement.
It was very rock solid.
Sr Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Sometimes, when creating connectors for implementing with Google Workspace, we encounter challenges because both Google Workspace and Proofpoint Email Protection do not have very good documentation on how to do this.
Senior Security Engineer at DCIPHERS IT SOLUTIONS (P) LTD
When evaluating the stability of Proofpoint Email Protection in regards to downtime, bugs, and glitches, it comes and goes in waves.
Consultant at Exelixis Inc
 

Room For Improvement

Proofpoint Email Protection requires improved integration, AI enhancements, better support, and user-friendly features to enhance user experience and satisfaction.
Sophos Phish Threat needs improvements in pricing, security, user interface, training, integrations, current simulations, and language options.
The older legacy user interface just took a little to work with, and the new unified interface, as it was able to do more and more of the functionality of the old one, the product just got easier and easier to use.
Sr Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Proofpoint could expand its phishing detection capabilities to improve its efficiency.
Products and solutions director at ITVikings
More security could be implemented.
Logistics Manager at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
The catalog is very small compared with products such as Terranova or KnowBe4.
Supervisor, Infraestructura Information Technology at Refineria Dominicana de Petroleo
 

Setup Cost

Proofpoint Email Protection is expensive but valued for strong threat protection, favored by large organizations despite higher costs.
Sophos Phish Threat's tiered pricing is competitive, with annual subscriptions preferred, covering user numbers and firewall integration.
Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees.
Products and solutions director at ITVikings
Given my other experience with other vendors, I think they are a bit on the high end and a bit on the pricey end for the email security functionality that we were using.
Sr Security Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
Logistics Manager at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
The cost of Sophos Phish Threat is very reasonable for customers as they charge based on usage only.
Senior Information Security Analyst at channelnext
 

Valuable Features

Proofpoint Email Protection offers advanced spam and threat blocking, user-friendly interface, real-time screening, and strong Office 365 integration.
Sophos Phish Threat excels with ease of use, effective training, scalable deployment, detailed reports, and strong technical support.
The main feature I find most effective is that Proofpoint Email Protection scans emails and quarantines the doubtful ones.
Logistics Manager at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
The most beneficial feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is mostly spam filtering; it was very efficient, and we were very happy with the functionality as only relevant emails were allowed for mailboxes.
Manager, IT Director at Cakmak Avukatlik Ortakligi
I appreciate that it's the industry leader, and its firewalling is very easy to manage and implement.
Senior Cybersecurity Specialist at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
The integration with Sophos Central benefits us for the management of the phishing campaign by being very user-friendly.
Supervisor, Infraestructura Information Technology at Refineria Dominicana de Petroleo
 

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)
Sophos Phish Threat
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Security Awareness Training (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Proofpoint Email Protection and Sophos Phish Threat 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.
Sophos Phish Threat, on the other hand, focuses on Security Awareness Training, holds 4.0% mindshare, down 5.5% 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 (%)
Sophos Phish Threat4.0%
KnowBe416.6%
Riot6.4%
Other73.0%
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.
JL
Supervisor, Infraestructura Information Technology at Refineria Dominicana de Petroleo
Customer support excels with timely responses and valuable assistance
Some of the best features with Sophos Phish Threat are good, but it has some limits. For instance, if you send an attachment to target the user with a macro, it doesn't work very well because by default Outlook disables opening macro files. Word macro files open in read-only mode. It has some false positives, such as when the user opened the file. We had good experience, and based on our three years of use, the users responded well. The videos are animated, and users prefer them, similar to our other applications for training in other areas. The integration with Sophos Central benefits us for the management of the phishing campaign by being very user-friendly. We used the customizable phishing emails with Sophos Phish Threat. We customized the template and modified it so we can phish our users. They are very customizable. The pricing and licensing for Sophos Phish Threat is good compared to other products.
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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%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Performing Arts
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
 

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 Sophos Phish Threat?
Sophos Phish Threat is a good product, but it has some limitations. We prefer Spanish language content, and the video selection has limitations. The catalog is very small compared with products suc...
What is your primary use case for Sophos Phish Threat?
I had experience with other products before KnowBe4, specifically we had Sophos Phish Threat for three years, but the catalog of training, video, and simulated phishing has some limits. Last Februa...
What advice do you have for others considering Sophos Phish Threat?
I rate Sophos Phish Threat eight out of ten due to some limitations, specifically the limited training catalog and the need for more trainings in local languages, particularly Spanish. A bigger cou...
 

Also Known As

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
Phish Threat
 

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 Microsoft, Proofpoint, Abnormal AI and others in Secure Email Gateway (SEG). Updated: February 2026.
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