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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
5.0
Proofpoint Email Protection enhances efficiency and threat defense, reducing security incidents and manual workload despite its cost.
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
After Proofpoint Email Protection, phishing has been completely eliminated, so it is working very efficiently.
Security Engineer at News Corp
Instead of individually logging into five portals, we can log into one and they all connect as if we had logged into all of them.
SOC at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Proofpoint Email Protection support is generally reliable but requires improvements in communication and direct engagement for better satisfaction.
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
Even the engineers have been helpful, and if we open a case, they get back to us right away.
Information Security Analyst at a government with 11-50 employees
We always contact them if we need support, whether it's for setting up features or technical support, which is very responsive.
System Administrator at Tutt Bryant Group
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
7.3
Proofpoint Email Protection is scalable and flexible for enterprises, though some face costs and integration challenges.
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
The solution provides a graphical representation and dashboard view showing how many threats are getting blocked on a daily and monthly basis.
Information Technology Team Lead at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Proofpoint Email Protection is considered to be highly scalable, designed for large enterprises, with a cloud-based architecture that offers an enormous number of options, including multi-organization support and high-volume email handling.
Senior Solution Delivery Lead Cybersecurity at International Olympic Committee – IOC
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Proofpoint Email Protection is highly regarded for stability, handling high volumes with minimal downtime, ensuring reliable enterprise-level security.
Sentiment score
7.3
Sophos Phish Threat is stable, reliable, with minimal issues reported, but some users suggest potential for improvement.
If Proofpoint Email Protection has an outage, we are either not receiving emails or not blocking the right threats.
Senior Security Engineer at Cloudflare
Regarding the stability and performance of Proofpoint Email Protection, I have not experienced any crashes, downtimes, or performance issues.
Cyber Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Proofpoint Email Protection is very stable and reliable, as it remains accessible at all times without issues, ensuring that data is available in real time.
Principal Consultant at Infosys
 

Room For Improvement

Proofpoint Email Protection requires interface improvements, AI enhancements, pricing adjustments, better integration, and responsive support for an improved user experience.
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
In addition to the UI improvements, I would appreciate an increase in the speed of the tasks being processed on the pod.
Security Specialist at a leisure / travel company with 10,001+ employees
There are pros and cons to that, but I would suggest maintaining a good balance between security protection and operational impact.
Senior Security Engineer at Cloudflare
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 a premium, costly solution valued for its advanced threat protection and comprehensive security benefits.
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
Although it is a bit costly compared to Mimecast, Defender, and Cofense Vision, it is efficient and strong in security, so I do not mind the cost because I will not reduce my security risk.
Senior Solution Delivery Lead Cybersecurity at International Olympic Committee – IOC
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 threat detection, enhances security, and integrates with SIEM tools to prevent email-based risks.
Sophos Phish Threat excels with ease of use, effective training, scalable deployment, detailed reports, and strong technical support.
Without Proofpoint Email Protection, most of these emails would have come through, slipped through Exchange, gotten into the user's mailbox, and created a lot of trouble for the organization.
Cyber Security Engineer at IT Naturally
Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by ensuring we are not at risk of a breach through email.
Release lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
TAP alerts, where Proofpoint Email Protection scans emails and sends alerts, provide the ability to review suspicious emails and validate them in a sandbox environment.
Infrastructure Analyst at a consultancy with 51-200 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
6.7
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
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 19.0%, down 21.8% compared to last year.
Sophos Phish Threat, on the other hand, focuses on Security Awareness Training, holds 4.0% mindshare, down 4.5% since last year.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection19.0%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36516.1%
Mimecast Email and Collaboration Threat Protection15.1%
Other49.8%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Security Awareness Training Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sophos Phish Threat4.0%
KnowBe412.7%
Riot7.4%
Other75.9%
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.
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
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Construction Company
12%
University
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise59
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?
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...
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 Proofpoint, Microsoft, Mimecast and others in Secure Email Gateway (SEG). Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.