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Proofpoint Email Protection vs Symantec Advanced Threat Protection 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 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Symantec Advanced Threat Pr...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
26th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 3.4%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is 2.0%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection3.4%
Symantec Advanced Threat Protection2.0%
Other94.6%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

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.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber SecOps Principal at Dotcom Security
Provides end-to-end antivirus protection and has good stability
Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control. It can integrate with other Broadcom solutions, such as Symantec Messaging Gateway and Symantec DLP. If you want to send an email, it gets scanned through endpoint protection and DLP. We get all Symantec functionality in a single pane.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Phish Alarm button allows users to submit questionable emails for review and complete analysis."
"The tool has improved our workflow by ensuring people receive only the emails they need for work rather than being inundated with hundreds or thousands of unnecessary emails daily."
"Our clients have definitely seen an ROI; their level of breach and reporting of malicious emails from their user base actually went down by over 50% by using this product."
"Using Proofpoint Email Protection has significantly improved SOC analyst workloads for my customers by enhancing response times and adding value through built-in threat investigation tools."
"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection provides visibility into people-based risk within my organization, and I am able to see which users have a higher risk rate."
"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."
"Considering Proofpoint Email Protection's end-to-end visibility in email threats, focusing on both the email and the person, it accomplishes what automation does in half the human work."
"They have a very simple and easy implementation; they have been around for a long time, and they have been very easy to deploy, support, and manage."
"All of the solution's features are quite valuable for us, and we especially like the threat protection it provides."
"You don't have to buy a separate email security platform. You can enable that using their endpoint, and I like that. You don't have to have two agents running on the same box."
"It has certainly helped out our audit efforts because we each stay compliant in terms of various security standards."
"The technical support services are excellent."
"The great advantage in using this product is it creates multiple services."
"The Application Control code and the easy integration are valuable features."
"Endpoint to network is a good feature, it can protect the line."
 

Cons

"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
"The flexibility of the solution can be improved."
"I feel Proofpoint Email Protection can be improved by providing a better user experience."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Their technical support is mediocre. It could be better."
"I feel there is still room for improvement because many features are in POD and not yet available in the Admin Portal."
"Pricing for the platform could still be cheaper."
"It has too many screens. It is kind of a conglomeration of products. In other words, they built product A, product B, and product C, and they are yet to integrate them into a single administrative console. I would certainly like to see a more seamless administrative interface. I would also like to see them include more bang for the buck, by including features like email fraud protection, rather than making their product so piecemeal, where you are buying little pieces. I agree with the idea of having multiple tiers or layers, but maybe as small, medium, and large, as opposed to an a la carte menu."
"There are limits with respect to blocking files by hash value or blocking IP addresses, and these limits should be removed."
"Entire threat protection is not available for the advanced features."
"The endpoint protection looks old."
"It also needs network-based threat protection for shared folders and files."
"The administration interface needs a lot of improvement. It should be UI-based and simple."
"The cloud platform needs to have improvement in terms of the user interface and the different capabilities it has available. It needs to match the other leading next-gen EDR products that are available in the market. That's the reason why we are stepping away from Symantec. Their cloud environment is just generally lacking in comparison to others."
"The product's support services need improvement."
"They could enhance the solution to work across all devices, including Android, iOS, and Mac, and make it more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five."
"The solution uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"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 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."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"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."
"Symantec Advanced Threat Protection's pricing is comparable."
"The pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
"Pricing is good. It is nice to have a great product at a fair price."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection has an average price."
"The price is quite expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise62
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise13
 

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 Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
One area for improvement could be the pricing model. Future releases could further enhance integration capabilities with other platforms and simplify the licensing model to compete more with Micros...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
Our primary use case for the product is to provide advanced threat protection to our clients, primarily in the banking and financial sectors.
What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
Symantec ATP has proven to be a reliable and effective solution. I rate it a nine out of ten.
 

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
ECI
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint Email Protection vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.