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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

"Proofpoint Email Protection provides quite comprehensive protection."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has improved operational efficiency, simplifying our internal processes and consolidating what used to be four or five different portals into a single, seamless login experience."
"The archive feature is valuable."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted our organization in a very fruitful way."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted our organization as it has been deployed for more than five years, serving as a good SEG that protects our staff members before email hits their inboxes and filters out junk or spam, allowing users to spend significantly more time on real work rather than going through unnecessary emails."
"The solution offers very good flexibility. You can blacklist or whitelist with ease."
"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."
"The power, flexibility, configurability, and Proofpoint Email Protection's professional services were some of the biggest selling points for me at the time and the things that I benefited from the most."
"It has certainly helped out our audit efforts because we each stay compliant in terms of various security standards."
"The incident management on the solution is very good. You get a lot of detailed information about an incident. You also get a lot of documentation in connection with the CVI or integration."
"They manage to solve detection quite nicely, with rather elaborate detection compared to other providers, and Symantec also provides a useful set of information linked to each of the attacked computers."
"Overall, the product supports everything already feature-wise, because it has email protection, monitoring detection, network intrusion detection, and advanced threat protection."
"The most valuable feature is Click-time URL protection."
"Currently we have 800-plus nodes connected with this solution, without any issues. The solution is scalable."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The most valuable feature is NetFlow threat protection."
 

Cons

"Sometimes it detects false positives."
"The solution could lower its price."
"We'd like to have the ability to create more customized reports."
"The price could be improved."
"Pricing for the platform could still be cheaper."
"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's interface is confusing and could be improved."
"The reporting section could be enhanced. I like some reports but if they could allow us to create custom reports with more flexibility it would enhance the reports more."
"It's a strange situation where the infrastructure of the consumer or customer is behind some kind of firewall and they have always used some kind of customized proxy. In this situation, the ATP has a very tough time to pass the information to the cloud and back. To fix, it requires a more elaborate and complex configuration for that particular case."
"The security features need to be improved."
"Solutions like CrowdStrike, ESET, and SentinelOne have really jumped ahead on behavioral and algorithm-based detection capabilities. Symantec is trying to catch up, but they still have some limitations of being an old-school AV protection program and adding AI and behavioral learning and detection algorithm."
"One area for improvement could be the pricing model."
"The endpoint protection looks old."
"The support has dropped down to a five out of ten."
"They could enhance the solution to work across all devices, including Android, iOS, and Mac, and make it more user-friendly."
"The administration interface needs a lot of improvement. It should be UI based, and simple. They need to improve it. It's pretty much not that friendly compared to what we were using as Bitdefender before. It's okay but is improving, actually."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing has recently been increased and the cost is a downside"
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"It is expensive."
"The tool's pricing depends on the customer's preference, offering options for an annual license or a monthly subscription. The cost varies based on factors such as the number of users and specific requirements. Overall, the pricing is competitive."
"Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees."
"The licensing is basically $8/user."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"Pricing is good. It is nice to have a great product at a fair price."
"Symantec Advanced Threat Protection's pricing is comparable."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection has an average price."
"The price is quite expensive."
"The pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
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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.