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Proofpoint Email Protection vs VMRay 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)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
VMRay
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
29th
Average Rating
5.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 5.3%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMRay is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection5.3%
VMRay1.1%
Other93.6%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

AshishKochhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Team Lead at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Advanced email protection has blocked targeted attacks and reduces manual threat handling
I feel Proofpoint Email Protection is overpriced. I cannot say that the security level being provided does not justify the cost, but when comparing the similar level of security with other applications or security systems, it is overpriced. If Proofpoint could provide offers or discounts for customers who are already using the product or for new customers implementing it, along with some free services or add-ons, that would be helpful in terms of financial expense. Proofpoint Email Protection has recently introduced AI functionality in terms of data security capabilities and protecting AI assistance from targeted attacks. This is important since everything is now related to AI. The solution is doing threat detection and real-time threat detection and response pretty well. There are a few things I would like to see improved. Sometimes Proofpoint Email Protection takes time to analyze the workflow and the nature of the email. In this age of AI, the solution should analyze an email on the first receipt and determine whether it should pass or be marked as spam without checking previous data. Another improvement would be to have a more user-friendly dashboard. Additionally, if Proofpoint could add the same features in BCP as part of email protection in BCP, it would be helpful since I currently have to take a different add-on for BCP, and integrating it would save costs. I cannot say that threats have increased or decreased with Proofpoint Email Protection because it depends on the mail flow. The solution captures and filters out all threats, and the email threats vary every day depending on how many users are receiving how many emails per day. Today there might be 1,000 emails, tomorrow 5,000, and the day after 500. Proofpoint Email Protection does its job by scanning all emails and threats are reduced to some extent. Since I am aware that virus definitions are updated every day, I cannot blame Proofpoint Email Protection if they take time to determine the nature of an email being received. There are sometimes emails that are false positives, and Proofpoint Email Protection is a bit strict in analyzing false positives, sometimes stopping emails that are actually required. It analyzes the previous nature of an email and if a template looks like an informational template or related to spam, it blocks it because it looks similar to one blocked earlier. However, the template might actually be required. If I receive the same template today that is also blocked by Proofpoint Email Protection, that particular template might be useful and should not be blocked. In such cases, I have to raise it as a false positive stating that this is something in use or my users use and should be released. When AI starts doing its work, it analyzes the email from a sender with a particular template and releases it, but if the same email and template come from another sender, it blocks it according to the policies.
GC
Pre-Sales at Frux
Has a valuable IP tracing feature, but is an expensive solution
We use this solution for authorization and more on the false positive verification IP tracing is the most valuable feature. The technical support needs improvement.  I have been using VMRay for two and a half years. The technical support team is not good.  Negative The initial setup is…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The anti-spam features are excellent on the email firewalls."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by definitely reducing the load on administrators for releasing emails and other spam operations that used to be handled by administrators."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the dashboards and their visibility, easy configuration, and artificial intelligence. Additionally, the reports are very important and helpful."
"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."
"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 Tap and Trap features. They are the best features."
"Compared to other products, Proofpoint's real-time threat intelligence makes it less noisy; they collect and share threat information effectively, which benefits all customers."
"The solution offers very good flexibility. You can blacklist or whitelist with ease."
"IP tracing is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve on the training. Every organization is different and to fine-tune it to block everything properly there needs to be better training. Sometimes it can block some of the information it shouldn't."
"As an enterprise, we have high demands on the services, and if we have to wait for something like a week or weeks, it is not acceptable; we need solutions in one or two days sometimes because if there is spam going around, you cannot wait weeks."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is an expensive solution."
"The initial setup is complex."
"I think Proofpoint Email Protection could be slightly more intuitive."
"The accessibility of Proofpoint Email Protection, particularly access to product trials, could be improved. It's hard to get a trial for Proofpoint Email Protection, and many customers prefer not just to do the POC or demo but try the product out."
"I feel there is still room for improvement because many features are in POD and not yet available in the Admin Portal."
"The support team was a bit slow."
"The technical support needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"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 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."
"It is expensive."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"We sell annual licenses for this solution."
"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
"The solution is overly priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise43
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
I do not handle the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Proofpoint Email Protection, but I think it's a bit pricey compared to other solutions, even though we found no competitor with comparable...
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
Some of the old portal features of Proofpoint Email Protection are missing in the new portal, so some of the settings could be modernized. The TRAP mail gateway product of Proofpoint Email Protecti...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Email Protection?
Proofpoint Email Protection is primarily used for anti-spam purposes. As other companies receive a lot of malware, phishing emails, and unwanted bulk email, Proofpoint Email Protection stops unwant...
What needs improvement with VMRay?
The technical support needs improvement.
What is your primary use case for VMRay?
We use this solution for authorization and more on the false positive verification.
 

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
National Bank of Canada, Carbon Black, Cloudmark, Cyberint, Expel, G Data Advanced Analytics, Jisc
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Proofpoint and others in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). Updated: February 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.