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Proofpoint Email Protection vs ZeroFOX comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 4, 2025

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 Digital Risk Protection
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Office 365 Protection (1st), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
ZeroFOX
Ranking in Digital Risk Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Digital Risk Protection category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 2.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ZeroFOX is 12.8%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Digital Risk Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ZeroFOX12.8%
Proofpoint Email Protection2.1%
Other85.1%
Digital Risk Protection
 

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.
AS
Senior Consultant at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech
Efficiently identify and address online threats with timely alerts and thorough takedown capabilities
The most valuable features are its threat intel platform, which provides the latest trends and indicators of compromise (IOCs) that I can act on. I quickly obtain data, such as leaked email IDs and passwords, from the ZeroFOX portal or the threat intel portal when required. The platform's GUI-based features stand out and provide thorough takedown capabilities for domains, social media accounts, and phishing numbers.

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."
"Using Proofpoint Email Protection has successfully reduced the volume of emails that we need to review."
"Proofpoint Email Protection ensures users have clean mailboxes and are not bothered by unwanted email."
"It has been comprehensive and easy to use for both users and administrators."
"There is no downtime."
"The most valuable features of Proofpoint Email Protection are the performance from being on the cloud."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by making things safer; when we rolled it out, it gave us better filtering than the previous product that we were using, capturing a lot more of the malicious material and being easier to use."
"The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the central location dashboard for viewing all the related information for risk."
"The best thing about the tool is that its backend team is pretty good and has a strong engineering team."
"I rate ZeroFOX a ten overall."
"ZeroFOX has no language limitations. It can detect many languages."
 

Cons

"I have noticed some lagging and issues with the Proofpoint Protection Server, which is not the cloud solution or the Admin Portal solution. It seems to lag quite a lot when we try to work with folders, quarantine folders, or configure anything in there."
"The price could be improved."
"There have been a few cases where an obvious phishing email has not been blocked, but perhaps Proofpoint Email Protection was still learning and needed some extra time to figure out that the email was malicious."
"While it remains a difficult tool for spammers to crack, its limited automation lowers my rating to 7.5 out of 10."
"Those kinds of emails, while they were suspicious and malicious, sometimes Proofpoint Email Protection failed to detect them."
"Unfortunately, the whole product is going downhill right now, ever since they were sold to Thoma Bravo. We're constantly having problems with stability and the product in general."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is an expensive solution."
"The solution should add post-sales training."
"ZeroFOX is not configured to grab the information automatically, including the news."
"Social media takedowns are a major issue. The takedowns should not take more than two to three hours."
"ZeroFOX needs improvement in handling duplicate alerts. If an alert on a domain, such as abcd.com, has not been addressed or is still in progress, similar new alerts are not combined into a single incident."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost of Proofpoint Email Protection is a lot higher than other solutions, such as Barracuda."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"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 end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"In general, the pricing is competitive."
"Clients pay for an annual subscription of Proofpoint Email Protection. Every client always finds it 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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
 

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 do you like most about ZeroFOX?
The best thing about the tool is that its backend team is pretty good and has a strong engineering team.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ZeroFOX?
Based on my observations, ZeroFOX is moderately priced. It's neither highly expensive nor very cheap. The pricing depends on the licensed services, such as takedowns or dark data services, chosen.
What needs improvement with ZeroFOX?
ZeroFOX needs improvement in handling duplicate alerts. If an alert on a domain, such as abcd.com, has not been addressed or is still in progress, similar new alerts are not combined into a single ...
 

Also Known As

Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
LookingGlass Manage Intelligence, VigilanteATI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Royal Farms, Hootsuite, BAE Systems, True Citrus
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint Email Protection vs. ZeroFOX and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.