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Sophos Email vs TitanHQ SpamTitan comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Sophos Email
Ranking in Email Security
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Office 365 Protection (2nd)
TitanHQ SpamTitan
Ranking in Email Security
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (17th), Office 365 Protection (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 13.1%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Email is 2.3%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TitanHQ SpamTitan is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
NaveedAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good identity proxy features, but sandboxing and spam control features could be improved
Sophos gives you a feature set to manage your on-premises firewall on the cloud. I just integrated my on-premises firewall into the cloud, and I can manage the tool through the cloud as well if needed. I recommend using Sophos Email as a proxy. For email gateways, I advise choosing mature products with rich feature sets, like Trend Micro or CrowdStrike. The solution's integration with other tools is very simple. I easily integrated Sophos Email with my Active Directory. My organization needs a WAF with a limited feature set, which we use through Sophos. Purchasing additional WAF will be costly, but I get sandboxing and WAF features free of cost with Sophos, which is included in the license. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
George Kajaia - PeerSpot reviewer
Work hours are not lost searching through spam emails to determine which emails are legitimate
In history on the reporting graph, when you are trying to search for sender by address, it won't search by domain. I could send an email from SendGrid with my domain, but with SpamTitan, if you search by that domain then it wouldn't search it. It only searches from the field, not in the envelope field. Unfortunately, mass mailing companies, like SendGrid, send email with the form address and that completely differs from the domain envelope form address. There is no way to search for the envelope form. So, I gave them an idea to improve this filtering. For example, if I have to search an email sent by SendGrid, then I am forced to search by the recipient, then find the emails marked as spam. This is quite a huge hassle. They told me that they are aware of this and will try to add it, but they haven't added it yet. I would like to implement a secondary delivery pool for mass mailings, having an alternate pool for mass mailing lists since there is only a single mail queue with SpamTitan. For example, if 10,000 emails are being sent, then the queue will be large. Unfortunately, without a secondary delivery pool, legitimate emails will wait in the queue to be delivered to my email. Therefore, I would like to have two queues: one for everyday emails and another for mass mailings. Now, I have to decide whether to buy a second SpamTitan license just for this reason because I am very satisfied with the functionality of SpamTitan overall and don't want to use another sender's appliance for this. From 2020 to 2021, there was a huge switch in the types of spam coming in. SpamTitan's anti-spam should be enabled to catch this spam. The spam catching rate went down over the last three to four years. I think this is because spammers are evolving and using different methods to send spam emails. The phishing rate of SpamTitan is not great, even Exchange Online Protection catches phishing better than SpamTitan. The most worrying are the phishing emails. I would like SpamTitan to upgrade and improve the phishing catch rate. The sandbox of the Bitdefender engine is not working correctly. They sent me an email that they pulled it because it was not working as it was intended to work. So, they are working on this as well, and maybe the sandbox will be fixed. The sandbox is for viruses. If something goes through then it is sent to the sandbox for analysis. However, I am not using the sandbox right now. I am just quarantining this type of attachment right away.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"Defender enables us to secure all 365-related activity from a single place. It gives us visibility into everything happening in Outlook, protecting us against phishing and other email-based threats. Defender helps us detect any suspicious behaviors."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"The initial setup was easy."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is its spam filter."
"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos Email is the sandbox. We're able to scan the file, isolate it, and look at it before it is delivered. It is highly effective."
"The solution protects users from phishing links and spam."
"Good VIP protection, time of click protection and the Sandstorm feature."
"I would recommend Sophos Email to both end-users and other entities that want to protect their emails."
"The deployment is very easy. It's quite straightforward."
"Sophos Email offers encryption and malware protection, provides visibility into emails, has 99% accuracy in catching spam, enhances organizational safety, integrates with various vendors like Microsoft, is deployable with any email service, prevents data loss, features authentication rules, synchronizes with Active Directory and Azure, and includes a self-service portal. The product is very flexible."
"The speed and stability were fine."
"The anti-spam functionality of Sophos Email is good."
"Another feature of SpamTitan that I like is the reporting. We are able to identify the users or accounts that have been attacked most. We can see information that shows us the sites that the user goes to, and that helps in launching an investigation of that user and how they use our resources."
"It filters some of the spam."
"Another nice feature is how tailored it is so that I can adjust the domain reputation score. At certain times of the year we run marketing campaigns and I can raise the score a little bit and that way we get feedback more readily. And during Christmas time, when the bad guys try to pull people in, I can turn it down and make it a little bit tighter."
"The user interface for regular users is quite intuitive. The email report that they receive is pretty self-explanatory. The online interface for administrators is simple yet really quite effective. It's really a set-it-and-forget-it, and everything is available when needed."
"They have something called Pattern Filtering, which has been a godsend... For example, if I don't want any email to ever come through that has the term "hot dog" in it, whether it be in the subject, the title, or anywhere else, I can immediately block such emails, company-wide. That has saved me so much time."
"We really like the fact that we get a quarantine report because we can identify for ourselves which emails we want to keep and which we want to get rid of. It also gives us the option of directly allowing emails, which we really like. That way, the next time we get such emails, they're not blocked."
"We have absolutely seen ROI. The regained productivity hours that we were able to claim since we automated the email protection have been really good. Our team of three people has seen an increase in our productivity, by around 30%, since implementing SpamTitan."
"Among the features that led us to choose SpamTitan are the ability to lock down, the multiple layers of security they have built into it, the ability to scrub inbound and outbound, as well as higher-level SPF and DMARC capabilities that were not really built into our previous product."
 

Cons

"Microsoft needs to broaden its global support presence by establishing teams of subject-matter experts in all regions."
"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"The visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."
"The visibility into threats is not up to the mark, as I do not have control. I rate my experience with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 as six out of ten due to troubleshooting and pricing concerns."
"Microsoft sometimes has downtime, and we'll get several incidents coming in back to back. We have a huge backlog of notifications, many of which may be false positives. However, there might be serious alerts, so we can't risk dismissing all of them at once."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"Sophos Email can improve mail security."
"The solution's sandboxing and spam control features could be improved."
"Email installation could be more user-friendly so that it can be done without involving the partner."
"The tool's integration becomes an issue when the internet connection is weak."
"Lacks visibility into spam emails."
"The tool has some performance issues and bugs, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Their technical support is slow to respond."
"Email installation could be more user-friendly so that it can be done without involving the partner"
"They need to keep up with the latest technology and add new features as they arise, e.g., artificial intelligence, new and improved updated lists, or new ways of tracking spam. They need to just keep up so the product is effective. Because, if all of a sudden viruses or spam starts getting through, then we might have to look at something else. However, so far, it has kept up and done a great job. So, we are happy."
"The product's GUI, dashboard, and speed could be better."
"As a Danish company, it would be great to see a Danish translation for the UI."
"There is no plugin for Outlook, which might be of an advantage so that you can just click on a link in Outlook that takes you right to your quarantine list. It doesn't have that at the moment."
"We're so used to it now. If anything, there should be more ease of access for the users. If you're on our mail server, there should be easier access for you to better manage your own mailbox."
"We had to do some stuff with eFax in order to get eFaxing to come through. Had we known that ahead of time, we could have had that ironed out before we went live. However, we just didn't realize it was going to interfere with it. After we implemented it, we realized it was interfering with some of our eFaxes, so we had to go figure out why"
"SpamTitan doesn't quarantine when it blocks things based on the remote block list or greylisting. It just deletes the email. When I try to look at these blocked items, it tells me they're gone. RBL or greylisted items aren't saved, so you can check them. There may be a setting somewhere that I haven't seen."
"Initially, I had some issues where we were getting emails coming in that appeared to come in from our own internal domain. My company is called M2 Systems, so our domain name is M2-corp.com. I had to get on with support twice to get them to help me mitigate or block that from happening."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
"The product is expensive."
"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."
"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
"Sophos Email is priced lower than its competitors."
"The platform is inexpensive. It offers a cost-effective licensing model. We purchase its yearly license."
"It is an expensive solution. On a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price, I rate the pricing a seven."
"I would rate the pricing of Sophos Email as a six. It is considered affordable as a standalone product, and there are no additional costs besides licensing. The pricing is fixed."
"Sophos Email is a little expensive for us, but it's necessary. We have a subscription and renew it every three years."
"I rate the price of Sophos Email a four out of five."
"Sophos Email is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The pricing is fair."
"The price point is still of a reasonable nature. It is reasonable for the services that they offer. They are very reasonable, and that is one of the factors why we decided on SpamTitan a long time ago."
"For the service, the pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is very reasonable. I know the cloud version costs more because of active 24/7 monitoring, but we take care of that as our setup is on-prem. SpamTitan is in line with what we were paying for GFI MailEssentials but works much better."
"The pricing is great, but it has been increasing on a yearly basis. It is now close to that of Microsoft solutions. If it continues to increase, then clients may need to migrate to a different solution."
"The pricing model was one of the reasons that we selected it. The solution was very effective at what it did and it was very cost-effective. My client saved in the 30% to 40% range by installing it, so the pricing is competitive."
"This pricing is absolutely fine and it's never been an issue of it being too expensive."
"Its pricing is good. We've been happy with the pricing. I know that they did some extensive research, and the pricing was quite favorable with everything else that they looked at. My budget hasn't changed a whole lot over the last three to five years. It's nice to see that it has remained pretty steady. So, I am happy with the pricing. It provides good value for money."
"The approximate cost is around $7000 USD."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I don't have detailed specifics on pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost.
What do you like most about Sophos Email?
The solution's identity proxy feature is very good and reliable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos Email?
Sophos Email pricing is a bit high, especially since I purchase through a partner, and they sell it at a higher price...
What needs improvement with Sophos Email?
Email installation could be more user-friendly so that it can be done without involving the partner. If made more use...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TitanHQ SpamTitan?
Pricing is affordable. We renewed for three years, and the cost is reasonable.
What needs improvement with TitanHQ SpamTitan?
The GUI is problematic. It's a mess and absolute rubbish now. We also face issues with the settings that are not yet ...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Sophos Email Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Del Monte Foods, Terra Verde, spicerhaart, RIVERLITE, Dataprise, SureBridge, Reed's School, Sayfol International School
De Montfort University, Scope Services, Park County School District, NRC, Quality Smith, Toyota, CarTrawler, Videotron
Find out what your peers are saying about Sophos Email vs. TitanHQ SpamTitan and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.