Proofpoint Email Protection Reviews

The primary use case of Proofpoint Email Protection is to ensure email security for both incoming and outgoing emails.

The most valuable feature is the option to edit the inbound security. 

In terms of improvement, I have some concerns regarding the effectiveness of Proofpoint's phishing protection. There is room for improvement in detecting and preventing phishing attacks. While the solution performs well in some aspects, it struggles with phishing threats. There are other solutions on the market that do a good job with that.

I have been using the solution for three years.

In terms of stability, the solution performs well. We have not experienced any issues or downtime.

The solution is scalable enough for our organization. Approximately 2,000 people use it at our company daily.

We are currently working with both Proofpoint and Abnormal Security, but we plan on completely switching to Abnormal Security soon. Proofpoint needs to work on its performance in handling spam and phishing and to improve its services when it comes to AI or ML-based solutions. Even if Proofpoint decides to roll out such features, it will take some time. There are competitors on the market who already offer those features, and that is why we opted for Abnormal Security.

The initial setup is quite easy. It took one day to deploy the solution because our team needed to edit SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, which took some time as well.

My advice to people who are considering using Proofpoint would be to properly evaluate the services it offers. During the POC phase, you should assess all features offered, including phishing protection, and ensure they are up to date. You should compare Proofpoint with other vendors in the market before making a decision. Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten.

I use Proofpoint Email Protection as an email protection system.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the protection it offers to emails, along with the spam filters.

The stability and UI are the two areas of the solution with certain shortcomings that need improvement.

I have been using Proofpoint Email Protection for four or five years. My company is a customer of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I wouldn't say that the solution's stability is imperfect since it has been a stable tool. In our company, we see some notifications in the tool stating that certain login attempts are not happening successfully, but it is important to note that these issues happen rarely. The issue in the solution may be because of our lack of experience with the solution in our company.

A lot of people rely on the solution's UI. I often see the solution's UI go down, like once a month, which doesn't happen very often, in my opinion.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I had previously worked with an email protection system from Symantec.

The initial setup of Proofpoint Email Protection is easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model, along with a SaaS version. A PnP deployment is enough with the on-premises version, which is an appliance.

The solution's deployment process took around a week.

I was a part of the solution's deployment process, which was pretty much engaging professional services, putting requirements and other stuff in place before going for the validation part, making it a simple process.

Proofpoint Email Protection is a reasonably priced product, which means that it is neither too low nor too high in terms of price.

I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high.

Proofpoint has many modules, allowing one to opt for the right module that fits into their business. Oversubscribing to modules in Proofpoint may not help, and it can get expensive after a certain point. I work for a financial organization, so I know emails and stuff coming over emails are considered critical in our company, and because of this, we are pretty much subscribed to most of Proofpoint's modules. I see a benefit from the product. The solution may not fit into some other organizations.

Though Proofpoint Email Protection has been a strong and stable product, I feel that Proofpoint can still do better. The support for the product has been great since the solution's support team has been very responsive and accommodating to our requests, especially regarding the enhancements we have put in the solution.

Proofpoint Email Protection has been a very good tool that has been very accommodating to our company's needs. The tool helps my company since it has a lot of capabilities, especially the feature to provide protection to emails. I don't have anything that I could complain about. My experience with the solution has been good, as it works the way I expected it to function.

The stability can get redundant because of ensuring the email system in an organization where every minute counts, and since it is deployed on a SaaS model, it becomes a critical infrastructure where an organization doesn't have much visibility. Organizations rely on vendor infrastructure, so I hope that Proofpoint does a better job there and ensures that the solution functions with the least downtime or on a no-downtime kind of model.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

We use most of Proofpoint Email Protection's features including email phishing protection, TAP (Targeted Attack Protection), TRAP (Threat Response Auto-Pull), URL rewrites, and sandboxing. It is currently used in a hybrid environment and we have just deployed a patch for the latest version.

Proofpoint Email Protection's advantage is that, when it's working properly, it tends to catch more threats as compared to other products.

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.

Even their sales and support is deteriorating as well. I can't even get them to quote me for the next year, possibly because they are still in disarray from their sale.

Because of these issues, we are likely going to move away from it soon. I would prefer not to change, but I might not have a choice, especially if they can't even send me the proper quotes for everything.

I have been using Proofpoint Email Protection for about five years now.

The stability of Proofpoint Email Protection is a problem right now, and I assume it has to do with their sale to Thoma Bravo.

These days, I would rate the stability a four of ten.

We have somewhere between 4,000-6,000 users who are benefiting from the solution. However, when it comes to extending our usage, I'm not sure if we will go ahead with them because they're completely dropping the bomb on everything; they won't even respond to give me quotes to renew this year.

Licensing issues aside, I would rate the product an eight out of ten in terms of scalability.

The initial setup was good, at least until the last 12 months after their sale. I would rate the setup process an eight out of ten.

Our in-house team worked with Proofpoint's engineers for the deployment. It was a pretty quick process of setting up the email gateways and starting up the VMs in our hybrid environment. Overall, we only needed one person for the VMs and server setup, and one other person to take care of the security configuration and all the rest.

In terms of ROI as compared to their competitors, Proofpoint still has a very good phishing signature file, so they're probably catching 5-10% more threats than what the other products are catching. If you can keep it running, that is.

They are competitively priced, but I have been forced to get quotes for other solutions now because they haven't been responding to requests to do the work that we would like them to do.

My advice to others is to be cautious because they seem to be going through some changes (likely to do with corporate structuring issues) that are negatively affecting customer service and stability.

I would rate Proofpoint Email Protection a six out of ten.

Our organization is large and has multiple entities that use the solution. 

Our department includes two senior information security analysts and two network analysts. We use the solution and as our main security filter for 90% of emails. Emails come into the domain, hit the gateway firsthand, and the solution filters for spam, phishing, malware, and virus attachments. 

The TAP service integrates with the PPS API connection and analyzes every bit of email that goes through the system. Troublesome domains are blocked automatically without needing to be analyzed. If a specific email address is not blocked, the email gets released. TAP still analyzes the email, identifies whether it is a threat, and details its attributes such as the IP address, subject and content, and URL name. 

All metadata for a threat email is sent from TAP to TRAP which goes back to the user's mailbox and automatically pulls the email so that it disappears. TRAP also identifies if the email has been distributed, even to 10,000 users, and attempts to pull back all instances. TRAP can pull internal emails but not external emails because it does not have access to external systems. 

Our company uses the solution to its fullest potential. 

A organization's security culture and investment defines how extensively they will use the solution. For example, Bank of America is a big company where security is important so they will spend millions of dollars improving their product. A smaller company with just 10,000 users might only do a certain level to improve.  

Spam scoring is a feature for which usage varies. The solution scores emails from zero to 100 and companies can decide the level of acceptance. A level of 70 might block too many emails so users will complain. If you have 2,000 users, the complaints might cause you to loosen the rating constraints to 85 or so. 

The solution's whole server is valuable because has robust algorithms, AI that learns what goes through a company's email server, and strong rules for analyzing data. Competitor's products are just standard email filters that block or pass with no ongoing AI for learning. 

The security is very strong and comparatively better than Cisco CES. For example, in the last six months there has been an uptick in phishing campaigns or malicious email attachments purporting to come from Geek Squad. I see a substantial number of these troublesome emails pass through CES, Barracuda, and Mimecast but I have not seen a single email pass through the solution. 

The Phish Alarm button allows users to submit questionable emails for review and complete analysis. A submitted email is analyzed in the cloud sandbox and the results are provided along with the actual email. Substantial information is included in this dynamic analysis such as email details, URLs, links, domains, ages of accounts, and what the email is intending to do. No other product offers this type of built-in email analysis. I have reviewed three different products including Cofense and they all send the email with its metadata to the user's security response team for manual review.  

The solution's server console and cluster dashboard have been the same for four years so need to be upgraded. There is no feature-rich dashboard so searching emails is cumbersome and slow. The way Facebook, Gmail, and LinkedIn looked five years ago is not the same as today. Everything today is feature-rich and user-friendly.

I have been using the solution for four years. 

The solution is very stable with no issues in six years. I never have situations with the cloud going down or email going haywire. However, I have seen other products have these issues. 

The solution is scalable depending on your licenses. 

Technical support is excellent, very easy to access, and fast. It is easy to chat with support via the online community portal. They will point you in the right direction during chat sessions or set up a call with a support agent. 

This is the first solution our company has used. 

The deployment process is pretty easy. 

The solution builds your cluster in the cloud and gives you a gateway, URL, MX records, and IP addresses. You then set up your DMS and MX records for your cluster and tie it to your email gateway. The process is pretty simple and can be done within a week. 

Suppose all your emails and servers are from Microsoft 365 with mailboxes in the cloud. Once your domain is on the solution's cluster, it needs to be connected with the Microsoft email gateway. Think of a pipe where water goes from one end to the other. The solution sits at the entrance of the pipe to filter out bad particles. Filtered items go into the pipe or Microsoft's email gateway. Down the pipe there is an open tap which pours right into the user's glasses. 

We implement the solution for customers. Implementation takes one to three people depending on the size of the organization. 

Our team handles any ongoing maintenance which is minimal. 

The solution uses a licensing model that is reasonable compared to other products. I rate pricing a nine out of ten. 

I appreciate the solution because it is purely for email security. 

The solution is a great product and the best existing option in 2022. You will be very happy with the solution's security features. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

The product looks at the emails that we receive. If there are any suspicious emails with attachments or strange content, it will detect that and give us an alert on a dashboard. From there, we can pick up the alert, and then we can review and take action to mitigate any risk.

Overall, it is a good product.

We like that it provides everything in a single dashboard. On that, we can find all the information related to the risks involved within a suspicious email.

The initial setup is very, very easy.

It's a stable, reliable product.

As a cloud-based product, it can scale well. 

Customer support is very helpful and responsive. They are great at answering questions. 

We'd like to have the ability to create more customized reports.

It would be ideal if we could customize exceptions more effectively and have more control over blacklisting and whitelisting. 

The solution can be expensive. 

I've been using the solution for the past three or four years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We find it scales well. It is cloud-based, which makes the process very easy.

We have about 5,000 people using the solution right now.

We do contact support regularly. We do get in touch to understand certain features or if we want to know more about how to use something. We frequently get in touch with support. They offer excellent assistance.

Positive

This is an easy product to set up. It's not complex at all in terms of implementation.

How long it takes to deploy depends on the business. If they approve and agree to everything readily, it should only take a couple of weeks. 

I'm not sure of the exact cost. My understanding is it is expensive.

I have been recently attempting to compare Microsoft 365 and Proofpoint. 

We are a customer. We are not a partner.

I'm not sure which version number we're using.

It is one of the leading email security providers and has gone through reviews by our application security team. They evaluated all of the features to make sure they aligned with our needs, and so far, it has not disappointed me. 

I would recommend the product as it provides everything users need right in one place, especially security controls. 

It may be a good idea, however, to have a separate product for security control and a separate product for email business flows to give a separation of duties. Instead of having everything in one place, it is sometimes best to manage business and security policies separately. Companies should have dedicated security and an effective email security gateway where they can control the security of an entire organization.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's very useful to be able to see everything in one central place. 

I have been using Proofpoint Email Protection for the emails that we receive to determine if there is any suspicious attachment or content. It will detect and give us an alert on our dashboard. From there we can pick up the alerts and review and take action to mitigate the risk.

The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the central location dashboard for viewing all the related information for risk.

Proofpoint Email Protection could improve by allowing more customization of the reports, such as exceptions and black-and-white lists.

I have been using Proofpoint Email Protection for approximately four years.

Proofpoint Email Protection is stable.

The scalability of Proofpoint Email Protection is good because it is cloud-based.

We have approximately 5,000 people using this solution in my organization.

If we need to understand how to use the solution better we contact the support.

I rate the support of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five.

Positive

The initial setup of Proofpoint Email Protection is easy, it does not take more than a couple of weeks. However, it can depend on the business.

The solution is expensive.

My company is using the solution because it is one of the leading email security providers, and it has gone through a review by the application security team. The features were in line with our requirements.

I recommend Proofpoint Email Protection because it provides everything in one place, such as security control. I would suggest having a separate solution for security control and another for email business flow. This way it would give a separation of duties instead of having everything in one place, the business policy as well as the security policy. Sometimes it is not the best way to manage both policies in one place. It's better to have a dedicated security, email security gateway where we can control the security of the organization.

I rate Proofpoint Email Protection a nine out of ten.

I gave my rating because the solution provides everything in one place and it has a lot of features for more insight regarding suspicious emails. I can see how many users received it, the attack vector, and the repetition of the email.

The stability is good.

The spam filter for email is good.

The solution can scale. 

We have found the initial setup to be straightforward. 

I have some concerns about Proofpoint mail flow rules. It's not smart.

Proofpoint has a lot of false alarms. Even their mail flow rules are not the best thing. Mimecast and Microsoft Office 365 are better than them. Many emails are marked as spam unnecessarily. I've had issues and have had to open many tickets. 

I've used the solution for five years. 

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

While most of my clients have under 100 users, my understanding is if it works for 100, it can work for 1,000 or 10,000 users. Scaling shouldn't be an issue. 

I've talked to support about creating rules and the issues we've had. I've had to open many tickets with them. 

For example, last month our web application sent an invoice for one of the customers, and it relayed the email on behalf of the customer domain. This email was marked as phishing. Even when the SBS was correct and the DCOM was correct. I opened a ticket. The rule didn't work. They responded fast. Even though I have problems, I find them to be responsive. 

I have used Defender, Proofpoint, and Mimecast. I use them daily for different companies and have subscriptions for all three. In my company, we use Defender.

Mimecast and Microsoft are better than Proofpoint when it comes to mail rules. On Proofpoint, the rules don't work as expected. 

The solution is straightforward and simple to set up. It's not overly complex. 

I'm a freelancer working to support some companies that are using Proofpoint. 

Sometimes I create a subscription for them and configure everything from scratch; sometimes, I take it already configured and just maintain it.

Anyone with basic knowledge of the solution and how to configure items will not have an issue with this product.

I'd rate it seven out of ten based on the mail flow issues I have witnessed.

The targeted attack protection that we use has been great, as has the email filtering and the rules that we have set for Proofpoint. The quarantine capabilities are very useful.

You can scale the solution.

It's a mature product. It does a good job in detection. 

The false positives are an issue. There are many false positives that come in, which you report to Proofpoint. Sometimes they take time to update those things. They say there's an option that we can use to report false positives. However, it is not a quick remedy. You go and report it, and still, you have to take action on it and clear those emails getting blocked. It's too cumbersome. 

We don't have the option to scan a password-protected attachment. I have to either blindly whitelist it as it will get blocked since an email with attachments normally gets scanned. We'd like to have some mechanism in place where we can scan these protected attachments or whitelist the domain.

I've been working with the solution for two years. 

We purchased some licenses, and we are using all of them. For us, scalability is not a problem. We have been able to scale it. 

We have more than 5,000 people working on the product.

Technical support is good. The expertise that they offer is good. The only thing that I have a problem with is we have our support operations in India and their availability for a call can be mismatched. That would normally take some time. You don't get a suitable person in the time zone available around the clock.

We did not previously use a different solution.

I was not there when it was deployed. We only manage at the application level.

We do not need that many admins to maintain it. We might need three or so. Most of the time, it's only checking on the blocked emails, which are actually good emails, and sometimes if there are investigations required and maintenance, they would handle those tasks. At a minimum, you need three, depending on the size of your organization. They would maintain it for the shift, for fixed operations hours, not on a rotational basis. You might have to put in more resources if you have rotational.

Depending upon your company's revenue, you can make up your mind about whether you want to invest that money or not. However, the offering is niche in the market today compared to other products, like Exchange Online Protections, which is an evolving product. It's growing. In contrast, Proofpoint has been around in the listing for quite some time, so they mature in terms of detection of suspicious emails and its email filtering system. Of course, while the pricing is rather fair, clients would always prefer to pay less. 

I cannot speak to the exact price. 

The price is fixed. It doesn't change according to companies. It gives you multiple package options, so you can pick what suits you. 

You also get other add-on services, which if you've got a subject matter expert within Proofpoint, then you don't have to buy additional personnel from them to coordinate. You wouldn't need a customer success manager or somebody doing a health check for it. That might increase your cost. 

Next time, if I get an opportunity to reapply for a license, I might think of removing some of the add-on services, which might reduce the cost or the overall price that we are paying today. I don't know the actual standalone product cost, meaning what would be the product cost alone. It's dealt with by our procurement team, or they can check with Proofpoint to see the product pricing.

I have cross-checked this solution with Defender right now. We're doing a cost-benefit analysis and seeing if it makes sense for us to use it at all or not.

I'm a customer and end-user.

We are using Proofpoint Essentials right now. 

When you are an SME, every product company is trying to promote a product and sell it to you; however, if you don't know how it functions and its capability and effectiveness, then you probably end up buying what you need. Constantly evaluate any product you're buying. I've seen Proofpoint used in the last three companies that I worked with, so I have a lot of experience with this particular solution.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I am using Proofpoint Email Protection for blocking out spam and malware from the emails. Proofpoint Email Protection is linked to our Microsoft Office365

Proofpoint Email Protection has improved the way our organization functions by blocking threats.

The most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the blocking capabilities, it blocks a lot of potential threats.

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.

In a feature release, phishing blocking could improve.

I have been using Proofpoint Email Protection for approximately one year.

Proofpoint Email Protection is a stable solution.

The scalability of Proofpoint Email Protection is good.

We have between 50 to 100 people using this solution in my organization.

I have not used the technical support from Proofpoint Email Protection.

I have previously used SolarWinds Mail Assure prior to Proofpoint Email Protection. The main reason we switched was that the price was better for Proofpoint Email Protection.

The initial setup of Proofpoint Email Protection is very easy. The full process took approximately 15 minutes.

We did the implementation of Proofpoint Email Protection in-house. It did not require a lot of maintenance. We only have to watch out for the quarantine list that gets emailed to us.

We have received a return on investment. Less spam is coming in through email. 

I rate the ROI of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five.

I rate the price of Proofpoint Email Protection a four out of five.

We evaluated other options before choosing Proofpoint Email Protection.

My advice to others is the solution seems to be good and stable with a very easy-to-use user interface.

I rate Proofpoint Email Protection a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to filter out spam from our end users, block malicious attacks, and add banners to the emails if they're from suspicious senders. 

If there's a suspicious link, we'll have a URL to open it in a browser.

The solution has lowered the amount of spam to our end users. There is a quarantine inbox. Users can go into their quarantine inbox and release emails for them if they are legitimate, but they get blocked. It reduces false positives too.

The solution blocks malicious emails containing viruses and malware and reduces them out of spam.

The email DLP portion could be a bit easier.

I have been using Proofpoint Email Protection for nine months.

The product is stable.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

There are no scalability issues.

I rate the solution’s scalability a ten out of ten.

We used our built-in Microsoft Gateway since we used Microsoft Outlook for email. We switched to Proofpoint because more spam emails were getting than we wanted. We're trying to find a better way to stop spam, and Microsoft wasn't getting it done how we wanted it.

The initial setup is straightforward. We had a Proofpoint support guy who did it for us. It would have been really difficult if I tried to do it on my own. Since they did every step with us, it was much easier.

The solution is worth the price. We have noticed that fewer spam emails are getting into our users' inboxes. We have seen a reduction in spam emails.

We were evaluating Mimecast before.

Proofpoint is a solid product.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.