Symantec Messaging Gateway Reviews

We use the solution for email gateway security.

The product helps to filter spam messages, phishing attacks, and spoofing. These are some of the very good features of the product. The product performs well. Symantec’s spyware and malware signature database is very good compared to other products.

The product must improve the user dashboards. The user navigation is a little bit outdated. It should be made user-friendly. When we click certain links, it takes us to multiple other links.

The product must provide a feature to quickly increase the users or license model based on our needs. Though the product is good, the services are not up to the mark. The product’s technical and commercial services are very, very pathetic. That is why the solution is losing business.

My organization has been using the solution for the past three to four years.

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

I rate the tool’s scalability a six out of ten. The commercial department is lazy. These products only work with the licenses. Technically, the product is sound, but Symantec is not utilizing it fully due to poor management.

Assume I buy the product for 150 users today. If I add five users the next day, enabling licenses for the new users will be a tedious process. Around 150 people are using the solution in our organization.

We also use Symantec for EDR for our servers and endpoint protection. The product is good, but services are not up to the mark.

The initial setup is simple. We use Microsoft 365. Linking Microsoft 365 with the product is not tough. It gets synchronized within an hour. The tool is deployed on the cloud.

We do not require consultants to deploy the solution. We use the Microsoft platform. We have to follow some easy steps. First, we have to enable it in Microsoft and choose where to route the link. Then, we have to put the URL given in Symantec in DNS. DNS could be located in Cloudflare or GoDaddy. When we place the URL, it gets automatically routed. Later, we must update the MX records or TXT records.

It is a tedious process to enable the license on the portal. The tool has a reasonable price. Compared to other products, Symantec quotes a very good price. The price is optimal. For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000.

Barracuda is a competitor. From a technical point of view, Symantec is superior. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and Barracuda are not up to the mark. I compared these two products before buying Symantec. Symantec is better compared to other products. It has a good database.

Since Symantec merged with Broadcom, they might have lost some good technical engineers. Maybe that’s the reason why the product is performing poorly. When we have a good marketing and sales team, even though our product cannot perform, we will sell it at a high price because of the buzzwords. However, at the end of the day, the product should perform. Most of the products might not perform.

Symantec is a very good product, but the services are basic. I rate the technical features of the product a nine out of ten. However, I would rate the services provided by the solution a six out of ten. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

I use the solution for email security.

The anti-malware and spam features are valuable. The product provides nice content filtering options. All the features are good. Everything works as a single entity.

The spam submissions must be improved. It doesn't get actioned if we submit the false positives using the system. The false positive submissions must be improved.

The tool is very stable. I rate the stability a seven out of ten. It's an on-premise application that runs on a virtual machine. It has dependencies on the hypervisor host that we're running it on. If it's not configured, the application can be influenced by it. Sometimes, there is a service stop error while the service is still running. Sometimes, the service just stops. Some policies do not act the way that we intend them to respond.

The tool is very scalable. We can scale it up and make it like a cloud solution if we want to. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. We have more than 100,000 active mailboxes being scanned by the solution. It's not like an agent deployment that we put on the user's endpoints. It scans for emails.

The product is tedious. When we set up the policy on some components, and it doesn’t work as intended, we call the support team. We must know if the policy is set up correctly, whether it works, and what alternatives we have. We have to keep up with the protection mechanisms in the application. Sometimes, the product falls a little bit behind. The product must be improved.

Neutral

The initial setup is not too easy, but not too difficult. I rate the ease of setup a five out of ten. If we manage the solution, we must know how it works. Otherwise, we will have some difficulty understanding how to sync it up. The ease of setup depends on how well we understand mail flows and image records. After the deployment, we must set up spam, anti-malware, and content filtering policies. We also have to define our domains. It is based on the client’s requirements.

If someone doesn't have too much money to spend on cloud solutions like Mimecast or Symantec Endpoint Security, Symantec Messaging Gateway is a very good substitution that they can use to get decent security for their emails. The product is very scalable. Even if we have a cloud-based solution, we can place Symantec Messaging Gateway behind that solution as a secondary tool. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

We use the solution to secure our data and emails.

Symantec is a secure product. We faced no attacks when we used it. Symantec is a big name in the IT industry.

The solution takes up a lot of memory. The system becomes slow. The performance must be improved.

I have used the solution for four to five years.

We did not face any downtime, but updates take too much time. The product required a GUP server. We installed a GUP server in each location. Every system was updated from that location’s server so that the network traffic was reduced. We implemented this solution due to the slowness we faced in Symantec.

We contact the local partners if we need support.

We were using Kaspersky before. Then, we switched to Symantec. Now, we have switched to Trend Micro because Symantec utilizes a lot of memory.

The deployment takes one week.

My team is responsible for implementation. We are at peace if our data is secure. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

I use Symantec Messaging Gateway for email security, content monitoring, and as an antimalware solution.

Symantec Messaging Gateway has a good GUI, and it is very powerful in detecting viruses and spam.

Symantec Messaging Gateway should include better exclusions and exceptions for better administration.

I have been using Symantec Messaging Gateway for ten years.

I rate Symantec Messaging Gateway a nine out of ten for stability.

Around 5,000 users are using the solution in our organization.

I rate Symantec Messaging Gateway a nine out of ten for scalability.

My experience with Symantec Messaging Gateway’s technical support was very good.

Symantec Messaging Gateway's initial setup is very easy.

Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap.

I am using the latest version of Symantec Messaging Gateway.

In today's world, you should always use an anti-spam or antimalware solution, and Symantec Messaging Gateway is a good option because of its price, deployment, and administration.

Overall, I rate Symantec Messaging Gateway ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for mail. All messages go through the gateway. It helps maintain security. It helps with spam and protects emails. 

It helps avoid mail threats. 

It protects against spam bots and messaging threats. It's a full solution for email. We do not get any phishing. 

We do like that we do not need to manage everything. It's managed by Symantec. 

The setup process is easy.

The solution is "set and forget". You pay for it and everything is done for you.

It is stable, for the most part.

It can scale. If you want more people to use it, you just buy more licensing. 

We've had issues in the past where the user finds spam, and Symantec does not recognize it as spam. We had one person get 1,000 emails in two hours, and when we asked Symantec to look into it, they said it was not spam. As a user, you don't have much flexibility. You just get results. You cannot manage anything. They manage it, and you can't control it as you would like. 

We would prefer if there is no downtime. We had experienced times when the site was down for four or eight hours. 

I've used the solution for three years. 

We've had some issues with stability where there was downtime for a few hours. Usually, over the last three years, there's rarely been downtime. It could be better. However, it is okay. 

I'd rate the stability eight out of ten. 

You pay per user. If you need more users, you pay for the extra licenses. 

We have 800 users on the solution right now. 

The number of users is currently decreasing. We are not increasing usage. 

We have used Trend Micro in the past. They are both good solutions. We moved from the appliance to the cloud. That was when we moved to Symantec. 

The implementation is very easy. It's a cloud setup and happens very fast. It only takes ten minutes to half an hour.

We do not have any maintenance that we need to concern ourselves with. 

We deployed the solution in-house. We did not need any assistance. 

I've not looked into the ROI. 

You pay a licensing fee per user. 

I don't know of the exact cost per license as licensing is not part of my scope of work.

We're always on the latest version as it is a cloud product.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd recommend a cloud service like this as it is easy to use, and you don't have to do a lot of maintenance. 

I have supported the product for a couple of customers and handled migrations for others. 

It is basically used to receive emails and then check its hygiene, detect spam, report block-listed emails, and detect viruses. It provides all that reputation filtering that is part of policy group configurations. 

It has very good capabilities for managing malware. We can create malware policies and it directs those and reports them nicely. It's straightforward and easy. All you need to do is redirect your mail traffic to Symantec Cloud Gateway. 

They really need to create a good package that competes with Microsoft. They should accompany a lot of other products and do better with attractive packages that reduce cost. They have Endpoint production tools like Microsoft's Defender. They should offer both as a bundle to have a stake in the industry and give the customer a better price. I'd have the packet of products include identity security so they have a complete package that stands up to competitive products. 

I used it for the last five to six years. 

Stability is good and they offer both cloud-based and on-premise solutions. 

The cloud-based solution is very scalable. It is not hard to increase the number of users or onboard new companies. Any addition can happen quickly.  

I've worked with them to handle escalated cases such as messages wrongly quarantined. I also worked with them to include work list IPSs and URLs. They're reachable. 

Most of our customers already migrated to ING online protection after considering the consolidation request, the cost of the product, and what they're spending month to month. 

There are steps prior to use. First, I create all the relevant policies in the cloud. So that's something that can take months. Then I test and validate. The actual migration is straightforward. 

We are resellers, so we are the vendor team and have teams of six members for our normal operations of handling migrations. 

Customers see ROI but they feel they are paying duplicate bills. They paid at one time to Microsoft but were not using it. Now they pay Symantec per mailbox. And on the other side, now Microsoft offers it for free. 

Billing is based on the number of mailboxes and number of emails processed. So, in that way, they're a little costly compared to Microsoft. One customer I was supporting had 30K users from Singapore and their annual cost was almost $130K. The customer feels that's costly. If a customer is not too concerned about cost, then I would tell them to go for it. But even Microsoft these days has very good, competitive features to replace Symantec. If the customer has to think about budget and solutions to reduce IT cost, they should get away from Symantec and try using Microsoft. 

I handle migrations for customers and have experience comparing this solution with Microsoft and ING products. 

They have some things to improve or they will lose the industry. They have to place themselves in the game with complete packages. 

We primarily use the solution for security - to protect us from malware and to have anti-spam, content filtering. It's for that initial inspection of email before it gets into our environment.

The solution is stable and the performance is good. 

Technical support, under Symantec, was good.

They were great at keeping up with patching.

The product could scale.

The initial setup wasn't too difficult. 

Having the control center in just one place was difficult. Now that they are moving to the cloud, it will be less of an issue. 

The solution is slightly outdated. The version that we have now is due to the fact that the company hasn't moved up to the latest version. They're on 10.6 and the latest version is 10.74 or something like that. They were four versions behind.

The biggest problem is it's an on-prem product and we're trying to get out of having equipment in data centers. The company wants the reliability that the cloud offers. That's the main justification for leaving that product. I know they offer a cloud solution, however, when you have Microsoft having it as part of a package and you're already kind of paying for something, it makes sense to move over, rather than have two solutions doing the same thing in one company.

I worked for the company that I'm working at now, for 19 years, however, I was gone for six years. In that 19 years, I had about 10 years where I was using Symantec Messaging Gateway. 

The stability is good. It's not buggy or glitchy. It works well. The performance is good.

I haven't messed with it in six years, and prior to that, there were not really any issues. It was a pretty good product, and they kept up with security patches. I noticed that we have a product that looks for vulnerabilities. If it's alarming, Symantec will come back and say, "No, we're good, we don't have that code in our product." They seem to have been pretty good with that.

It was pretty easy to scale. You just added more scanners. The one downside was you could only have one control center unless you wanted to manually keep two different control centers at two different data centers, and configure them the same. 

That said, you'll never 100% have them alike. That's the one downside is that you're stuck with, no matter how you scale your scanners, in the DMZ, and you still have that one control center inside. That's how we deployed it. If we lose that data center, we lose that control center. There are some white papers out there now on how to make that change to a different control center, so it is possible, however, it's been a long time since I've looked at that.

We have about 15,000 end-users on the solution currently. 

Technical support was fine when it was Symantec. It might have changed since it was bought out by Broadcom. I can't speak to that.

We're moving over to Microsoft Defender P2.

I'm on a project now, however, the hardware's old as we bought it originally back when you bought the appliance from Symantec. Due to the fact that the hardware's old, and since the company's already paying for Microsoft, we've decided to just go full-on with the Defender P2 license, and pull that old hardware, and take the Symantec Messaging Gateway out. The goal is to get everything into the cloud. 

The initial setup isn't too complex. That said, there are some challenges when you start stacking on different policies and stuff like that.

I didn't know the pricing when we bought it, and that was a long time ago. I can't speak to the exact costs. 

We are currently on the oldest version that's supported. It might be around version 10.

Symantec provides a layer of protection on the email gateway. It checks for malware, IP,  domain, etc. 

The solution is highly customizable. You can make rules for domains and configure policies for spam or malware. Messaging Gateway is an on-prem solution, so it's useful for companies without a cloud presence. 

The documentation could have more detailed examples of how to use the product in various situations. As more companies shift to the cloud, they could better integrate the on-prem and cloud versions through an on-prem client. 

I have used Symantec Messaging Gateway for many years. 

I rate Messaging Gateway eight out of 10 for stability.

I rate Messaging Gateway eight out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Symantec support eight out of 10.

Messaging Gateway is priced fairly.

I rate Symantec Messaging Gateway eight out of 10. 

The primary use case of the solution is to future inbound and outbound emails, applying content, filtering policies, and power policies. Basically, the content filter is based on the dictionary words, and most of them integrate SMG with DLP to quarantine emails which violates the data protection policies.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the content filtering policies because the solution offers huge options for configuration, such as hardware manipulation, et cetera, and the dictionaries make the work easier.

The solution interface is from 2003 and is outdated. Symantec Messaging Gateway needs to update the interface.

I have been using the solution for six years.

I give the stability of the solution a ten out of ten.

I give the solution a five out of ten for scalability.

The technical support capabilities are good, but the time response is not good.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. I give the initial setup a nine out of ten.

Without counting the deployment time of the appliance, and we only look at the software portion, I believe three hours is sufficient for initial deployment without any advanced policies.

We have seen a return on investment because the solution can avoid a lot of phishing and infections in our environment.

I give the solution a seven out of ten because it is a good solution for email threats, but it is becoming an outdated solution. In the near future, all companies will move their end-spend solutions and their email solutions to the cloud. To maintain an on-premise application in an environment now, I believe is not the best investment.

We require one analyst and one specialist for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

The solution is becoming outdated because companies are moving towards cloud applications. I believe this solution will become deprecated in the near future because the solution does not integrate with the new COG mail solutions such as Office 365. We can manage the inbound and outbound emails, but we can not have full integration with these solutions.

We use Symantec Messaging Gateway as an anti-spam solution. We have about twenty domains we use it on, plus our email accounts on Office on the cloud, and for our on-premise console, we utilize Symantec Messaging Gateway.

What I like most about Symantec Messaging Gateway is its usability. I also find its interface very friendly. The solution has a very good interface.

What needs to be improved in Symantec Messaging Gateway is its local partner support, as it's not as technical. The support my company gets from the partner isn't good. Vendor support is good, but local partner support isn't. I'm happy with Symantec Messaging Gateway as a solution, but the problem is with its partner support.

To me, Symantec Messaging Gateway is a complete solution, but it can be very difficult to search the web for resolutions to issues or problems you experience from it. If this could be improved or resolved in the next release of Symantec Messaging Gateway, then that would be good.

I've been using Symantec Messaging Gateway for more than ten years.

Symantec Messaging Gateway is a very stable solution.

I don't have information on how scalable Symantec Messaging Gateway is.

Symantec Messaging Gateway had already been implemented when I joined the company, so I'm unable to give information on whether the setup for it was straightforward or complex.

Symantec Messaging Gateway was deployed by two people from the server and database department and three people from the infrastructure department, so a total of five people deployed the solution.

I don't have any information on the licensing cost for Symantec Messaging Gateway.

We're currently evaluating Fortinet because our main firewall is under Fortinet, so we were under the impression that implementing a solution that has the same brand as our current firewall would be easier.

I'm a customer of Symantec Messaging Gateway.

My company has more than one thousand users of Symantec Messaging Gateway, and everyone within the company uses the solution.

My advice to others who plan to use Symantec Messaging Gateway is that it's a very good product, it's very stable, and it's user-friendly, but the only problem is that it doesn't have good partner support here in Bolivia, where I'm located.

My rating for Symantec Messaging Gateway is eight out of ten.