Proofpoint is a market leading email security gateway, and the world’s largest email security vendor, with annual revenues of over $1bn. Proofpoint Essentials is Proofpoint’s solution for small and mid-sized organizations. Essentials is a strong solution for email protection, encryption, archiving and continuity, delivered as a single platform, with a single admin console. Proofpoint have an unparalleled visibility into email threats with their global threat intelligence platform that spans email, social and mobile. Other vendors rely on third party threat intelligence, which can be less accurate. Proofpoint collect and analyse more than 100 billion data points a day from more than 100 million email boxes, 200 million social-media accounts, and 7 million mobile apps. Proofpoint secure more than 50% of the Fortune 100, the top 5 banks globally and 7 of the top 10 global retailers.

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The Top 11 Email Security Gateways
Discover the top 11 best Email Security Gateway platforms. Examine email security features such as phishing protection, reporting and admin controls.
Expert Insights / Jan 01, 2021 By Joel WittsEmail security should be a top priority for your company. Email is the number one target used by hackers to get access to your company’s private data, and email attacks such as phishing and business email compromise are on the rise. Your first line of defence should be an Email Security Gateway, a platform which guards your emails against hackers, spam and viruses.
There are many Email Security Gateway solutions available. Some are targeted towards enterprise users looking for granular admin controls and advanced functionality. Some are better suited for smaller businesses looking for an easy to use platform with a good price point.
To help you find the right solution, Expert Insights has identified some of the top Secure Email Gateway platforms. We’ll take you through their key features, their functionality and how well they work.
Want to read independent reviews of all the top Secure Email Gateway platforms? Click Here.
The Top 11 Best Secure Email Gateways:
- Proofpoint Essentials | IRONSCALES | SpamTitan | SolarWinds Mail Assure | Mimecast Secure Email Gateway | Barracuda Essentials, Cisco Email Security | Sophos Email Security | Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection | Forcepoint | Symantec Email Security Gateway.cloud
Proofpoint Essentials
Proofpoint provide strong protection against email threats, with effective spam protection and detection, powerful URL defense and dynamic content filtering. Essentials is a cost-effective solution, with many features such as archiving, and encryption included as part of the Professional package that would otherwise be expensive add-ons. Essentials provides a range of reports and logs to give you more control and awareness over your email network. Proofpoint’s admin console is modern, providing granular controls and improved threat reporting. With Essentials, Proofpoint provides organizations with enterprise class email security at a cost effective price point. It’s an ideal solution for businesses and MSPs, with easy set-up, deployment, and competitive pricing. Proofpoint is also a good option for teams using Office 365, as it offers Azure Active Directory Sync, meaning deployment is seamless and new users are automatically added.
You can read verified user reviews of Proofpoint Essentials here.
IRONSCALES
IRONSCALES provides fast, powerful protection against threats within the email inbox. They offer six different modules, which are sold as one complete email security service, with a single admin console to manage. IRONSCALES is a fully cloud based platform, perfect for use with Office 365 and G Suite, deploying with no MX Record changes needed. In testing, it detected phishing threats missed by Office 365 and other leading email security solutions. IRONSCALES provides powerful protection against sophisticated social engineering attacks, such as phishing and business email compromise.
IRONSCALES utilizes AI-driven security tools, combined with human intelligence from end users, to identitfy malicious emails, and remove them from users’ inboxes automatically. IRONSCALES provides very strong malware protection, powered by CheckPoint.
Additionally, IRONSCALES allows businesses to implement a ‘report phish’ button directly into users’ email clients. This works on all devices, and is fully customizable. It allows users to report suspicious emails, which makes helps to secure businesses and reduces the time between an email attack and admins detecting it. According to admin policy, when a user reports an email a warning will display to other users who receive the same email, or alternatively, the email will be quarantined. IRONSCALES also provides a full suite of security awareness training and phishing simulation, with customizable phishing templates and engaging training materials.
Customers praise IRONSCALES for making managing spam and phishing much easier on a broad scale. Admins report that in many cases, IRONSCALES has allowed them to remove phishing emails from inboxes with ease, stopping attacks before they happen. Customers also praise the ease of deployment. IRONSCALES integrates very well with cloud based email providers, such as Office 365 and G-Suite, but also works on-premise Exchange. IRONSCALES is a good option for organizations that are happy with their level of spam filtering, but need additional protection from advanced email threats, such as phishing, insider threats and business email compromise.
Read our full review of IRONSCALES here.
SpamTitan
SpamTitan is a leading secure email gateway platform that provides comprehensive protection against email threats including spam, malware, ransomware and phishing attacks. SpamTitan is built on a powerful spam filtering platform, with a market leading catch rate of 99.99% and a false positive rate of 0.0003%. Alongside spam filtering, SpamTitan provides advanced protection against sophisticated phishing attacks, scanning all inbound emails in real time and filtering out malicious content, including links to phishing webpages and malicious attachments.
SpamTitan provides strong threat protection against both inbound and outbound email threats. The platform provides multi-layered threat protection for inbound emails, with CEO Impersonation protection, phishing and protection, URL analysis, attachment sandboxing, ransomware protection, SPF/DKIM/DMARC checking and encryption. SpamTitan prevents phishing and whaling attacks by scanning inbound emails in real time, providing a strong level of inbox protection. Alongside inbound email, SpamTitan allows admins to set up powerful data leak prevention rules which help to stop outbound email data loss. SpamTitan allows admins to easily configure their threat protection policies, including the ability to set allow/deny lists, customize DLP rules and set policies by user, domain and domain group.
SpamTitan is an accessible and easy to manage platform, with a comprehensive SEG feature set. The service is simple to use, and easy to deploy, easily integrating with existing email systems. SpamTitan works well as an extra layer of security for Office 365 accounts, providing enhanced threat protection and reporting for Office 365 email users. This protection is backed by their responsive and knowledge technical support team. SpamTitan is popular with customers, who praise the service for its ease of deployment, cost-effective pricing and high-quality technical support. We recommend SpamTitan as an easy to manage email security solution for SMBs, enterprises, MSPs and resellers.
SolarWinds Mail Assure
SolarWinds Mail Assure is a cloud-based email security suite that provides protection for inbound and outbound email. It protects against spam, malicious URLs and attachments, and advanced email threats such as phishing. SolarWinds combines their proprietary email filtering technology with machine learning to provide protection from spear-phishing, social engineering and other targeted email threats. SolarWinds also provides collective threat intelligence, email continuity and long-term email archiving.
Mail Assure provides a cloud-based email gateway, 24/7 continuity and security-built archiving to help ensure email continuity and prevent data loss. Mail Assure’s Intelligent Protection and Filtering engine is fed by data from 23 million mailboxes, helping to ensure threat information and inbox protection is up to date. SolarWinds provides a range of customizable admin policies and rules via a cloud-based admin dashboard, from where they can also manage email continuity. SolarWinds also allows end-users to manage their own email quarantines within Outlook. Users are able to manage their spam quarantine directly, viewing, releasing or blocking messages directly from the email client.
SolarWinds is a strong option for businesses and MSPs looking for an email security solution. Mail Assure partners can easily manage clients’ email filtering through the multitenant interface, which features a range of predefined policies, settings, and reports. The Mail Assure dashboard is available in multiple languages, which enables MSPs to support customers all over the world. SolarWinds Mail Assure is a powerful solution for email security, archiving and continuity.
Mimecast Secure Email Gateway
One of the most fully featured Email Secure Gateways on the market is Mimecast. It’s targeted primarily at enterprise users, with a high level of threat protection and granular admin policies on offer. The Mimecast platform is powerful and customizable. Mimecast provides a strong protection against email threats and admins can fine-tune the service to suit your specific needs. Mimecast offers Impersonation Protection to help prevent phishing attacks. Mimecast also offers features like Attachment and URL protection. These work in real time, stopping threats from infecting your network.
Mimecast is one of the leading vendors in terms of threat research. They monitor billions of emails and have a large threat database. This is good for customers because it means that they are always up to date on the latest threats and are ready to protect your organization against them. Customers praise the reports and analytics offered by Mimecast. They are easy to understand, allowing you to monitor how secure your emails are and how well Mimecast is performing. Mimecast boasts a low rate of legitimate emails being falsely marked as spam and a high rate of spam and virus blocking. Mimecast is a good option for enterprise organizations, looking for the most powerful protection for their emails.
You can read our full review of the Mimecast Secure Email Gateway here.
You can read our comparison of Mimecast with Proofpoint here.
Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda gives you a feature-rich email security system, without breaking the bank. Barracuda offers virus scanning and spam protection in real time. It’s easy to deploy with Office 365, making it a perfect option if you’re a small company looking to move your email network over to the cloud. Despite it’s cheap price Barracuda has packed lots of features into this platform. It offers advanced protection with URL scanning and outbound email filtering. These are paid additional features for many competitor services. With these features, it’s no surprise that the service is very popular with smaller businesses & MSP’s.
Barracuda Essentials is praised by customers for it’s support, with many users saying their team is quick to respond and knowledgeable. Being a global security vendor, Barracuda has a large threat intelligence division, constantly looking for new threats and developing measures to protect against them.
Barracuda Essentials offers a host of other services bundled with its email security. This includes an archiving solution, as well as encryption and backup. This range of features makes it easy to recommend this service to a smaller company or MSP looking for an all in one solution.
You can check out the full Expert Insights review of Barracuda Essentials here.
Cisco Cloud Email Security
Cisco have created a strong email secure gateway which offers strong defense against business email compromise and phishing attacks. Their research team looking at email threats is huge, ensuring you will always have access to cutting-edge threat protection. Cisco’s platform offers good protection against business email compromise and ransomware. This is due to a feature which automatically blocks links it deems to be unsafe, which protects you from emails even when they look genuine. This platform provides a range of admin features, which are customizable. The reporting and logging on offer are strong, bring you insights into your email security.
Cisco offers effective spam filtering, which will ensure you only get the emails you want in your inbox. The platform also features data loss protection, with methods which ensure your emails are protected with encryption.
One of the key benefits of this platform is that as a Cisco product, it’s easily integrated into their range of other security services. This means that your organization gets access to strong multi-layered protection. We’d highly recommend this service to larger organizations who can take advantage of this.
To find out more about Cisco Cloud Email Security read Expert Insights’ full review.
Sophos Email Security
Sophos Email Security offers email security powered by cutting edge technology. Their product has a focus on threat protection. It offers inbound and outbound message scanning and time of click URL protection. Customers praise this service for how customizable and scalable it is. Sophos also offers spam protection and detection, with anti-spam filters. It offers a number of end-user features which let them monitor their own inboxes. This is important to keep things running smoothly and reduce the burden on IT departments.
Reporting and logging are comprehensive, with even reports, message history and gateway activity. Sophos have agreed to an acquisition from US private equity group Thoma Bravo, who have recently purchased other cyber security companies including Barracuda. They have indicated that the technology will not be integrated however, and Sophos will continue as a standalone company. Sophos is popular with mid-sized businesses, managed service providers and resellers.
You can read Expert Insights’ full review of Sophos here.
Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection
Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a cloud-based email filtering service that works natively with Office 365, as you would expect from a Microsoft service. It helps to protect organizations against unknown malware and viruses by including anti-virus and URL scanning to block malware and harmful links, in real time.
Microsoft ATP provides a range of features including enforcing anti-phishing policies, anti-malware protection across SharePoint, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams and ensuring attachments are safe. It’s very easy to get up and running for customers on Office 365. As an additional service to provide greater protection for Office 365, ATP provides admins with threat protection policies, reports and investigation and response capabilities that businesses would not otherwise get with Office 365. Using ATP, admins can define threat-protection, view real time reports and use tools to investigate threats and where they are coming from. This is important functionality, which goes beyond security capabilities that businesses can achieve with Office 365.
However, despite these features Office 365’s functionality, especially in terms of spam filtering, admin features and phishing protection, is not as developed as the other third party solutions that we cover on this list. Microsoft ATP is a popular choice with customers, as a low-cost solution, that works directly with Office 365.
You can read Expert Insights’ full review of Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection here.
Forcepoint Email Security
Forcepoint Email Security offers businesses strong threat protection. This service has a range of features to protect your business against phishing attacks. It offers real time threat detection, powered by machine learning. Forcepoint also includes sandboxing and malware protection with data loss prevention. The levels of threat detection on offer is the biggest benefit of this service.
Forcepoint offers effective spam protection. The platform offers a service level agreement promising organization that 99% of spam coming into your network will be blocked. Reports show your email security stats for the last 30 days, which helps admins to monitor and enforce email policies. Forcepoint also offers some security training to help end users spot threats.
Forcepoint is a popular choice with customers. They like the strong threat protection on offer, and praise how easy the service is to administer after installation. There is also a range of add-on features which can make Forcepoint a good option for multi-layered email protection. This service is a good option for companies looking to set a ‘set and forget’ service, which they can run in the background and not have to worry about fine-tuning.
You can read Expert Insight’s full review of Forcepoint Email Security here.
Symantec Email Security.Cloud
Previous Market Leader But Concerns Raised Since Broadcom Acquisition
Symantec is an enterprise focussed secure email gateway. It features threat isolation and real-time threat protection. It also features spam filtering which studies shows stops 99% of spam from entering your network. Symantec also provides detailed reporting on the types of threats that face your business. This service includes email encryption as standard. It also provides sandboxing of email attachments.
Symantec Email Security.Cloud is built for enterprise customers, with Symantec focussing on Global 2000 companies. Symantec’s Enterprise cyber security division has been acquired by Broadcom, leading to concerns from customers and analysts about spending cuts to support and research and development for Email Security.Cloud.
You can read Expert Insights’ full review of Symantec here.