The Top 11 Email Security Gateways

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.

Avanan provides multi-layered threat protection to protect emails inside the email inbox. As Avanan sits within the email environment, it can secure inbound, outbound and internal emails. Avanan uses machine learning to identify zero-day phishing attacks, using over 300 indicators of compromise – including time of sending, location and domain – to flag suspicious emails. Avanan also uses machine leaning algorithms to detect business email compromise, by flagging logins across multiple countries and alerting admins to unusual behaviours that point to accounts being taken over.

Avanan also provides enhanced malware protection for emails. This includes protection against harmful attachments and URLs, with advanced reporting for all inbound, outbound and internal emails. From inside the email network, Avanan provides real-time and historical visibility into all users and email threats. Avanan is a strong solution for Office 365 and Google Workspace users looking for powerful protection against phishing, spear-phishing and account compromise.

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

Microsoft Defender 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, Defender provides admins with threat protection policies, reports and investigation and response capabilities that businesses would not otherwise get with Office 365. Using Defender, 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 Defender is a popular choice with customers, as a comprehensive solution, that works directly with Office 365.

You can read Expert Insights’ full review of Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection here.

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 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.