Barracuda ESG (discontinued) vs. Microsoft 365

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
Score 6.4 out of 10
N/A
Barracuda ESG were physical or virtual appliances designed to protect email servers from spam, virus, spoofing, phishing and spyware attacks. The product line is discontinued.N/A
Microsoft 365
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is a Microsoft Cloud subscription service that includes Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access). The software can be installed across multiple devices and ensures that users always have the most up-to-date version of the included Office applications.
$5
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft 365
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Business Basic
$5.00
Per User Per Month
Individual
$5.84
*Per Month
Business - Apps
$8.25
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - F3
$10.00
Per User Per Month
Business Standard
$12.50
Per User Per Month
Business Premium
$20.00
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - E3
$32.00
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - E5
$57.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft 365
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details*When billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft 365
Considered Both Products
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
Chose Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
Because we are a small nonprofit a large portion of our decisions come down to cost. Barracuda was the lowest cost option for us during our evaluation of email gateway products. That one factor alone was the deciding factor, because Barracuda indicated that their product would …
Chose Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
Barracuda was selected purely on a need and cost basis during the course our selection for an SEG. We needed a tool that could be set up fairly quickly and block and detect against spam and malicious emails. It did not compare in efficacy or ease of use to Mimecast, however it …
Chose Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
I did not make the selection, I support the service. It was simple to support, patching was easy.
Chose Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
Office 365, while having a robust spam filter, is not as customizable or easy to use as Barracuda Email Security Service in my opinion. It is easier to recover email using Barracuda Email Security Service as well as finding messages that have been blocked. Support is much …
Chose Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
We compared both Barracuda and Mimecast, we discovered that there wasn't much between the two systems, there were pros and cons for both. In the end it came down to functionality and cost and Barracuda is more cost effective whilst still achieving the objectives we needed. …
Chose Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
Mimecast is an excellent, versatile and full-featured product. However, it was significantly more costly than Barracuda ESS. If you need some of the advanced features from Mimecast and are able to justify the cost based upon those, you will not be disappointed. Microsoft offers …
Microsoft 365

No answer on this topic

Features
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft 365
Secure Email Gateway
Comparison of Secure Email Gateway features of Product A and Product B
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
7.3
15 Ratings
14% below category average
Microsoft 365
-
Ratings
Anti-malware8.015 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability6.013 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Loss Protection7.510 Ratings00 Ratings
Threat Detection7.015 Ratings00 Ratings
Sandboxing8.68 Ratings00 Ratings
End-to-End Encryption7.012 Ratings00 Ratings
Management Tools7.015 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft 365
Small Businesses
Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail
Score 9.2 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.9 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.9 out of 10
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft 365
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(23 ratings)
8.8
(259 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(6 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(3 ratings)
8.7
(29 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.4
(5 ratings)
8.9
(54 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft 365
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
Good combination when using their other products like an incident response. When using automated workflows, this makes creating sender policies a breeze. Unfortunately, this can also be done too well as it may filter out valid emails and to resend or place them back into users' mailbox isn't an easy thing to do even if you attempt to resend through the Email Security Gateway.
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Microsoft
Microsoft 365 would be well suited for medium to large enterprises. This is where there are several hundreds or thousands of people. Since most everyone has used one of the applications the learning curve would be reduced. Another reason would be the ability to implement security measures to prevent access to sensitive data. This could justify the cost of an Enterprise license.
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Pros
Discontinued Products
  • ESS has a simple interface for both users and administrators.
  • The "Manage Quarantine" button in each email is a direct sign-on link, so users don't have to remember their password to manage their quarantine (this is GOLD, Jerry!).
  • The baseline functionality (catching spam/malware/phishing/malware attachments/malformed PDFs etc) is super-solid, with few false positives and few false negatives.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Chat with teams and the integrations with the other apps, and many more smaller ones, like to-dos, news, and the recent Outlook integration.
  • Easy embedding on SharePoint to broadcast all the content created in the different tools.
  • The office package is still robust with the good things from the past and new additions.
Read full review
Cons
Discontinued Products
  • You need to take time in adding your contacts to a whitelist so that you don't miss an email.
  • I recommend changing the time interval; Barracuda notifies you that you have quarantined emails as we were only getting 1 per day and we missed some urgent emails.
  • The quarantine folder is web based, we'd prefer it to have been an add-in for Outlook.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Slack is 1000x better than teams. Why put a 250 limit on a chat? Our company hasn't moved fully to channels and it's making us lose transparency. Plus, the teams channels we do have nobody is going to. 90% loss in visibility and engagement.
  • Teams for web meetings. I think the UI/UX should match Zoom which is the standard for all our customers. They don't like it when we use Teams.
  • Chats and Channels need to somehow be on one screen automatically without having to choose that view because majority of our company hasn't opened Teams Channels and only stays in chats.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
There are many features of Office that we cannot replicate in any other tool. Plus people know it already. It's not going away anytime soon.
Read full review
Usability
Discontinued Products
Setting up the Barracuda for use with Microsoft 365 provides issues that Barracuda seems to have no fix for. I mentioned these issues to their support, because I am constantly reminded of them by their system, and I was told that those errors are normal for our setup and to ignore them which is frustrating to me.
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Microsoft
Microsoft 365 is the gold standard for performing project tasks in a professional environment, enabling the quick transfer and exchange of files and ideas for team members who work locally and remotely. Its suite of tools is familiar and has evolved to being cloud based, allowing for files to be updated in real time from near and far.
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Reliability and Availability
Discontinued Products
Availability is robust and flawless. This is a non-issue, its always up & running and fail-over protection is available for restarts or upgrades.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Performance
Discontinued Products
The WebUI is the only piece I find lacking on the Barracuda ESK. Its is not the fastest and is fairly utilitarian in its approach. The Outlook plug-in, while not in wide use here, causes zero slowdown in Outlook or the Barracuda ESG.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Discontinued Products
Barracuda Email Security Gateway support is great at responding and escalating cases when needed. Timeliness is key when dealing with email attacks, spoofing or malware. Barracuda also has great resources for end-user training as our end users are our first line of defense in combatting attacks on our company. Training end-users pays off in time spent dealing with any email attacks
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Microsoft
Over the past 8 years of using Microsoft 365, I have noticed that they change vendors often. This always leads to a poor experience in the beginning, then levels out after some time for the company to get things worked out. As a customer, it is really frustrating because I don't have time when something isn't working to have them "look into my issue" and get back with me. They have even closed a ticket I specifically told them to keep open. Your applications are only as good as the support.
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Implementation Rating
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Everything works and I use it all the time.
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Alternatives Considered
Discontinued Products
Barracuda integrates well with Office 365 and mail flow is great. It was the first solution we found that was part of a greater suite to fit all the requirements we had. With the Email Security gateway being in the cloud, it required no extra hardware but also nothing new installed on an endpoint as some solutions require.
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Microsoft
Its very user-friendly, collaborative and efficient that boosts productivity using cloud tools. their security is strong and it provides data protection. There are regular updates that shields us from attackers too. It offers a wealth of learning resources, including tutorials, help articles and video guide to help users make the most of the application and personally upgrade their skills.
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Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • The gateway learns current scam which can prevent unmeasureable damage. As a government organization attacks on our network affect public safety.
  • Previous gateways I have managed have required significant amounts of time grooming. The Barracuda gateway has freed up a great deal of my time due to its intelligence and intent scanning.
  • I have very few incidences where a legitimate malicious email will pass through the filter. Just one of these emails can wreak havoc on an organization.
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Microsoft
  • We have a lot of nonprofit users, so they have a good ROI.
  • I like the constant updates without having to purchase the software repeatedly.
  • I used to purchase each Office (insert year here) often, so the software was up to date and had the newest options and connectors. I think my return on investment would have been much better if Microsoft had updated those versions to keep them current; after all, we did pay for them.
  • Microsoft 365's offering a monthly fee or a discount for a year helps, and you can look at it as a free backup if you have everything set to back up to One Drive. (Cloud-based document filing you can access anywhere ( with an internet connection)—you Can't beat that!)
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ScreenShots