Barracuda ESG (discontinued) vs. Microsoft Exchange

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
Score 7.1 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 Exchange
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Exchange is a secure email / messaging gateway with file archiving and encryption / data loss capability, available as a hosted service (Exchange Online) or installed (Exchange Server).N/A
Pricing
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft Exchange
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft Exchange
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft Exchange
Considered Both Products
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
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 …
Microsoft Exchange
Chose Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Exchange is the go-to software if you are going with the Microsoft stack as your main infrastructure provider. It made the most sense going with Microsoft to use Outlook with Exchange, as it would provide the most seamless experience when paired with Defender or most …
Chose Microsoft Exchange
Honestly, there are very few other enterprise-level email servers that I know about other than the basic gmail, yahoo, Hotmail, and just hosting it yourself. You either can get away with a very basic mail server, or your business needs true enterprise-level functions. If your …
Features
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft Exchange
Secure Email Gateway
Comparison of Secure Email Gateway features of Product A and Product B
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)
6.9
16 Ratings
19% below category average
Microsoft Exchange
7.3
84 Ratings
14% below category average
Anti-malware8.016 Ratings6.567 Ratings
Customizability6.014 Ratings8.079 Ratings
Data Loss Protection7.411 Ratings8.368 Ratings
Threat Detection7.016 Ratings6.566 Ratings
Sandboxing6.09 Ratings7.444 Ratings
End-to-End Encryption7.013 Ratings6.767 Ratings
Management Tools7.016 Ratings8.080 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft Exchange
Small Businesses
Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail
Score 9.4 out of 10
Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
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User Ratings
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft Exchange
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(24 ratings)
9.0
(102 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(3 ratings)
8.5
(6 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.4
(5 ratings)
9.9
(12 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Barracuda ESG (discontinued)Microsoft Exchange
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
Creating and receiving emails is simple. Managing contacts is a nice feature, especially connecting to Active Directory. Calendar management is also helpful and sharing access to others' calendars for scheduling meetings is useful. And reserving resources such as rooms or equipment is also useful. Personal and shared mailboxes are good features, as well. Tasks are a little lacking, but other than that, the features are thorough.
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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.
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Microsoft
  • As we have a large user base of 11,000 users we use MailTips to avoid people getting confused with people with similar names in the organization.
  • The integration between Teams Meeting and Resource booking is generally very good. The Scheduling Assistance makes it easy to scan calendars and find free periods to provisionally scheduled events.
  • Marking yourself as Out of the Office and busy is easy, as is sharing your calendar within the team/organization or individuals.
  • Voicemail integration and the ability to receive missed chats in your inbox are highly used and useful.
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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.
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Microsoft
  • The two main factors for the better reliability & Uptime of internally hosted Exchange Server depends on Exchange Server configuration and the level of investment the organization is willing to provide for hosting the Exchange Server On-Premise Environment. As the data is stored in the organization’s hardware, any disaster may lead to the loss of email and servers.
  • Losing data might affect business continuity and rebuilding it can be costly.
  • Security remains a major concern.
  • Security of data loss is main concern. To ensure that, organization needs to configure networks, systems and Exchange platform against possible threats.
  • Hardware and license costs are high.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Email and calendars in a business setting are requirements. And Microsoft continues to be the standard of business applications. Microsoft 365 makes Microsoft Exchange easy to use. Everything is in the cloud. Let Microsoft take care of the hardware, the software, and the security. You just enable your business users with the functionality they need.
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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 Exchange has come a long way over the years and has nowhere near the technical overhead required for support as it did back in 2003/2007 and prior. The integrations with Teams, Defender, Sharepoint, Copilot and many other products make it a solid and well-rounded tool used for many day-to-day tasks.
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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
Exchange is setup with multiple servers behind load balancers to provide high availability.
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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
I would say it's the best email product I've experienced.
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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
We have a good enterprise agreement with Microsoft which affords us quick phone support. I have found the support staff knowledgeable and prompt with a solution when required. At times it may be difficult to schedule a call back, this is mainly due to our need for calls early in the morning which happens to be during a shift change at Microsoft support.
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Implementation Rating
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Implementation/conversion can be quite complex and, unless you have certified Exchange administrators in-house, you should strongly consider a 3rd party consultant for this implementation.
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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
Microsoft Exchange Product The best cloud-based enterprise-grade archiving platform with a host of features that enable files to be securely archived and retrieved with advanced search options. This tool is very easy to use and has a User-friendly interface. It is a highly reliable platform that allows all employees to automatically store their data without any limitations. It offers a cost-effective solution with customized policy management. We are happy that the customer support team is always fast and concerned, and the product's uninterrupted service experience. It is very good that it stores data in real-time without losing it, even in the event of a disaster. The cost-effective solution and integration with other tools are seamless.
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Scalability
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The only time Exchange has failed us is when we did something to cause the failure.
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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
  • It has been an important factor in allowing seamless communication with clients and scheduling business meetings, which in turn works in the company's favor.
  • Haven't noticed any negative impact Exchange has had on our ROI. The support team is also responsive and helpful.
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