Barracuda ESG (discontinued) vs. RMail vs. SphereShield

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.

RMail is great for sending emails with information that is sensitive but that the recipient is not going to put a lot of work into retrieving. I do psychological evaluations for criminal courts and I use it to send reports to courts and attorneys. I need to use something compatible with HIPAA privacy rules, which courts and attorneys are typically not as concerned about. If they had to use a password or go to an outside web address to retrieve the email, they wouldn't do it. It's also common for an attorney to say they didn't get an email, but I always know if they did or not, and I have clear documentation of it, which is important in legal cases.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Read receipts tell you the time a message was actually opened
• The electronic signature feature is nice, and usually not included with these types of services
• Many times, a recipient doesn't need a password to open their email. RMail leverages TLS technology in most cases
• Recipients do have the option of creating an account, but generally they don't need to
• Outlook integration is very easy to set up
• Gmail integration within Chrome is pretty amazing

• 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.

Incentivized

• Program plug-in crashes on occasion.
• Issues can arise if your computer's clock is not synced to RMail's time servers.
• Setup was initially tedious (but has gotten much better since 2019).

Incentivized

I don't think RPost has any competition, at least none that I can use. I think that once registered email becomes widely accepted (someday soon?), it will be indispensable for anyone in business, and RPost is the leading vendor (maybe the only vendor).

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.

Incentivized

It is as simple as downloading a plug-in or installing a chrome extension, then you click a button to use it. The interface is straightforward.

Availability is robust and flawless. This is a non-issue, its always up & running and fail-over protection is available for restarts or upgrades.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Works well routinely without problems.

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

Incentivized

Support is easy to access via email or phone. They also reach out to you periodically with new features, but they aren't intrusive about it. I usually appreciate it when I get an email from RMail, which is not very often.

Works great.

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.

Incentivized

RMail is really useful when wanting to send important encrypted information, and have control of what happens on the other end. It also comes with a complete set of features that help in any other way you can imagine. I've been through other products, and nothing compares to it.

• 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.

Incentivized

• There's not much ROI, because we don't get it much cheaper than the list price.
• However, being able to offer this service strengthens our service offerings.