Barracuda Essentials vs. Sophos Email

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Barracuda Essentials
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Barracuda Essentials is an email security platform designed to protect users and businesses from volumetric threats like malware and spam, as well advanced threats like targeted spear phishing and ransomware, and provides email archiving and data protection from corruption and deletion with cloud backup and recovery of emails and files, data leak prevention and encryption.N/A
Sophos Email
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Sophos Email is presented as Predictive Cloud Email Security Powered by Artificial Intelligence designed to block spam and malware, as well as protect employees and block phishing attempts.N/A
Pricing
Barracuda EssentialsSophos Email
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Barracuda EssentialsSophos Email
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 EssentialsSophos Email
Considered Both Products
Barracuda Essentials
Chose Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda handles encryption better than Proofpoint. There are pre-defined rules for encryption that ProofPoint does not have (you have to define encryption rules for each client and from the ground up very tedious and time consuming). SPAM filtering is about the same. …
Chose Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda Essentials is the best in class. Things can change as time moves on, but Barracuda Essentials does the best job for sandboxing attachments as well as providing DKIM and SPF support. It is very customizable and includes outbound email encryption with its base antispam …
Sophos Email

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Barracuda EssentialsSophos Email
Secure Email Gateway
Comparison of Secure Email Gateway features of Product A and Product B
Barracuda Essentials
6.6
16 Ratings
25% below category average
Sophos Email
5.2
19 Ratings
48% below category average
Anti-malware10.016 Ratings3.619 Ratings
Customizability5.015 Ratings3.419 Ratings
Data Loss Protection2.113 Ratings7.516 Ratings
Threat Detection9.016 Ratings3.518 Ratings
Sandboxing3.012 Ratings7.614 Ratings
End-to-End Encryption8.013 Ratings7.816 Ratings
Management Tools9.016 Ratings3.419 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Barracuda EssentialsSophos Email
Small Businesses
Webroot Email Security Powered by Zix
Webroot Email Security Powered by Zix
Score 9.0 out of 10
Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda Essentials
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Webroot Email Security Powered by Zix
Webroot Email Security Powered by Zix
Score 9.0 out of 10
Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda Essentials
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Cloud Email Security
Cisco Cloud Email Security
Score 7.7 out of 10
Cisco Cloud Email Security
Cisco Cloud Email Security
Score 7.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Barracuda EssentialsSophos Email
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(16 ratings)
3.6
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(1 ratings)
1.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(8 ratings)
8.2
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(9 ratings)
2.9
(11 ratings)
User Testimonials
Barracuda EssentialsSophos Email
Likelihood to Recommend
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
The Barracuda Essentials solution is definitely a great alternative to network security and especially corporate email to prevent employees from clicking on malicious links, spam, phishing, trojans and ransonware. The solution today is implemented in almost all sectors of the company and we have control of everything and good protection guaranteeing principles of compliance and security.
Read full review
Sophos
The Sophos email solution is a good fit for my organization which is a mid-size resort with 200 users. Sophos email has revealed unwanted emails that were getting through our built in Microsoft email security scanning and policies so having this extra layer was a no brainier. With that we were able to focus on the bad stuff and even tweak our products with this information from Sophos email.
Read full review
Pros
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
  • Barracuda Essentials Spam Filtering works and it is very easy to add or remove senders from the Spam filter lists.
  • Barracuda Essentials provides excellent protection from Phishing and other Malware.
  • Barracuda Essentials email encryption is so easy to use and easy to setup. Our users love it.
Read full review
Sophos
  • We could customize it to have a certain level of workflow. We manage to enforce certain email (based on key-phrases) to be quarantined before send it to the recipient. And the email needs to be approved (manually) before being released.
  • For certain type (using regex) of email, we will encrypt it if it's sent outside our organization domain.
  • Scalable
Read full review
Cons
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
  • Encryption is always on. There's NO way to turn it off so false encryption leads to real issues. Many banks and other companies cannot read/accept encrypted email. There should be a "Do Not Encrypt" type of keyword to prevent encryption (competing products have this).
  • There's no indication an email was encrypted (like with Proofpoint or ZIX mail).
  • MSP management interface needs work. You have to request licenses by email and wait. Pretty archaic today. Most competing product sites let MSP's increase/decrease licensing as needed, immediately.
Read full review
Sophos
  • I would love to see tips integrated into the user interface from the management side to allow for easier dissection of email headers. This would allow lower level admins that may work at smaller companies to better understand the information presented.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
Its the best email security gateway product I have used.
Read full review
Sophos
It was easy to use and easy to implement. You don't need previous knowledge on the products, after we got this up and running, it took us hours to put everything together. The transition was easy and seamless.
Read full review
Usability
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
Barracuda Essentials is simple to use. It has a user dashboard that is simple to navigate even for those who have few computer skills. One can barely realize that the program is even running in the background heading off those emails that can cause damage to my computer or our overall system.
Read full review
Sophos
It's mostly great and for policies and features, it does everything we would ask it to and more. The only thing keeping it from being a 10 is the lack of granularity in the reporting, which is actually an issue within Sophos Central as a whole. The ability to drill down from dashboards into accurate, detailed data would be very helpful at times.
Read full review
Support Rating
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
This is the best tool in the industry. It provides the best support on top of the product. If one has any trouble configuring things or troubleshooting things, Barracuda's support is renowned for resolving bugs and issues as well as assisting troubleshooting and fixing issues. I would highly recommend it as it covers all email security bases.
Read full review
Sophos
Support is slow to respond. They call back outside of normal business hours despite clearly being advised when they should call. They try to BS you that the platform is working properly although there is hard evidence to the contrary. Once you get to senior level of support they agree that the product is incapable of performing properly in its current iteration.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
Barracuda Essentials has a far easier admin pannel than is provided by mimecast along with far more filtering options such as dkim. Much easier to do the initial setup along with much better support provided. Barracuda Essentials has Advanced threat protection that uses AI to spot patterns and gives you the option to remove a suspect email from all inboxs
Read full review
Sophos
I have only tried Sophos Email, and I find it to be a very useful tool, as it protects against information leakage such as fraudulent emails, cloud sandboxing and quarantine, which are essential functions and the product works excellent.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
  • Barracuda Essentials has had a very positive impact especially since the Pandemic with many remote workers. Our IT objective is 99.9% uptime with many redundancy fail safes in place. Barracuda Essentials helps meet that objective by protecting the vast amount of email we receive daily.
Read full review
Sophos
  • Sophos Email has been protecting our users, including the administrative branch, who are the target of attacks most frequently.
  • Every month Sophos Email stops about 100,000 malicious emails. We calculate that if these attacks have saved the company time, it prevents us from having a lot of support staff to attend to the cases.
Read full review
ScreenShots