Cofense PhishMe vs. KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cofense PhishMe
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Cofense PhishMe is a cyber threat and phishing simulator meant to be of use in training employees to be wary against threats and also to gain information about general employee threat knowledge and preparedness. A free trial is available for small business.N/A
KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
PhishER is presented as a lightweight Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platform to orchestrate threat response and manage the high volume of potentially malicious email messages reported by users. And, with automatic prioritization of emails, PhishER helps InfoSec and Security Operations team cut through the inbox noise and respond to the most dangerous threats more quickly.
$0.75
per month (billed annually) per seat
Pricing
Cofense PhishMeKnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
3001-5000 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$0.75
per month (billed annually) per seat
2001-3000 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$0.85
per month (billed annually) per seat
1001-2000 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$1.00
per month (billed annually) per seat
501-1000 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$1.15
per month (billed annually) per seat
101-500 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$1.50
per month (billed annually) per seat
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cofense PhishMeKnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cofense PhishMeKnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Considered Both Products
Cofense PhishMe
Chose Cofense PhishMe
PhishMe is a market leader in terms of phishing simulation solutions. The customization appears unmatched when compared with competitors and the support we have experienced from Cofense has been excellent. Phish me offers lots of realistic templates which are updated regularly …
Chose Cofense PhishMe
We chose PhishMe due to its ease of use and integration. The many different scenarios available and the price point were the main selling points vs the competitors.
Chose Cofense PhishMe
PhishMe had similar features and was less expensive.
KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Chose KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
PhishER has a streamlined user experience that makes it easy to implement and manage.
Features
Cofense PhishMeKnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Cofense PhishMe
7.8
4 Ratings
10% below category average
KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
-
Ratings
Single sign-on capability7.44 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.24 Ratings00 Ratings
Security Awareness Training
Comparison of Security Awareness Training features of Product A and Product B
Cofense PhishMe
7.3
4 Ratings
15% below category average
KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
-
Ratings
Training Content Library7.24 Ratings00 Ratings
Multilingual Training Content7.14 Ratings00 Ratings
Training Gamification7.13 Ratings00 Ratings
Industry-Specific Security Training7.83 Ratings00 Ratings
Individualized Security Training Plans6.93 Ratings00 Ratings
Phishing Simulations7.23 Ratings00 Ratings
Security Reporting8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Security Tech Stack7.33 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident Response Platforms
Comparison of Incident Response Platforms features of Product A and Product B
Cofense PhishMe
-
Ratings
KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
8.0
112 Ratings
11% below category average
Company-wide Incident Reporting00 Ratings7.292 Ratings
Integration with Other Security Systems00 Ratings7.789 Ratings
Centralized Dashboard00 Ratings8.6111 Ratings
Machine Learning to Prevent Incidents00 Ratings7.895 Ratings
Live Response for Rapid Remediation00 Ratings8.396 Ratings
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Cofense PhishMeKnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Small Businesses
Barracuda Email Protection
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Score 8.7 out of 10
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Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Hoxhunt
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Score 9.4 out of 10
CrowdStrike Falcon
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Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Hoxhunt
Hoxhunt
Score 9.4 out of 10
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cofense PhishMeKnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(28 ratings)
9.2
(118 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(1 ratings)
8.7
(7 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(2 ratings)
8.6
(32 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(4 ratings)
8.6
(5 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.5
(3 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(8 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cofense PhishMeKnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Likelihood to Recommend
Cofense
Cofense PhishMe is an excellent solution for scenarios where it will be sold as a managed service. I believe that PhishMe is too expensive for many clients and instead would benefit from the economies of scale where an MSSP sells it as part of a whole service, which offers the analysts and reporting included. PhishMe is excellent for training and awareness of Phishing, but shouldn't replace mandatory training for new joiners or yearly refreshers, it should only be used as an additional training option.
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KnowBe4
PhishER comes with some good features, such as PhishML, PhishRIP, PhishFlip, etc. These features help us manage phishing email reporting incidents. From reporting emails via Phish Alert Button plug-in to collecting all reported emails in one place at the PhishER dashboard. Now, the PhishML comes into play, scanning all reported emails and tagging each as clean, spam, or threat. With the help of this machine learning-based algorithm, our investigation process becomes easier. Other features, such as PhishRip, help to search and quarantine phishing emails, and PhishFlip converts a real phishing campaign to a test phishing campaign.
Read full review
Pros
Cofense
  • It gives clear-cut segregation of different parts of an email, header, text and HTML body, URL, attachments, HTML preview and some analytical insight like "similar reports." This distinctive approach actually helps reduce data overload during an analysis.
  • The URLs captured here pass through an automatic reputation check [in our case VirusTotal] and add a tag of the reputation. If it is a well-known bad URL the tag helps us take the decision fast.
  • For creating automation rules on the reported emails the "Recipes" section is really helpful. We can create easy recipes [or rules ] to handle a huge flow of reports and also we can create more sophisticated rules depending on the Cyber intelligence feed to catch the really bad currently less known attack attempts by malicious emails.
  • The "Threat Indicators" section is also useful to use as a threat intelligence source to check the URLs for their maliciousness.
Read full review
KnowBe4
  • One platform that integrates reported emails and using PhishFlip to educated staff.
  • Automation to remove malicious emails from mailboxes.
  • Instantly report back to users if an email is safe or malicious.
  • Easily review vital technical information to help you make a decision if an email is a threat.
  • Allow comments to be left from staff and IT.
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Cons
Cofense
  • Completely switching to the new UI - Most is redesigned, but some old elements remain
  • Ability to spoof known brands - limited in scope now and you are not allowed to use fully "convincing" campaigns that we are seeing in the wild
  • Ability to own and manage own domains - right now adding a new company domain requires a ticket, allow us to add/verify ourselves
Read full review
KnowBe4
  • Issues with Global Blocklist
  • Email Template Modification - Simplification
  • Target Specific Users vs. Groups
  • PhishRIP info tabs (i.e. if improperly check ripped emails are turned into tests. This has caused issues.) Info tabs or markers allow user to hover and get more information about what action a check box or slider provides.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cofense
No answers on this topic
KnowBe4
When we first discovered that KnowBe4 released something like this, we saw a demo of it and were floored at what it could do and how it could help us from a security standpoint. Gone are the days of us in IT sending out a mass email saying please don't click on anything in the email from sender "X", and it allows us to quietly and easily ensure that people don't take any action on malicious emails.
Read full review
Usability
Cofense
Its built with UX in mind and is aimed at non-tech people, to ensure that almost everyone can run the campaign. But if we go deeper - sometimes you will need an HTML editor or support in order to figure out some advanced edits you might want to add in your scenarios.
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KnowBe4
I give it an eight for the feature set. While I only give it an eight because the complexity and interconnectedness of the tools mean that there needs to be quite a bit of RTFM to get the most out of the products.
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Support Rating
Cofense
I have not had to use their support for pretty much anything. The software works well, and is very intuitive. I would imagine their support would be rather basic as there is not too much that can go wrong with a report phishing button, and if it were I would probably consider a different software.
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KnowBe4
I haven't needed to reach out to support very often, but when I have the responses have been timely and have provided the solutions I have needed. The support has been friendly and have always been able to resolve any issues that have come up.
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Online Training
Cofense
It's a must, even if you are never going to use the tool. Cofense aims to provide phishing training first and tool second.
Read full review
KnowBe4
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cofense
There are some hiccups, but there are meant to be, when you implement something in a large scale enterprise.
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KnowBe4
It was very simple to implement - with just a few settings needed to connect it to our O365 environment
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Alternatives Considered
Cofense
Cofense PhishMe was the first choice for us as the user interface as well as their bundle package with Cofense Triage and Vision has helped the organisation to alleviate the overall security awareness posture. The other vendors did not provide a vast range of phishing scenarios as compared to Cofense PhishMe platform.
Read full review
KnowBe4
Harmony does not provide security awareness training or simulated phishing emails like KnowB4. However, it does provide a phish alert button & workflow similar to PhishER & we may stop using PhishER because the Phish Alert reports from PhishER don't feed into Harmony to help train it from phishing emails that go through. We got Harmony after KnowB4 because we needed a tool to PREVENT phishing emails from getting to people's inboxes in the first place, which KnowB4 has very little capability for other than PhishER+ blacklists. It is a shame KnowB4 does not have the anti threat phishing prevention like Harmony considering all the email data it has & its existing AI analytic capabilities.
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Return on Investment
Cofense
  • Recipes in the system are capable of handling almost 2x what an analyst does, which cuts down the efforts [of] an analyst and provides more time for accurate strategies.
  • With roughly 90% false positives coming through, the remaining 10% of true positives need as much attention as they can get for the full investigation and analysis.
  • 1,500 or more phishing messages can come through in a given week and the amount of time/employees required to review this without a tool like Cofense is surely beyond [the] expected/anticipated budget.
Read full review
KnowBe4
  • Phish/ER & PAD: Identifying email threats more quickly allowed us to send alert to the users' community in a timely manner based on the pattern of the threat.
  • KnowBe4 Training Campaigns have proven to noticeably increase users' awareness.
  • KnowBe4 Phishing Campaigns made users realize how dangerous and deceiving hacker can be.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Cofense PhishMe Screenshots

Screenshot of Image 1 – Board of Directors (BOD) report showcasing results of your phishing defense programScreenshot of Image 2 – Create New Scenario PageScreenshot of Image 3 – Intelligent Program Automation using PlaybooksScreenshot of Image 4 – Organizational Suspicious Email Reporting StatisticsScreenshot of Image 5 – Phishing Scam Announcement Templates

KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus Screenshots

Screenshot of how PhishER Plus enables a critical workstream to help IR teams work together to mitigate the phishing threat and is suited for any organization that wants to automatically prioritize and manage potentially malicious messages.