McAfee Email Gateway (Discontinued) vs. N-able Mail Assure

Comparable to a Barracuda email appliance, these units retain email that is quarantined as well as provide cloud layer to support it. It is best suited for a medium size company as the devices are often not as scalable as Barracuda.

Incentivized

SolarWinds Mail Assure is well suited to medium and large sized organizations that need a configurable and flexible mail filter. It is likely to not be appropriate for marketing firms that want a set it and forget it sort of filter that needs no adjustment.

Incentivized

• Filtering system is very strong, more often than not blocks bad email.
• Does fine job filtering and configuring content filtering for extension types such as ZIP or RAR.
• Intermediary between Internet and email system provides extra layer of security including ability to spool email in the event of an email system outage.
• Outbound encryption feature is very useful for security purposes.

Incentivized

• Spam filtering
• Adaptive learning for security

Incentivized

• The onsite appliances have end-of-life forcing an upgrade to new unit.
• Many of the appliances have been end-of-life and seems McAfee may not be offering the service in the future.

Incentivized

• SMTP scanning trips some spam filters.
• Releasing a quarantined spam email often requires admin intervention.
• Console access is cumbersome for end users.

Incentivized

The support has been rock solid, easy to communicate with, and highly knowledgable.

Incentivized

Barracuda provides two product options, the ESS cloud-only filtering, and onsite Email Security Gateway appliances. Unless compliance needs require the on-premises device, the ESS option easily beats the McAfee Email Gateway.

Incentivized

We have used a few mail security options, including SpamStopsHere. Mail Assure is easier to manage and adapts as it learns the email traffic and patterns that come into the company. We use most of the SolarWinds suite, including MSPManager, N-central, Passportal, and Endpoint Security. We have been happy with their products and they are always quick to respond to their support tickets.

Incentivized

• The end-of-life of appliances is unfortunate as it forces a purchase of a replacement unit. Barracuda devices have a 4-year refresh cycle so purchasing additional hardware is rarely necessary.
• McAfee seems to be phasing out the service over time.

Incentivized

• It cut down on the amount of spam we get.
• It can differentiate a email box from an alias attached so it must be specified to keep from being billed.

Incentivized