Mimecast - Email Gateway Done Right!
April 10, 2018
Mimecast - Email Gateway Done Right!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Mimecast Secure Email Gateway
We use Mimecast as our email gateway. It filters all inbound and outbound messages for our entire organization. Mimecast helps us make sure that virtually all of our outbound email messages were encrypted, provides us with both a secure website and an Outlook add-in to review blocked/filtered messages. Being able to be certain that our outgoing messages are properly encrypted, as well as being able to send secure messages via the web portal to companies that don't accept inbound encryption, has proven indispensable.
- Encrypts email quickly and efficiently - We went from having a large amount of unencrypted outbound email to over 96% of outbound messages being encrypted, which was a big win for both IT Security and the company as a whole.
- Easy access to blocked/filtered messages - The Mimecast Outlook add-in makes checking your filtered and/or blocked messages a breeze, and also allows adding new entries to block lists to be done without needing to log in to the website, which is very popular with our end-users.
- Simple administration - Administering Mimecast is quite simple. SSO makes login a snap, and the web interface is very easy to navigate, while still offering robust controls and information about our Mimecast environment.
- Imperfect for shared mailboxes - Accessing the blocked/filtered messages for shared mailboxes is much trickier. The Mimecast add-in for Outlook is bound to the user that's logged in, so it won't function correctly for accessing the blocked/filtered messages for mailboxes for which the user has Full Access Permissions in Exchange.
- Dependence - While this is certainly true of just about any email gateway if the gateway servers go down or are otherwise inaccessible, your email system is effectively dead in the water. This only happened to us once in two years, but it was still very disruptive when it did happen.
- Lack of notifications - Aside from the daily quarantine summary you receive, you really have no way of knowing when messages have been either blocked or filtered. It would be nice if there was an Outlook or tray icon notification informing you that you had new messages to attend to, rather than manually doing so periodically.
- Encryption - Being able to assure customers/partners that virtually all outbound messages are encrypted is a great selling point.
- Reliability - Mimecast has been incredibly reliable for us, and that is extremely important in terms of ROI. We needed a gateway that wouldn't fail us, and Mimecast definitely met that requirement
- Ease of user access - Users constantly tell us how much they appreciate the simplicity of accessing their filtered messages, as well as the ease of blocking addresses they don't wish to receive messages from. That's exactly what we wanted, a solution that was readily available to users when they need it, and invisible to their daily lives otherwise.
- Microsoft ForeFront (Discontinued Product), Mailgate and Exchange Online Protection
The largest amount of experience that I have is with Microsoft's discontinued ForeFront as well as the newer Exchange Online Protection. While both products do a fairly decent job of blocking spam, the interfaces are somewhat primitive compared to Mimecast. The lack of a plugin for Outlook also makes accessing and managing blocked/filtered email much more difficult, as the only way to do so is to log in to the website for either product and take a look. The administrative interfaces for both products are also markedly inferior to Mimecast.
I also had about a year of experience with Mailgate (on-premise) at a previous employer, which was a comparative nightmare to work with. I don't recommend that product to anyone.
I also had about a year of experience with Mailgate (on-premise) at a previous employer, which was a comparative nightmare to work with. I don't recommend that product to anyone.