Proofpoint Alternatives

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the email and collaboration security layer Microsoft sells on top of Microsoft 365. Plan 1 protects email, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive, with real-time checks of links and QR codes, detonation of attachments to catch zero-day malware, and language-model analysis of phishing. Plan 2 adds threat hunting, automated investigation and response, cyberattack simulation training and cross-domain XDR. The protection is built into Microsoft 365, the tenant you already administer, so your help desk keeps one console.

Plan 1 is $2.00 per user per month and Plan 2 $5.00, both paid yearly on an annual subscription that renews automatically. For 100 users that is $2,400 a year on Plan 1 and $6,000 on Plan 2. Plan 1 undercuts Proofpoint Essentials Business on its old US list sheet ($2.75), and Plan 2 costs less than a third of Proofpoint's Core package on AWS ($16).

Tip: when a Defender subscription is canceled, Microsoft deletes all associated data, so export the incident reports you must keep before you stop a trial or downgrade. If you also want a wider look at the tenant, our Microsoft 365 alternatives page covers the suite itself.

Check Point Email Security, formerly Harmony Email & Collaboration, connects to your cloud suite by API. Its Advanced package covers Office 365 (email, OneDrive, Teams), Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive), Dropbox and Slack. It brings anti-phishing, anti-malware, URL rewriting and emulation, BEC protection, anomaly detection, shadow IT discovery and sandboxing. Complete adds DLP and encryption.

Price check: Check Point sells on AWS Marketplace at $83.46 per user for 12 months on Advanced and $109.14 on Complete. That is about $6.96 and $9.10 per user per month, or $8,346 a year for 100 users on Advanced. It costs more than Proofpoint Essentials Advanced on the old list sheet ($3.75), and less than the $16 per user per month of Proofpoint's Core package on AWS. Add-ons are priced per user per year too: email archiving up to 10 years old at $51.36, incident response as a service at $15.00 and DMARC management at $10.70.

If you replace an archive along with the filter, budget Advanced plus Archiving: $134.82 per user per year.

Mimecast is the closest swap for a Proofpoint gateway. It filters mail through a secure gateway that routes incoming email, or through an API that layers protection into your cloud email platform. Advanced Email Security covers business email compromise and impersonation, real-time link analysis, QR code detection against quishing, and malware protection. DMARC Analyzer and collaboration security for Microsoft are separate Mimecast products.

On AWS Marketplace, Mimecast sells a bundle of 100 Advanced Email Security users for one year at $7,500. That is $75 per user per year, or $6.25 per user per month. Above 100 users, and for 3-year terms, it quotes. That sits above Proofpoint Essentials on the old list sheet and well below the $16 per user per month of Proofpoint's Core package on AWS.

Watch the bundle size: 60 mailboxes still buy the full 100-user block. The real price is then $7,500 divided by 60 users and 12 months, about $10.42 per user per month. Under 100 users, ask for a private offer sized to your headcount before you sign.

IRONSCALES is an anti-phishing platform that combines AI with human insights, with phishing detection and automated remediation across mailboxes. It sets up on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace and offers three self-serve plans. Protect covers core AI email security, Email Protect adds URL and file scanning, and Complete Protect adds security awareness training and phishing simulations.

Against Proofpoint's $16, the buy page lists Protect at $3.11 per mailbox per month on the annual plan and $3.89 on the monthly plan. Email Protect costs $4.39 and $5.49, Complete Protect $5.83 and $7.29. For 100 mailboxes on Email Protect, the annual plan comes to $5,268 a year. The monthly plan costs 25% more on Protect, but you can cancel at any time, effective on the next billing cycle.

Tip: the buy page itself offers no trial, but a separate 14-day free trial connects to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace by API. After it, you can start with just 10 mailboxes month to month, which works as a paid pilot. On AWS Marketplace, the same vendor lists every option with a 50-user minimum, so a team of 10 to 49 mailboxes should buy on the vendor's own page.

Barracuda Email Protection Advanced combines a cloud email gateway with API-based inbox defense. The bundle sold on AWS Marketplace joins Email Gateway Defense and Impersonation Protection, against ransomware, spear phishing, spam and account takeover. It adds threat hunting and incident response, with automated playbooks, so your team can remove malicious messages after delivery. DMARC reporting is part of the offer, which matters if spoofing of your own domain is one reason you are reviewing Proofpoint.

Barracuda lists the Advanced bundle at $6.70 per user on a one-month contract and $80.40 per user on a 12-month contract. That is the same rate either way. For 100 users that is $8,040 a year. It costs more than Proofpoint Essentials Professional on the old US list sheet ($5.33 per active user per month) and about 42% of Proofpoint's Core package on AWS ($16).

What users say: reviews posted in 2026 praise the archive and the ease of reporting suspicious mail. One admin found it hard to pull a suspicious email back out of mailboxes once it got through, and another saw legitimate mail quarantined in the first weeks. Plan daily quarantine checks at first.

SpamTitan, from TitanHQ, is a spam and malware filter built for small businesses and the MSPs that serve them. It integrates with Microsoft 365 through dynamic recipient verification, syncs with Active Directory and LDAP and sandboxes suspicious attachments. End users get quarantine reports, so they can release mail they were expecting. Each user, domain and domain group can carry its own block list, the kind of granular policy MSPs used Proofpoint Essentials for. TitanHQ sells sister products for anti-phishing (PhishTitan), archiving (ArcTitan) and encryption (EncryptTitan), so you can rebuild an Essentials Professional bundle piece by piece.

SpamTitan lists $2.40 per user per month in US dollars and £1.92 in pounds, paid annually. For 100 users that is $2,880 a year. Proofpoint's old US list sheet put Essentials Business at $2.75 per active user per month. SpamTitan is cheaper on paper, but Essentials Business also bundled URL Defense and DLP filters. Bundles narrow the gap: Secure lists at $5.11 and Protect at $5.36 per user per month in USD. Tip: an MSP pushed from Essentials to 365 Total Protection changes plan and price anyway, so price this bundle against the new Proofpoint plan. Partners who migrate early keep their Essentials price until late 2026, which gives you time to run SpamTitan side by side.

Material Security protects the whole cloud workspace rather than the mail flow alone. Essentials automates inbound email threat detection and response and runs an agent on user-reported phishing. It also inventories connected OAuth apps and flags risky file sharing and account settings across Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. Advanced adds detection and control of sensitive content in Shared Drives and email, and an agent that investigates OAuth grants. An ATO Resilience add-on brings message-level MFA to protect sensitive email after an account is compromised. If you are also weighing the suite itself, our Google Workspace alternatives page compares it.

Essentials is $4 and Advanced $6 per user per month, billed annually, plus a fee based on Shared Drive size. ATO Resilience adds $3 per user per month, or $5 as a stand-alone. For 100 users on Essentials, that is $4,800 a year before the Shared Drive fee. Material charges a minimum annual fee that covers up to 1 TB of Shared Drive storage, so a small team pays that floor even with little shared data. Against Proofpoint's Core package on AWS at $16 per user per month, Advanced with ATO Resilience ($9) still costs less.

Its limit: its plans focus on inbound email threats, apps and files. If your Proofpoint bundle included an archive or outbound encryption, budget another tool for those.

Abnormal AI runs by API: a three-click integration with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, with no gateway and no MX change. Its behavioral AI reads tens of thousands of signals specific to each organization. It targets business email compromise, account takeovers, invoice fraud and supply chain attacks, the text-only scams that carry no link or file to scan. On AWS Marketplace it is sold as modules: Inbound Email Security, Core Account Takeover Protection, AI Security Mailbox and Email Productivity.

No price comparison is possible: Abnormal publishes no per-mailbox price. What is public is the shape of the deal: 12-, 24- or 36-month contracts, per module. AWS lists only placeholder prices and asks for a private offer, so ask for a one-year quote on Inbound Email Security alone. That is the buying model many people leave Proofpoint over, which is why its pricing transparency score is low and why it ranks last despite its detection.

Its limit: as an API tool it acts after delivery, on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace mailboxes.