Fortinet FortiMail vs Mimecast Email Security comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Microsoft Logo
12,736 views|10,031 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
Fortinet Logo
6,551 views|4,300 comparisons
93% willing to recommend
Mimecast Logo
952 views|811 comparisons
91% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 6, 2023

We compared Fortinet FortiMail and Mimecast Email Security across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:

  • Features: Fortinet FortiMail is highly praised for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and smooth compatibility with other Fortinet products. Mimecast Email Security is appreciated for its efficient archiving capabilities and effective protection against targeted threats. Its seamless integration with Microsoft 365 also earned high marks.

  • Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiMail requires enhancements in integration, user management, and documentation. Mimecast Email Security should focus on improving its administrative aspect, filtering capabilities, and ease of setup.

  • Service and Support: Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable. Mimecast's customer service elicits varied opinions, with some customers expressing satisfaction with its responsiveness and effectiveness, while others perceive it as unsatisfactory.

  • Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Fortinet FortiMail is described as relatively easy and can be completed within a few hours or up to 14 working days. It is flexible and can be tailored to specific needs, although it may require help from technical professionals. Users had mixed experiences with Mimecast Email Security's setup. Some users found it fast and uncomplicated, while others found it moderately complex.

  • Pricing: Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable. Mimecast Email Security is generally seen as costly, and some users struggle to justify the expense. It’s perceived as more expensive than competing solutions.

  • ROI: Fortinet FortiMail provides enhanced email communication, decreased spam, stabilized collections, and altered expenses. It is challenging to measure the return on investment for Mimecast Email Security.

Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiMail and Cisco Secure Email have distinct features and functionalities. Fortinet FortiMail is known for its simple setup, user-friendly interface, and effective email filtering. It can be customized and seamlessly integrated with other Fortinet products. Mimecast is commended for its archiving and targeted threat protection capabilities. On the other hand, Mimecast faces challenges with its administrative aspect, filtering capabilities, and high pricing.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiMail vs. Mimecast Email Security Report (Updated: January 2024).
787,033 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance.""Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features.""It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself.""The solution is very easy to use. All you have to do is to assign the license to the end-user and it's done. The customer will only have the feature activated, and the solution will monitor the emails to determine if they are a threat or not.""Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable.""The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over.""At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pros →

"After implementing FortiMail, the spam, and malicious emails we receive have significantly reduced, making it much simpler to manage.""Fortinet’s support services are good.""It actually filters the compromised emails when on a network layer itself.""The product's initial setup phase was very easy.""Troubleshooting is very simple because you can see where the email was not delivered and why it would be considered as spam.""It is a scalable solution.""Fortinet FortiMail is a complete product addressing mail security concerns. It helps to know spam subscriptions and create restriction policies.""It can block a lot of fake emails."

More Fortinet FortiMail Pros →

"We like Mimecast's spam filtering. The email signature feature is also a big plus for our users.""The product is good. To date, we have not faced any challenges.""URL inspection works pretty well.""It's good, it keeps the spam out.""Due to our specialized use case, that HIPAA dictionary really comes in handy.""The most valuable feature is the DMARC Analyzer.""We like the content filtering and secure messaging features.""The solution is pretty straightforward to use and easy to set up."

More Mimecast Email Security Pros →

Cons
"In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement.""Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab.""Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites.""About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting.""In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should be more proactive.""There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails.""The product must provide better malware detection."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Cons →

"Sometimes it takes a little bit too long to determine if an email is good or not. If they could shorten that time span, it'd be so much better. It does delay our email, which does not make users happy. That said, I would have to say we have not been blacklisted for quite a while now.""Fortinet FortiMail's technical support team has shortcomings and needs improvement.""The biggest room for improvement would be the deployment. It will be hard for someone who doesn't understand the interface to deploy. If you understand it, you can find your way around the problems.""The tool needs to improve its pricing policy. Also, it needs to be more user-friendly. I would want it to improve email security as well.""I have little to say about possible improvements, but the configuration for content blocking could be better. So, for example, if the email includes the line "You have a Bitcoin", I would like it to be easier to block it before it enters an inbox. Fortinet could maybe offer better or simpler help on how to do this properly.""Sometimes, the tool flags legitimate incoming traffic as spam.""The product should work on licensing and provide more detail once the license is selected for the customer.""In the Latin America market, some spam messages use Portuguese language. Some clearly spam messages would be better identified by the anti-spam if not for the language."

More Fortinet FortiMail Cons →

"The feature that should be included is to remove the block on the encrypted files.""External security features need improvement.""Lately, Mimecast's outbound mail servers have been regularly blocklisted by spam filters. That didn't happen a few years back, but it seems to be a more frequent problem these days. When a server is blocklisted, it means all of my outgoing mail ends up in the recipient's junk mail. That affects my reputation and business confidence.""The solution should include more AI features instead of Mimecast's more general static configuration tooling.""Their support should be improved. They are notorious for sending you to knowledge-based articles rather than actually talking to you, but that is, unfortunately, kind of becoming a trend with everything. In terms of features, I haven't had any complaints. However, I don't like the fact they moved to a paid training subscription model. They used to have a lot of free webinars for training, but they have started to charge for them in the past year.""The attachment scanning feature doesn't work properly.""From an administrative point of view, Mimecast is a little bit cumbersome and difficult. It's not something that the end-user can easily find navigate themselves.""The detection rates are an area for improvement."

More Mimecast Email Security Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's a user-base subscription."
  • "From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
  • "Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
  • "For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
  • "The solution saves money so we have seen a return on investment."
  • "Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The licensing model for this solution is better because it is based on the box and not the number of users."
  • "It is an expensive product."
  • "The annual cost is $55,000."
  • "Pricing is straight-forward and renewable without complicated pricing structures."
  • "Pricing is based on initial license purchase and use volume."
  • "In the future I would like it if there's a possibility to lower the price of the bandwidth and UTM. It is quite expensive."
  • "This is a good solution and value for the money."
  • "If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
  • More Fortinet FortiMail Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It's an expensive solution."
  • "The licensing costs are per-user for the product that you get with them."
  • "It is a bit expensive."
  • "I'm always going to say the price needs to be lower, but it's reasonable."
  • "The customers can select the license packages as per their requirements."
  • "On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
  • "Compared to the other solutions in the market, Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection's pricing is fine."
  • "For what it is, the product is overpriced."
  • More Mimecast Email Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.
    787,033 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various… more »
    Top Answer:The product must provide better malware detection. The detection algorithms don't perform the way I hope they would.
    Top Answer:The price of Fortinet FortiMail steadily increases every year. There is a possible ten percent increase. It's concerning… more »
    Top Answer:The solution's pricing could be improved.
    Top Answer:The interface of this solution is very easy to navigate and user-friendly. There is no delivery in email and other… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    MS Defender for Office 365
    FortiMail
    Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect organizations against advanced threats in their email, collaboration, and productivity environments. It combines the power of Microsoft's threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to provide real-time protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other malicious attacks.

    With Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations can safeguard their email communication by detecting and blocking malicious links, attachments, and unsafe email content. It employs advanced anti-phishing capabilities to identify and prevent sophisticated phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information or compromise user credentials.

    This solution also offers robust protection against malware and ransomware. It leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze email attachments and URLs in real-time, identifying and blocking malicious content before it reaches users' inboxes. Additionally, it provides advanced threat-hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to proactively investigate and respond to potential threats.

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 goes beyond email protection and extends its security features to other collaboration tools like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. It scans files and documents stored in these platforms, ensuring that they are free from malware and other malicious content. It also provides visibility into user activities, helping organizations detect and mitigate insider threats.

    Furthermore, this solution offers rich reporting and analytics capabilities, providing organizations with insights into their security posture and threat landscape. It enables security administrators to monitor and manage security incidents, track trends, and take proactive measures to enhance their overall security posture.

    As cyber attacks become more sophisticated, it is crucial for email security solutions to offer multi-layered protection. Fortinet's proven email security platform, FortiMail, is a comprehensive multi-layered threat protection solution designed to secure users from the full spectrum of email-based threats, which includes zero-day threats, credential impersonation, spam, phishing, malware, and business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

    Fortinet FortiMail offers a variety of deployment models to best fit your organization’s email security needs. On-premises, private or public cloud, or hybrid email environments can be deployed and managed in-house by your team or managed by Fortinet’s data centers. FortiMail also employs virtual machines that provide robust scalability options and flexible deployment of email security infrastructure.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Fortinet FortiMail provides your organization with the following benefits:

    • Eliminate message-based threats by using FortiMail’s advanced inspection capabilities before they can harm your users.
    • Flexible licensing ensures that you don’t have to create a license for each user as you scale your network upwards.

    • Achieve regulatory compliance with sophisticated messaging content archiving, quarantining, and routing tools.
    • Stop spam before it takes over your messaging system and network resources, ensuring that your messaging performance remains optimized.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Some of Fortinet FortiMail’s top features include:

    • Spam and malware prevention: FortiMail employs advanced techniques and technologies, such as outbreak protection, impersonation detection, content disarm and reconstruction, and sandbox analysis to provide users with high-performing antispam and antimalware tools designed to prevent unwanted bulk email, ransomware, and other targeted attacks.
    • Powerful data loss prevention: Identity-based email encryption and archiving help prevent the loss of sensitive and important information and ensure that your organization adheres to compliance with corporate and industry regulations.
    • Automatic updates: Receive dynamic updates from the FortiGuard subscription services that automatically upgrade your antispam and antivirus functionality using intelligence gathered by Fortinet's dedicated global threat research team.
    • Seamless integration: Integrations with other Fortinet products and external third-party components enable companies to enhance their security by sharing indicators of compromise (IoCs) across a unified security system.
    • Easy email management: Gain full visibility over real-time email traffic with Fortinet FortiMail’s intuitive dashboards, rich reporting features, centralized quarantine tools, and end-user controls. Control email traffic with the solution’s full mail transfer agent and mail-handling capabilities. The solution’s quick-start setup wizard greatly reduces the complexity of deployment and management.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Fortinet FortiMail stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful anti-virus tool and its robust spam protection capabilities.

    Flamur P., head of security management at Ipko Telecommunications, writes, "Fortinet FortiMail has a lot of valuable features. It works great. It also has an antivirus feature. Support for Fortinet FortiMail was also great when my team wanted to block some geographic IPs, but couldn't figure out how to do it. The support team provided clear communication on how to resolve that issue. Another valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is spam filtering which tells you how many spammy emails you've received. Based on my current use cases, I'm happy with Fortinet FortiMail."

    Mimecast Email Security is a comprehensive solution designed to safeguard organizations against advanced email threats. With an array of advanced security features, it provides robust protection against phishing attacks, malware, ransomware, and other targeted threats.

    This product leverages Mimecast's extensive threat intelligence network to identify and block malicious emails before they reach the user's inbox. It employs sophisticated algorithms and machine learning techniques to analyze email content, attachments, and URLs, ensuring that only legitimate and safe emails are delivered.

    One of the key features of Mimecast Advanced Email Security is its URL Protect capability. This feature scans all URLs within emails in real-time, checking for any signs of malicious activity. It blocks access to suspicious websites, preventing users from inadvertently clicking on harmful links and falling victim to phishing attacks or drive-by downloads.

    Another notable feature is Attachment Protect, which scans all email attachments for malware and ransomware. It uses multiple layers of defense, including sandboxing and file conversion, to detect and neutralize any threats. This ensures that users are protected from opening malicious attachments that could compromise their systems.

    Mimecast Advanced Email Security also includes Impersonation Protect, which guards against CEO fraud and other impersonation attacks. It analyzes email headers, domains, and sender behavior to identify suspicious emails that attempt to deceive users. By alerting users and administrators to potential impersonation attempts, it helps prevent financial loss and data breaches.

    Furthermore, Mimecast Advanced Email Security provides comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities. It scans outgoing emails for sensitive information, such as credit card numbers or social security numbers, and prevents accidental or intentional data leaks. This helps organizations comply with data protection regulations and maintain the privacy of their customers' information.

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
    Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
    Azizi Developments, Affinity Credit Union, Aftercare, Al Abbar Group
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company17%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider17%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Government14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization45%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Retailer16%
    Transportation Company16%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Construction Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Construction Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business45%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise24%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise55%
    Large Enterprise27%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business52%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise44%
    Buyer's Guide
    Fortinet FortiMail vs. Mimecast Email Security
    January 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiMail vs. Mimecast Email Security and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
    787,033 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 5th in Email Security with 57 reviews while Mimecast Email Security is ranked 5th in Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with 25 reviews. Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.6, while Mimecast Email Security is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiMail writes "Good GUI and configuring security policies is easy but the pricing needs improvement". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Mimecast Email Security writes "It gives clients peace of mind and helps them educate their users about threats". Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Cisco Secure Email, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Proofpoint Email Protection and Sophos Email, whereas Mimecast Email Security is most compared with Abnormal Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, Cisco Secure Email and Avanan. See our Fortinet FortiMail vs. Mimecast Email Security report.

    We monitor all Email Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.