Sold by: Barracuda Networks
Deployed on AWS
Vendor Insights
Spam, Malware, and Advanced Threat Protection. Protect your business from email borne cyber threats.
4.2
Overview
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense identifies and blocks spam, viruses, and malware delivered via email messages. Using virus scanning, spam scoring, real-time intent analysis, URL link protection, reputation checks, and other techniques, Barracuda scans email messages and files.
AWS customers, or even organizations who are considering AWS, can take advantage of AWS Private Offers https://www.barracuda.com/solutions/aws/private-offer to receive a specialized price quotation from Barracuda, allowing you to negotiate terms, conditions, even discounts, either directly or through your trusted partner.
Highlights
- Stop advanced threats. Protect your users and business from volumetric threats, such as malware and spam, as well as advanced threats, including ransomware and zero day attacks.
- Block access to malicious URLs and attachments. Keep your users safe with realtime analysis of inbound URLs and attachments and block access to malicious content.
- Stay productive during downtime. Protect your data from corruption and deletion with full cloud backup and recovery of every email and file. Keep sensitive data safe with data leak prevention and encryption.
Details
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Features and programs
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Pricing
Pricing is based on the duration and terms of your contract with the vendor. This entitles you to a specified quantity of use for the contract duration. If you choose not to renew or replace your contract before it ends, access to these entitlements will expire.
Additional AWS infrastructure costs may apply. Use the AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate your infrastructure costs.
Dimension | Description | Cost/month |
|---|---|---|
Email Gateway Defense | Email Protection, Email Gateway Defense | $3.20 |
Vendor refund policy
Please see Barracuda's website.
Custom pricing options
Request a private offer to receive a custom quote.
Legal
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Delivery details
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS delivers cloud-based software applications directly to customers over the internet. You can access these applications through a subscription model. You will pay recurring monthly usage fees through your AWS bill, while AWS handles deployment and infrastructure management, ensuring scalability, reliability, and seamless integration with other AWS services.
Resources
Vendor resources
Support
Vendor support
Barracuda's award-winning technical support is available 24x7 worldwide.
Support Phone Numbers: North America - 408 342 5300 Europe - +44 (0) 1256 300 102 Australia - +612 8019 7254 China - +86 400 720 8200 Japan - +81 3 5436 6236 India - +91 804 904 8600 Germany, Austria, Switzerland - +43 (0) 508 100 800 Support Website:https://www.barracuda.com/support Support Email: support@barracuda.com
AWS infrastructure support
AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.
Updated weekly
By Barracuda Networks
By Fortinet Inc.
By Check Point Software Technologies
Sentiment is AI generated from actual customer reviews on AWS and G2
Functionality
Ease of use
Customer service
Cost effectiveness
Positive reviews
Mixed reviews
Negative reviews
AI generated from product descriptions
Virus and Malware Scanning
Identifies and blocks viruses and malware delivered via email messages using virus scanning techniques.
Spam Detection and Filtering
Detects and blocks spam using spam scoring and reputation checks on inbound email messages.
URL and Attachment Protection
Performs real-time intent analysis and protection of inbound URLs and attachments to block malicious content.
Advanced Threat Detection
Protects against advanced threats including ransomware and zero-day attacks through threat analysis mechanisms.
Email and File Backup with Recovery
Provides full cloud backup and recovery of email messages and files with data leak prevention and encryption capabilities.
Spam and Phishing Protection
Built-in capabilities for spam and phishing detection with machine learning and outbreak detection techniques powered by FortiGuard Labs.
Malware and Ransomware Defense
Advanced protection against malware and ransomware threats with zero-day attack detection capabilities.
Data Loss Prevention
Data leak prevention (DLP) functionality with identity-based encryption (IBE) and message archiving to address compliance requirements including SOX, GLBA, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.
Sandbox Integration
Integration with FortiSandbox for deep analysis of message attachments and embedded URLs to detect emerging and unknown threats.
Multi-Email Platform Compatibility
Compatibility with Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, and G-Suite environments with zero impact on network or message traffic flow.
Multi-Platform Email and Collaboration Security
Defense-in-depth security for Microsoft 365 and G-Suite, extending to collaboration environments including file sharing, chat, Slack, and Microsoft Teams
Advanced Threat Detection and Sandboxing
Advanced sandboxing and active-content analysis to scan files for malicious content and prevent phishing and malware propagation
Data Loss Prevention with Context-Aware Policies
Identification of confidential information with context-aware policy enforcement to prevent unauthorized data leakage of PCI, HIPAA, PII, and other protected content
Comprehensive Email Scanning
Scanning of inbound, outbound, and internal email traffic with threat quarantine capabilities before user download
Cloud-Native Deployment
One-click, cloud-enabled deployment without requiring proxy, appliance, or endpoint agent installation
Standard contract
No
No
No
Customer reviews
David Smith
Phishing training has strengthened email security and identifies high‑risk users
Reviewed on Feb 18, 2026
Review from a verified AWS customer
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is to conduct phishing awareness campaigns, which we do on a semi-monthly basis, and we also utilize the USB drop feature, which is another handy feature.
One specific example of how I have used Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) for our phishing awareness campaigns is when I need to train end users by creating phishing campaigns. With the number of options Barracuda has, it makes it easier to keep up with the latest phishing types, such as invoices, invoice scams, Teams, and LinkedIn. The USB drop campaigns are also helpful for the corporate office and when there is a need to train end users on being alert and cautious when plugging in devices.
Regarding my main use case, it is great to set up phishing campaigns by using the extensive library, and in a couple of minutes, I can set up a detailed campaign. This campaign has helped reduce the number of times our users accept and open phishing emails since emails from support and executive were not cutting it. Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) helped us identify problem users and train them directly, which has helped us immensely, especially to increase our security in our emails.
What is most valuable?
The best features Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) offers are reporting that helps raise management awareness, easily monitoring individual user behavior, and accessing any cybersecurity risk, along with an extensive library, training possibilities, customizing according to our user needs, and short videos that highlight how to use these tools.
These features have made a difference in my day-to-day work and for my team by allowing us to customize how we want to train our users.
I would also add that now our team is able to take time to analyze an email before clicking, which has avoided many disasters.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) has positively impacted my organization. It has been a very good tool, increasing email security by 70%, improving compliance and risk management, and providing adequate training, making our staff more aware and alert, as they check more often and report more spam emails.
To measure that 70% increase in email security, I compared it with our previous tool, which was KnowBe4 security awareness training. I can now understand that our security has increased from 50 to 70% since we are able to capture many spam emails and have reduced data breaches and other security threats in our organization.
What needs improvement?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) can be improved because the user interface is not very intuitive, especially for new users, and it is not easy to make my own landing page designs. Additionally, the support is not always responsive.
I would also add that the cost could be more affordable, especially for smaller organizations working on a tight budget.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) for the past five years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very scalable, with no downtime noticed, and it is really fast.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support has been very responsive at times, helpful, and solution-oriented. However, during a few instances when I reached out to them, they took a bit of time to respond to our queries, possibly due to a large volume of requests, which is normal.
I rate customer support an eight out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used KnowBe4 training and Sophos Phish Threat .
The reason I decided to switch from KnowBe4 training to Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is that Barracuda was easier to launch a campaign compared to our previous tool, has a better analytics suite, and the phishing simulations are more convincing. Additionally, the plan is cheaper overall.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment because Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) helped us reduce the risk of phishing attacks, thus driving down cost exposure as a result of a breach, and it is less costly than our previous solution or provider, allowing us to save costs.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I find the price to be cost-effective.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is that it has been really great and helpful in my organization, as it helped us identify users and departments that need extra training. The training videos that were also part of the application were very beneficial, making the training smooth and easy. I highly recommend this tool for training your users on how to capture and identify spam emails and other cybersecurity threats.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) has improved our security, enabling our compliance team to set up real-life scenarios to train and keep all our staff aware of email phishing security threats against 13 types of phishing attacks, allowing us to easily monitor individual user behavior and assess any security risk. I give this product an overall rating of 8 out of 10.
SachinShelar
Advanced phishing defense has improved email protection and consistently reduced security workload
Reviewed on Feb 13, 2026
Review from a verified AWS customer
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is primarily to secure the email gateway for Microsoft 365 or Exchange Online , and it is also used for phishing and BEC protection. Additionally, it allows us advanced threat protection such as sandboxing attachments, URL protection, and centralized multi-tenant management.
I mainly use Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) for email security, such as inbound and outbound SMTP filtering, anti-phishing, ATP sandboxing, URL time-of-check protection, and email continuity. Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is also employed for email security, archiving, continuity, and basic encryption.
Additional considerations include that it acts as a compensating control over native Office 365 . It has also reduced our SOC overload via pre-filtering and policy enforcement.
What is most valuable?
The best features of Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) include advanced threat protection (ATP), anti-phishing with targeted attack heuristics, and impersonation detection such as display name and domain similarities. Top features also include URL defense, URL rewriting, time-of-click verification, blocking malicious links in delivered mail, and spam and reputation filtering that helps us to real-time block list content crawling.
The feature I find myself relying on the most is anti-phishing and impersonation protection because phishing is the highest incident volume across the tenants, leading to direct financial and reputational risk exposure. This feature significantly reduces P1 security escalations, delivering measurable risk reduction, SLA stability, and operational efficiency across multi-tenant environments.
An additional standout feature is the sandbox detonation of attachments, which detects zero-day unknown malware, along with behavioral analytics. The value it provides to our organization includes preventing payload delivery, reducing endpoint incidents, and lowering SOC and remediation overload. The key strength it gives us is layered filtration.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) has had a positive impact on our organization, including a reduction in phishing, fewer P1 security escalations, a lower volume of user-reported spam, an improved email authentication posture, and a reduction in SOC triage workload.
The observed outcomes from these improvements show a reduction in successful phishing incidents post-tuning of about thirty to fifty percent. I have also seen a seventy to eighty percent spam catch rate improvement over the native baseline filtering and a drop of thirty to forty percent in user-reported phishing tickets, as well as a major reduction of about twenty to thirty-five percent in SOC email-related triage workload. The operational impact includes improved MTTD, reduced false positives after policy optimization, and stronger DMARC enforcement compliance.
What needs improvement?
The improvement area for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) would be reducing false positives via imported ML transparency and securing logic, along with faster log search and policy sync performance enhancements. Additionally, a stronger API or SIEM integration for automation and SOC workflows would be beneficial.
Additional challenges related to improvements include impersonation tuning complexity, which requires continuous policy refinement, and the false positive management overhead in high-security tenants. There is a need for stronger automation, role-based access control granularity, and advanced threat visibility for multi-tenant environments.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) for two or more years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is stable in my experience, as there has been no downtime since it has been deployed.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is scalable. We first deployed it for one line of business (LOB) and then for multiple LOBs, all while maintaining stability without any lag.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is good, and the documentation is also very helpful.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we were not using an email gateway solution; we only utilized native Microsoft 365 EOP or Defender for Office 365 . The reason for switching to Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) was its higher phishing bypass rate, limited impersonation protection granularity, and less visibility in message tracing and threat logs. Our decision was driven by the need for a dedicated security layer with stronger phishing control, sandboxing, and centralized policy governance across multiple customer tenants.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the licensing is flexible but needs proper feature scoping to avoid over-licensing. The setup cost primarily involves services rather than the product.
What about the implementation team?
I purchased Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) through the AWS Marketplace .
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment, with an incident reduction of about forty to sixty percent drop in successful phishing. The efficiency of the SOC team has increased because the email-related triage workload has been reduced by twenty to thirty-five percent. Additionally, there is reduced endpoint remediation cost, with less reimaging or incident response hours, and operational stability has been quite high as the continuity has avoided mail outage impacts, which is useful for avoiding business downtime penalties.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials), I evaluated one other option, which was Trend Micro Email Security .
I chose Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) due to its better MSP multi-tenant manageability, competitive total cost of ownership (TCO), and bundling flexibility.
What other advice do I have?
The advice I would give to others looking into using Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is to do a proper baseline assessment of the current phishing rate and mail flow design. I would also suggest enabling ATP and URL protection by default, tuning policies per risk tier, and integrating logs with SIEM for centralized monitoring. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Xekavi Jackson
Security training has reduced phishing risk and builds ongoing awareness across our organization
Reviewed on Feb 13, 2026
Review provided by PeerSpot
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is that it functions as a great security awareness platform. The product is a good addition that addresses today's growth in phishing emails, which we use internally and externally to train and educate people to recognize those types of emails and social engineering attacks. We implement it internally and have also implemented it at our partner organizations. It has a good library of resources available, and we also use self-made templates to correspond better to the user environment.
A specific example of how I have used Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) to train and protect my team and partners is creating campaigns to train staff and giving them an opportunity to get trained.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) has extensive customization available, which is also the main challenge. It is too complicated to navigate, especially for new users. It requires a significant amount of effort to learn and get the most out of it. However, the support has been very great and very quick to resolve any issues the product has.
How has it helped my organization?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) has positively impacted my organization by reducing the risk of phishing attacks, which drives down cost exposure as a result of breaches. It is also less costly than our previous solution.
We have seen a reduction in the risk of phishing attacks since we educated all our employees with Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials). They have learned about phishing emails, how they look, and what suspicious emails entail. We have reduced the risk by 60%.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) helps us better protect our information and our information security environment. It saves us time since we do not have to rely on other teams for security, especially when we see a phishing email. We are very proactive about that. It also saves cost because there are no more data breaches in our organization.
What is most valuable?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) offers several best features, including a large library of existing templates, numerous options to fine-tune delivery of emails, design for a large amount of end-users, analytics and reporting, individually tailored user training, and realistic phishing simulations.
The feature I find myself using the most day-to-day from Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is the trend analytics and behavior metrics with its reports and dashboard, which are remarkable. They allow us to track user behavior and alert us so that we can set up appropriate follow-up awareness training and reduce any risk of a user falling for a phishing attack.
Regarding the features of Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials), I wish to make training part of a comprehensive security strategy.
What needs improvement?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) can be improved in the area of the learning curve, especially for new users, which might be a bit complex. Campaign setup and launch can take a while compared to other competitors.
Additionally, the user interface could be a little easier to use, and the campaigns could be easier to create. That would be a great improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) for about eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very scalable and grows with my organization's needs. We deal with a lot of emails, and it can handle all of them. It can handle the organization, especially when offering training. It is very scalable.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very proactive and supportive. They are available on time to guide new users in case of any questions, and they are very helpful.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Our previous solution was the KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training tool. The reason we switched from the KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training tool to Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is because Barracuda is free and included with the Essentials and Sentinel solution. It is also very easy to train users, especially through the help of the tool. Even with better training, users that fall for phishing do not continue to fall for it after knowing what to look for in a suspicious email.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials), with positive feedback from faculty.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) makes training and testing easy to set up. If your staff can become aware and trained to have minimal incidents, that is a huge return on investment for any organization.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is that the price is cost-effective and affordable.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials), I evaluated other options including KnowBe4 and PhishER.
What other advice do I have?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is free with email filtering and will boost your security email and add confidence in your organization and peace of mind, knowing that all data from email is secure and at rest. I would recommend this product, as I have given it a rating of 9 out of 10.
Gexore Andrew
Training users has built a strong human firewall and now reduces successful phishing attacks
Reviewed on Feb 12, 2026
Review from a verified AWS customer
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is that we use it for training to create awareness among our users. We have about a thousand users who go through the training on a regular basis. We noticed an increase in awareness where we receive much more feedback about suspicious emails, pop-up messages, and notifications on websites.
The training definitely helped to increase people's alertness, and now they are more cautious and aware of any suspicious email. When a suspicious email appears, they are able to mitigate the risk.
What is most valuable?
The best features that Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) offers include easy deployment, excellent protection against online threats, and first-rate technical support.
Regarding excellent protection against online threats, I value their ability to protect against various online threats such as spam, phishing, ransomware, and malware. This gives us peace of mind while using email. The software helps us to create emails that look exactly or almost exactly the same as the phishing emails we found in our email gateway.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) has positively impacted my organization by making us less prone to several attacks, with malware being our highest return on investment. Our users feel more trained and they feel happier working with this email security. Our users report the emails they think are fake more often to the IT department, and they take action from there. Security has rapidly increased, and data breaches, email phishing, email takeover, and account takeover have reduced.
What needs improvement?
One of the areas that needs to be improved in Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is the user interface. As a non-IT person, it is not always simple to use the interface. Sometimes it is not very fast. Sending out emails to large databases feels tricky.
For needed improvements, I think customization is not easily coded.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) for at least five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very scalable, as it grows with my organization's needs efficiently.
How are customer service and support?
My experience with their technical support is that it is first-rate and efficient, highlighting the helpfulness. The support is very helpful and very professional in resolving any issue or concern that arises. They are quick to respond and very helpful.
The customer support for Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is very responsive and supportive 24/7. They are quick to find a solution in case of any issue.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before choosing Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials), I evaluated other options, specifically Phished.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment with Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) as it has protected our customers against targeted phishing emails, set up training campaigns easily, and trained the human firewall. Users are now aware of what they have to pay attention to, and possible attacks can be prevented.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the cost is very effective and affordable. I have no problem with that.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is that it is very suited to make the users aware of how easy it is to fall into well-made campaigns. This also generates statistics that we can correlate with the same situation at customers or other partners. Meanwhile, it is less appropriate when using it against IT professionals, as they quickly see the fishy links.
Barracuda Email Gateway Defense (Barracuda Essentials) is a good email security solution that has boosted my organization's security. I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10.
Kelly F.
User-Friendly Software That Helps Protect Our Environment
Reviewed on Feb 11, 2026
Review provided by G2
What do you like best about the product?
The software is user friendly, and does a great job at protecting our environment.
What do you dislike about the product?
At times, emails we’ve already whitelisted still end up getting blocked. When that happens, we have to dig into the cause and adjust the right settings so it doesn’t keep happening.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Email security! It’s honestly amazing, day to day, how many emails we receive compared with how many get blocked. Simply keeping phishing emails out is a huge win in my book.