HailBytes SAT - Enterprise Phishing Simulation Platform
Targeted campaigns have reduced phishing clicks and build ongoing employee awareness
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Gophish is to run a phishing awareness campaign inside an organization in a safe and controlled way. For example, instead of waiting for a real attacker to send a fake email to employees, the company can simulate a phishing email using Gophish. The email may look legitimate or resemble a login alert, password reset request, an invoice, an HR notice, or a document sharing link. The goal is not to blame employees; the goal is to understand how many people may click the suspicious link and enter credentials or report the email to the security team. Based on the results, the company can train employees better to reduce their risk of a real phishing attack. Gophish helps the security team create an email template, landing pages, user groups, and campaigns, and it also shows useful reports such as who opened the email, who clicked the link, and who submitted the information. In simple terms, Gophish is the tool that helps the organization test employee awareness before the real attackers do.
In my recent campaign, we created a controlled email that looked like an internal password expiry notification. This message informed employees that their password was about to expire and asked them to click the link and verify their account. Some employees clicked it. Using Gophish, we created the email templates, added the target user groups, and connected to safe landing pages. The landing pages did not collect the real password; they were only used to track awareness and show training guidance. After sending the campaign, Gophish helped us measure how many users opened the email, clicked the link, and submitted the details. Based on the results, we identified which department needed more phishing awareness training. The main purpose was not to blame anyone; it was to understand employee behavior, reduce phishing risk, and help the company prepare better against a real attack.
One challenge I faced was the credential awareness simulation. We set up a phishing campaign where employees received an email that looked like a password expiry or account verification message. The landing page was only for awareness testing; we did not collect the real password or sensitive data. The outcome was useful because it showed which user or team is more likely to fall for phishing. Gophish is very useful because it turns security awareness into a practical exercise. Instead of just telling employees about phishing, we can safely show them how phishing works and help them learn from real-world style scenarios.
What is most valuable?
The best feature of Gophish is that it makes phishing simulation very simple and practical. First, it allows us to create realistic email templates. We can design emails resembling password reset alerts, HR notifications, invoice emails, document sharing, or account verification messages. Second, it supports landing pages, so when a user clicks the link, we can direct them to a safe awareness page or a simulated login page to understand their response. Gophish also allows landing pages to be created or imported and connected to each campaign. Another strong feature is campaign management, which is easy to manage. We can create user groups, select an email template, choose a landing page, configure the sending profile, and launch the campaign in a structured way. Another strong feature is tracking; Gophish helps us see who opened the email, who clicked the link, and who submitted the information during the campaign. This is very useful for measuring employee phishing awareness and risk levels.
Gophish has positively impacted my organization by increasing awareness among my employees. Before using security awareness training with Gophish, the phishing clicking rate was seventy-five percent; now it has reduced to twenty percent.
It takes us a month to see this improvement, and we train our employees on how phishing works and how attackers will deceive information from them. We also simulate this kind of activity through Gophish. After doing this, employees are getting awareness on phishing every month.
My most favorite features are landing pages and reporting because it is very useful for me to create a landing page, and we can track how employees behave regarding that link.
What needs improvement?
I believe Gophish can be improved in a few areas. First, the user interface could be made more modern and beginner-friendly. The current setup is simple, but for a new user, campaign creation, landing pages, and sending profiles can feel somewhat technical at first. Second, it would be helpful if Gophish added more built-in templates—for example, ready-made templates for HR emails, password expiry alerts, invoice scams, and cloud login alerts. This would save us time. The third area for improvement is reporting; reporting can be enhanced with more visual dashboards. It already shows opens, clicks, and submissions, but more detailed charts, risk scoring, department-wise comparison, and training progress would make it more useful for management reporting. My final suggestion is that built-in awareness training content would be a good improvement. After a user clicks a phishing link, Gophish could show short learning modules or a video explaining what mistake happened and how to avoid it next time. This could save some trainer's time explaining security awareness; it will alert users about what would happen if they click a link. Another useful improvement would be easier integration with tools like SIM, Slack, Teams, or email security gateways, which would help the security team connect phishing simulation results with their overall security monitoring. Overall, Gophish is very good for running phishing simulations, but it can become even better with improved UI, more templates, stronger reporting, and built-in training support.
If Gophish brings some ready-made templates or better visual reporting, it would be much better for us and should also make integration with all kinds of security tools like SIM or email security gateways easier.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Gophish for more than four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Gophish is stable, but I find KnowBe4 to be better.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Gophish is scalable enough for most phishing awareness campaigns, especially for small and medium-sized organizations. In our on-premises setup, scalability mainly depends on server resources, mail sending configuration, network capacity, and how many users we include in a campaign. If the campaign is planned properly, Gophish can handle multiple user groups, different templates, landing pages, and campaign tracking without major issues.
Gophish is scalable for most awareness campaigns, and since we use it on-premises, scalability depends on server resources, mail configuration, and targeted users. For larger campaigns, I prefer sending emails in batches instead of all at once to help with delivery, tracking, and performance. Overall, Gophish is stable and scalable, but for enterprise usage, it requires proper planning, monitoring, and infrastructure. If you are planning for a larger enterprise, I would suggest the KnowBe4 tool, not Gophish.
How are customer service and support?
I do not see any customer support for Gophish so far. I cannot rate customer support because I have not seen any support provided so far.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before using Gophish, we used KnowBe4, which is also similar to Gophish, but KnowBe4 has additional features, such as providing video training courses. If the user clicks the phishing link, they receive a banner stating, "You are hacked. You clicked the phishing link," which helps users understand why they clicked and what they clicked on.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing shows that the setup cost is not very high; Gophish is completely free, as it is an open-source tool.
What was our ROI?
We have not saved time, but we have saved money because most suspicious links come from spam and junk mail attacking employees and the company's servers. Previously, my clicking rate was seventy-five percent, but it has reduced to twenty-five percent due to Gophish and our training.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing shows that the setup cost is not very high; Gophish is completely free, as it is an open-source tool.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I can go with KnowBe4 as another option I evaluated.
What other advice do I have?
A good template helps measure whether employees can identify suspicious links, sender issues, and urgency-based messages, which has very much surprised me.
Regarding Gophish's AI capabilities, I see it mainly as a phishing simulation tool, not a fully-fledged AI platform. For governance and security, I believe the key is responsible and authorized use; campaigns should be approved, access should be limited, employee data must be protected, and results should be used for awareness training, not blaming people. If AI is used to create a template or analyze results, human review is important to ensure the content is safe, ethical, and aligned with company policy.
Gophish is reliable for tracking campaign results such as opens, clicks, and submissions, but it is not mainly an AI-based tool. If AI is used to generate a template or analyze results, I would not trust the output blindly. AI can be useful, but it should be treated as a draft; a human should review the content for accuracy, tone, company policy, and ethical use before launching any campaign.
I advise others looking into using Gophish to use it safely with authorization and permission from your company to avoid unauthorized access and misuse, as misuse could lead to severe consequences. I would rate this product nine out of ten.
Targeted phishing campaigns have strengthened employee awareness and helped reduce risky behaviors.
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Gophish is running phishing simulation campaigns for multiple clients of different sizes. I have also used the Gophish API to automate certain phishing scenarios and integrate the tool into a cybersecurity awareness platform.
For example, I conducted a campaign for one of my clients to assess the maturity level and security awareness of their employees regarding phishing risks. We first defined the campaign objectives with the client, then selected the target audience, chose the scenario, and validated the landing page.
The selected scenario involved simulating an email from the HR department. We also reproduced a web page related to the client’s environment to make the exercise more realistic. The goal was to measure employee reactions, identify risky behaviors, and evaluate their overall level of awareness.
For this type of campaign, I use Gophish through its web interface, API, and campaign management features.
What is most valuable?
In my opinion, the best features of Gophish are recipient management, template creation, detailed reporting, and the API.
Recipient management makes it easy to organize target groups by client, department, user profile, or risk level. This helps prepare campaigns that are better adapted to each specific context.
The email and landing page templates are also very useful because they allow realistic and contextualized scenarios to be created. This level of customization makes campaigns more relevant and helps assess how users react to situations that are close to their real working environment.
I particularly appreciate the reporting capabilities, as they help measure campaign effectiveness and the client’s maturity level. Gophish provides key indicators such as email open rates, click rates, data submission rates, and behavioral changes across multiple campaign iterations.
The Gophish API is another strong feature. It makes it possible to automate several tasks, including campaign creation, email delivery, result collection, and integration with cybersecurity awareness platforms or other internal tools.
Another major advantage is that Gophish is open source and free, which makes it accessible, flexible, and easy to adapt to different organizational needs.
Gophish has had a positive impact on my work with several clients. For example, during an initial campaign, more than 70% of the targeted employees submitted data. After a contextualized awareness training session, we launched a similar campaign again, and the data submission rate decreased to around 40%. This improvement showed a clear increase in employee awareness and maturity regarding phishing risks.
What needs improvement?
Gophish is already an effective tool for running phishing simulation campaigns, but some features could be improved to better meet the needs of organizations and consulting firms.
The first area for improvement is reporting. The current reports are useful, but they could be enhanced with more advanced analytics, such as segmenting results by target audience, department, business unit, risk level, or campaign. This would make it easier to identify the most exposed groups, track maturity improvements over time, and generate reports that are better aligned with client expectations.
The second area for improvement is user and role management. In a consulting environment, it would be very useful to clearly separate access and responsibilities between managers, technical teams, and clients. For example, some users could have read-only access to campaign results, while others could create campaigns, manage templates, or administer the platform.
More advanced access control, with customizable profiles or roles, would make Gophish more suitable for multi-client environments and organizations with multiple stakeholders.
In my opinion, the two modules that should be prioritized in future versions are advanced reporting and user management. These improvements would increase the value of Gophish, especially for teams using it at scale or in a professional context with multiple clients.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for more than 3 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Yes, I consider Gophish to be a stable and reliable solution, especially for small and medium-sized companies. In this type of environment, the tool works very well when it is properly installed and configured.
For large enterprises or campaigns involving a high volume of users, stability depends more on the technical preparation. It is important to segment the target population into several groups in order to better control email delivery and avoid blocking or performance issues.
The SMTP server configuration also plays a key role. A poor configuration can lead to delivery delays, blocked emails, or incomplete results. However, with the right infrastructure, proper SMTP configuration, and a secure platform setup, Gophish remains stable and reliable even in larger environments.
Overall, my experience with Gophish in terms of stability has been very positive.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I consider Gophish to be quite scalable, especially for small and medium-sized companies. In this type of environment, the tool is generally reliable, easy to deploy, and capable of managing phishing simulation campaigns effectively.
For large enterprises or environments with a high number of employees, however, campaign execution needs to be carefully planned. I recommend segmenting the target population into several groups, for example by department, business unit, location, or risk level. This helps better control email delivery, reduce the risk of blocking or overload, and produce more actionable results.
Scalability also depends on the infrastructure used to host Gophish, the SMTP configuration, the volume of emails being sent, and the client’s security controls. With proper technical preparation and appropriate segmentation, Gophish can be used effectively in larger environments.
How are customer service and support?
Gophish support is different from what you would expect from a commercial solution, as it is an open-source tool. Therefore, there is no traditional customer support with a dedicated team or formal service desk.
However, my experience has still been positive because the documentation is clear and detailed enough to resolve most issues. I have never needed to contact technical support, as the available guides and community resources helped me find the answers I needed.
In my opinion, Gophish is well suited for teams with some technical skills that can rely on documentation and community forums. For organizations that require official support, service-level commitments, or direct assistance, this may be a limitation to consider.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was not using a similar solution before adopting Gophish. We selected Gophish directly after conducting a comparative study more than three years ago.
At that time, we evaluated several competing solutions, although I no longer remember the exact names of the tools that were assessed. Gophish stood out for several reasons: it is open source, free to use, well documented, and relatively easy to install thanks to the available resources and community feedback.
Another important selection criterion was the availability of a fairly complete API. This allowed us to integrate Gophish with other internal tools and automate certain tasks related to cybersecurity awareness and phishing simulation campaigns.
In the end, we chose Gophish because it met our functional needs while offering an excellent balance between flexibility and cost.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Gophish was generally quite straightforward, although I did face some difficulties at the beginning during the installation process.
These challenges were mainly related to the initial deployment and some configuration settings. However, after reviewing the documentation and using the resources available in community forums, the issues were resolved without major difficulty.
In my opinion, installing Gophish does not require highly advanced expertise, but it does require a solid technical foundation, especially in hosting, network configuration, SMTP setup, and securing access to the platform.
Overall, I would say that the initial setup is fairly accessible for someone with a technical background. It is important to read the documentation carefully, test the configuration before launching a campaign, and rely on the community resources when needed.
What was our ROI?
Yes, we have seen a return on investment with Gophish, mainly through licensing cost savings. Since Gophish is an open-source solution, there are no licensing fees, which is a significant advantage compared to some commercial solutions.
The main costs are related to hosting the platform, configuring it, and the time spent preparing, monitoring, and analyzing campaigns. Even with these operational costs, the overall cost remains controlled, especially in a multi-client context.
Another positive aspect of the ROI is the gradual improvement in employee awareness. By tracking campaign indicators such as click rates and data submission rates, it is possible to measure behavioral changes after awareness actions.
For example, in some campaigns, we observed a decrease in the data submission rate after contextualized awareness training. This shows that Gophish provides value not only from a cost perspective, but also by helping reduce risky behaviors.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with Gophish pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been very positive. Since Gophish is an open-source solution, there are no licensing fees or costs directly related to using the software.
The main costs to consider are related to hosting the platform, the required infrastructure, and the time spent on installation, configuration, maintenance, and administration.
In our case, the absence of licensing fees was a significant advantage, especially in a multi-client context. It allowed us to use a flexible and effective solution while keeping costs under control.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Gophish, we evaluated several competing solutions as part of a comparative study. However, since this analysis was conducted more than three years ago, I no longer remember the exact names of the tools that were assessed.
The main comparison criteria were cost, ease of installation, availability of documentation, solution flexibility, integration capabilities, and the level of automation supported.
Gophish stood out mainly because it is open source, free to use, and well documented. The absence of licensing costs was an important advantage. The available documentation and community resources also made installation and onboarding easier.
Another major advantage of Gophish was its API, which provided enough capabilities to integrate it with our internal tools and automate certain stages of the campaigns, including preparation, execution, and result collection.
Compared with some commercial solutions, Gophish may require more configuration and administration effort. However, it offers greater flexibility, a much lower cost, and strong adaptability. This balance between cost, simplicity, flexibility, and integration capabilities was the main reason we selected Gophish.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Gophish 9 out of 10.
My advice to organizations considering Gophish is to start by properly securing the platform installation. It is important to use HTTPS, protect access to the administration interface, and restrict access to authorized users only.
Before launching a phishing simulation campaign, it is also essential to clearly define the objectives, validate the scenario, run preliminary tests, and carefully select the target audience. An effective campaign should be contextualized and aligned with the organization’s maturity level.
I also recommend paying close attention to data management. Campaign results may contain sensitive information related to employees or clients. Therefore, it is better to limit data retention and delete campaign-related data after completion, in accordance with confidentiality requirements and internal policies.
Overall, Gophish is a very effective, flexible, and cost-efficient solution for running phishing awareness campaigns, provided that campaigns are properly prepared and the environment is securely configured.
Academic phishing simulations have deepened my social engineering skills and awareness training
What is our primary use case?
I used Gophish for a project last August, a phishing attack simulation, and I reused it recently because a student found the project I did on GitHub and wanted to do the same project, so he asked me some questions, and I reused it at that time.
My main use case for Gophish is in a phishing attack simulation project where the idea is to learn and understand social engineering and how to simulate phishing attacks when you're in a Red Team. I also created a slide deck that explains how to recognize a phishing attack, showing some of the results of the three campaigns, and then at the end, I provided some advice to people to avoid falling for those kinds of phishing attacks.
What is most valuable?
The best features that Gophish offers, the ones that impressed me the most during my use, are mainly two things. The fact of having templates makes the task easier instead of creating an email and copy-pasting for each person every time. Here, you can create campaigns and send them, and you can create a CSV file, for example, and send directly to all the people you list there, so it saves time.
Also, the dashboard gives a direct view of the clicks and the number of people who received the email, making it very illustrative and saving from having to compile the results manually, delivering them in Excel tables or whatever; it is directly visible in the application, and it is easier to read that way.
Gophish has had a positive impact on my learning and my academic path in cybersecurity as it allowed me to understand and go deeper into the concepts of social engineering and phishing attacks. It gave me experience because this is a project I completed and published on GitHub, and there were even other students who were interested and contacted me for information. This is a project that I added to my CV, and I am very happy, not just because I added it to my CV but because it allowed me to learn things.
What needs improvement?
In my opinion, Gophish could be improved to better meet my needs or those of other users, but I did not really encounter any problems, so I found the tool well designed. Since I did not use it in a real environment, I do not really know how it goes if you want to use real email addresses, so on that point, I cannot really give my opinion.
I do not really have any improvements in mind at the moment, but offering ready-made templates that we could use or examples of emails that we could directly use would be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding Gophish's scalability, the maximum I did was three campaigns with 10 people per campaign, making 30 people. I did not test it with a larger number of people because it was just in an academic context, so I did not want to go beyond a lot of people.
How are customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before using Gophish, I did not test other similar solutions; I chose Gophish because I had downloaded a list of cybersecurity projects to do, and among those projects, there was a phishing attack simulation project suggesting the use of Gophish. That is how I discovered Gophish, and I did not think about looking for or using other tools since Gophish met my needs.
How was the initial setup?
Regarding my use of Gophish in this academic context, I found it extremely easy to use; you do not need to be a technical person with special skills to be able to handle it. In maybe an hour or two, I understood how to use it, how to create templates, how it works with landing pages and dashboards. It is really useful and very easy to use, so I recommend it both for cybersecurity students like me and for security professionals.
What about the implementation team?
What was our ROI?
I have noticed a return on investment in terms of time saved and skills acquired thanks to my use of Gophish. It is thanks to this tool that I was able to carry out these phishing attack simulations, understand how it works, see concrete results, and even make a small slide deck that explains this little project and includes advice that I might present in the future to some users.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Regarding the price, setup cost, and licensing of Gophish, I do not remember having to pay to use it. It is a completely free tool if I am not mistaken. Unless there are features that were paid and that I did not choose, but as far as I remember, I did not pay anything.
What other advice do I have?
In my opinion, the one I found most interesting was the one from CROUS because generally when students arrive here in France and they see this, they have to pay quickly since phishing attacks usually use an urgent tone. Since these students are afraid of losing their CROUS housing, they might quickly pay, just click on the link and proceed with the payment without necessarily realizing that it is a scam, especially since generally, people who come from certain African countries do not really have this concept of scam and phishing.
The project is purely academic; I did it with fake email addresses that I managed with Mailpit. I created fake emails that do not exist, for people who do not exist, and I was the one who clicked on these emails myself, opened them, or accessed the links in the attachments of each email. Again, it was purely for academic purposes so I could learn because otherwise, with real email addresses, I cannot really do that, and also it is a bit complicated with Gmail. I preferred to do it with Mailpit and fake email addresses.
Regarding campaign management and the use of templates, Gophish's interface seemed very intuitive to me from the start; everything was clear and self-explanatory. You have buttons for each thing, and it does not really require super advanced knowledge; it is very easy to handle.
I do not really have any improvements in mind at the moment, but offering ready-made templates that we could use or examples of emails that we could directly use would be beneficial.
I do not have any particular advice for other people who want to use Gophish in an academic or professional context; I would tell them to go for this tool because it is really easy to get started with. You do not need to be an expert to use it, and it helps a lot with dashboards and templates. My overall rating for this product is 9 out of 10.
Practical phishing campaigns have raised staff awareness but still need more languages and SaaS access
What is our primary use case?
I create emails to raise employee awareness and send them to see if employees end up clicking. If they click, I reach out to them after finishing the campaign and conduct awareness work so they do not fall for phishing.
I configure Gophish within our Office 365 and proceed with the campaigns, sending emails similar to Microsoft's, emails similar to service providers', and I analyze the results. If someone falls for it, I then handle awareness together with that person.
What is most valuable?
I also consider the SMTP configuration of the server from which I send the emails to be a differentiator because it is very simple to do.
With Gophish, I am able to work in a more appropriate way on phishing awareness, and I am also able to make employees aware in an easy and appropriate way because they see how a phishing attack works in a real way. This allows them to become aware in a more practical way.
I did notice a measurable change as employees are more aware of phishing and the number of incidents has decreased because they now know how phishing works.
What needs improvement?
I rate it a seven because of the improvements I mentioned. I think if it were a SaaS platform and had more languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, it might be a ten.
For how long have I used the solution?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
How are customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
How was the initial setup?
What about the implementation team?
What was our ROI?
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
Targeted phishing simulations have strengthened security awareness and improved reporting rates
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Gophish is phishing campaigns. A quick specific example of how I use Gophish for phishing campaigns is for security awareness and training.
I use it for tracking responses, ratings, and also analyze statistics regarding my main use case.
What is most valuable?
The best features Gophish offers are that it is user-friendly and easy to use. Its user-friendly interface helps me in my daily work by making setup quicker.
Gophish has impacted my organization positively in terms of security awareness. I have noticed fewer phishing incidents and more responses towards reporting phishing emails as specific improvements.
What needs improvement?
Including more templates would be nice, and it would be beneficial to elaborate more on the user manual on how to use Gophish as some users have been struggling in using the tool.
Gophish can be improved by elaborating more and putting more screenshots in providing user manuals and user instructions for users to make installation easier. I think including more phishing templates would be a needed improvement. Other improvements Gophish needs include having the setup instructions be more detailed and clear.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Gophish for more than one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In my experience, Gophish is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Gophish is good.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support needs improvement.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used other solutions before Gophish, and I switched to it because it is open-source and easy to use, which saves us costs.
How was the initial setup?
I did not purchase Gophish through the AWS Marketplace; I have installed it manually, only as a server. It is easier to install compared to other simulating tools.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment in terms of time saved; building phishing campaigns is much more straightforward, and the setup was acceptable, but with more instructions on the user manual, that would be quicker.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that overall, it was good compared to other competitors.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Gophish, I evaluated options such as King Fisher, Evilginx, and the B4, but I found that Gophish was an open-source and readily available tool with very little costs and also the flexibility of using my own templates.
What other advice do I have?
Regarding Gophish's AI capabilities, I find its governance and security overall acceptable. Regarding Gophish's AI capabilities, I think the accuracy and reliability of output are good. I would recommend others looking into using Gophish to use it for performing their security awareness and campaigns because it is easier to install compared to other simulating tools.
Providing more details and videos on proper tutorials would be helpful. I found this interview to be good; it is well-calibrated and conducted effectively. I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Ethical phishing drills have strengthened client trust and improved employee awareness
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Gophish is conducting mock phishing drills, which was one of the biggest ethical reasons we can use Gophish for during my previous internship. For those mock phishing drills, we set them up on our cloud, on a virtual machine. From there, we set up all the landing templates. For example, we took a landing page of Netflix and we sent an email through Gophish using a real domain that we had purchased. We sent the mail to the employees of our clients. They ended up opening the email. For 400 employees, we sent 400 mails. The result was that 300 opened the mails and around 15 people actually submitted their information.
What is most valuable?
The best feature Gophish offers in my experience is the learning part. You can set it up on your own and learn new things by practicing and thinking from an attacker's perspective. What do they think? How do they deliver the payload, the mails? I think that part is the best. The UI is definitely very friendly.
What makes Gophish's UI friendly for me is the layout. Every step on the left panel, I can see. I just have to go to the next step, and I can even edit my previous step. The UI is very friendly in the sense that I don't have to navigate to different dropdowns or panels. Regarding the attacker's perspective, it really helps in thinking about how real-life fraudsters and attackers set up their own servers and try to mimic phishing attacks.
Gophish has helped in strengthening the relationship with our clients. It has also helped us give training regarding simple social engineering and phishing attacks that every employee must follow. For example, not clicking any suspicious mail. People know about it but they don't follow it. An actual real-life example where they are given a phishing mail out of the blue and they are clicking it gives us an idea of what people do when they're not being watched. That really helped us set up statistics and was very helpful.
What needs improvement?
Some more phishing templates would help. The feature of actually taking the website's source code might be something which is not so ethical, because you're copying from the main website even though you're learning. However, how would you differentiate between a person who is learning and a person who is actually trying to conduct an attack?
The training part, which is manual, is where Gophish can improve. After the phishing mails have been sent and we get the information and make up the statistics, we can attach or make a separate UI or a different panel where we can give training sessions within Gophish, within the Gophish hosted local server itself, to the clients. That would be great and will help in the educational part, making people aware of different types of attacks. Phishing is not related to one type of phishing attack; there are multiple types. That would help.
Gophish is currently in a very good spot where it caters to the needs of its target customers. But if they want to expand, they can add training modules or awareness modules regarding phishing and social engineering attacks within their own website itself. Clients can be guided to this particular website to get more details about phishing.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Gophish from time to time.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Gophish is very stable and very good in terms of setting up. We did not experience any downtime or issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Gophish can handle larger campaigns or more users easily. It can send over 2,000 to 2,500 mails.
How are customer service and support?
We did not reach out to customer support for Gophish, and we did not need to because everything went great.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Gophish was my first solution; I did not use any solution prior to it.
How was the initial setup?
Gophish was deployed on our public cloud with a firewall in front of it, so only our IPs were whitelisted, although it was public. In the campaign itself, we put our own domain, and the mails were sent through that domain's mail server. I used Microsoft Azure for deploying Gophish.
What about the implementation team?
I did not evaluate other options before choosing Gophish, primarily because the first thing that you search when you want to conduct a phishing drill is that Gophish comes up first. It was the most searched and the most used.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Gophish is to explore more. Gophish is a very good tool and can be used within the organization and with clients. If you're catering to your own clients, then you can use it for them as well. My advice would be to start with a small pilot campaign before rolling it out across the organization. That would help you validate any small hiccups that you come across. Gophish is relatively easy to deploy and use, and you can create realistic templates and use it to improve the results.
Regarding Gophish's AI capabilities, I don't think it is an AI-driven platform, so I haven't evaluated it based on AI-generated content. From my experience, the platform is very reliable in terms of campaign management and email delivery tracking and reporting, including the clicks. Overall, Gophish is dependable for phishing simulations and awareness assessments.
I rate Gophish a nine out of ten. I would choose nine out of ten because of how easy it is to set up. What makes it different for me not giving it a ten is the education part, as we can add training modules that would really help the organizations using Gophish for phishing drills because they can simply direct them to links that show what they need to do.
Targeted phishing simulations have improved staff awareness and provide measurable risk insights
What is our primary use case?
Setting up a phishing simulation for a client using Gophish typically starts with defining the objectives of the client, which varies from one client to another. We determine if we are testing awareness of credential harvesting, malicious links, or attachment-based attacks. After figuring that out, we create the target user groups, design or customize the phishing email template, and configure a landing page that simulates the intended scenario. We then set up the sending profile, schedule the campaign, and launch it to the selected users. During the campaigns, Gophish allows us to gather data that we visualize using our own platform, including interactions, how many people opened the email, who opened it, how many clicked the phishing link, how many reported the email as phishing, and how many submitted their credentials. We can even see those credentials to ensure that the submission is genuine, as sometimes individuals realize it is phishing and enter dummy credentials. After completing the campaign, we analyze the results, identify trends and high-risk groups, and provide a report, as our platform features automated reports with graphs and recommendations for awareness training opportunities for our clients.
What is most valuable?
Some of the best features Gophish offers include easy campaign creation with customizable email templates and landing pages, detailed tracking and reporting, including email opens, link clicks, credential submissions, and reported emails. Additionally, we can see what device users employed, for instance, whether they used an iPhone, mobile phone, or laptop, and which browser they used. This information helps us understand which browsers can open such emails while others may detect phishing attempts and block them. Other good features include user and group management, RESTful API support, well-documented processes, scheduled campaign management, the open-source aspect, high customizability, and simple deployment and administration.
The feature I rely on most and find most valuable in my day-to-day work is Gophish's reporting and tracking capability. Being able to see who opened an email, clicked a link, submitted credentials, or reported a phishing attempt provides clear and measurable insights into the organization's security awareness. These metrics help demonstrate risk levels, identify areas needing additional training, and show improvements over time. For example, if we conduct one campaign with a client, then provide training for those who failed, we can later run another campaign and evaluate who has improved or who still needs help. These metrics again assist in demonstrating risk levels, identifying training needs, and tracking improvements, making simulations much more actionable than merely sending test emails.
What needs improvement?
For how long have I used the solution?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
How are customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
How was the initial setup?
It was very easy for our team to learn and adopt Gophish due to its straightforward interface and clear workflow for creating campaigns, managing user groups, and reviewing results. Most team members achieved productivity with minimal training thanks to the excellent documentation and well-documented APIs, making it accessible with just a little reading.
What was our ROI?
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
I would describe Gophish's performance and reliability during large campaigns or high user loads as very reliable and performing well. I acknowledge there are limitations on the number of emails that can be sent simultaneously, leading to the emails being split into separate groups for sending. However, that is not an issue for us, as what we want Gophish to do is not particularly time-sensitive; we do not need all the emails to go out at one specific time. The reliability remains very good overall.
There have not really been any significant challenges we have faced using Gophish, as it is very well-documented and we have implemented it through our own dashboard and reporting system. We primarily needed it to perform its core functions: sending emails, ensuring everyone receives correct templates and landing pages, and reporting accurate data. Gophish accomplishes that very well, with no major challenges.
Gophish supports compliance and regulatory requirements for our organization and clients indirectly, as many government agencies and private companies are mandated to conduct internal training to prevent accidental data leaks or phishing. Our company performs the testing to ensure employees are educated and, if they fail, we provide them training, with Gophish facilitating the assessment process.
We receive mostly positive feedback regarding Gophish, but it is worth noting that we run Gophish alongside our own platform. Our clients and users do not distinguish between Gophish and our platform, as they only recognize our reliable system. Therefore, they generally provide positive feedback, reinforcing that notion.
Gophish helps meet our clients' organizational security goals by assisting in identifying weak points in their teams and facilitating training to prevent information leakage or account hacking.
My advice for others considering Gophish is to thoroughly read the documentation. Many people skip this step and expect the tool to provide everything without understanding how to use it. Gophish offers great documentation, and those who take the time to read it will find it immensely helpful. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.
Quarterly simulations have improved phishing awareness and guide targeted staff training
What is our primary use case?
As Gophish is an open-source tool, we prefer to use it because it is free and does not retain any personal data. We run a campaign on Gophish, which is usually designed by our own developer team, using our own template, email headers, and then choosing the filters for on-click emails and credential uploads. This is how we run a campaign every quarter using Gophish and send an email to all employees. We determine how many of them have clicked on the email and how many of them have entered their credentials on the login page.
I have an example to share here. The last time we did a Gophish simulation, it was with a newsletter template. The scenario was that a company is launching a new newsletter, and employees could apply or subscribe to it by entering their company email ID. This is how employees get trapped and how they risk exposing the company to cyber attacks. We use Gophish to understand how many employees are still not aware of phishing attacks overall. After that, we provide them with phishing prevention practices and training.
What is most valuable?
Gophish is one of the easiest tools that I can see available online, and a significant advantage is that it is free of cost and open source. Even if I need some customization, I can use Gophish and do whatever I want with the tool. I can also design my own campaign according to my own requirements with my developer teams, and we can run this very efficiently and clearly in any organization. It is very easy to use.
The best features Gophish offers are no limit on the number of employees I can target. Many other tools limit the number of employees because many organizations have a huge number of employees. I have used Gophish for many employees and I did not find any limitation. Secondly, I do not have any restriction over my template or design. Gophish allows us to put every design and everything that we want.
Gophish has really helped me find what category or what department of the company usually has more employees entering their data, clicking on emails, or opening emails. We found that we need more training in certain departments. For example, in the finance department, people do not understand phishing. We can provide them more training about phishing simulation and related awareness. By this, we also get many insights and it was really helpful for us to understand the requirements of cybersecurity and phishing simulation.
What needs improvement?
Currently, we do not think Gophish requires much improvement other than a better graphical user interface. Gophish still has an older or outdated design or GUI. They can work on the GUI more significantly.
Because I think with the technicalities and everything, it is perfect, but just because of the UI and other aspects, I would appreciate seeing more usability. For example, if we could also use it from a phone and add new templates or new ideas, that would be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Gophish for a particular time frame because we usually perform this activity quarterly in our organization so that we can assess how employees are aware of phishing attacks and all phishing emails.
What other advice do I have?
Gophish does not have standard templates available. We can use it from the browser itself, but we prefer to use our own templates to use it on a mass scale because the available templates are very basic. Employees can easily understand that it is a phishing attempt when using the standard templates. We use our own techniques to create real phishing scenarios for employees.
I do not think there will be any security concerns or any negative impact because it is an open-source tool and we can use it the way we want.
Gophish is a very good tool to use, and I would recommend it to others. My review rating for this product is 8 out of 10.
Automated phishing projects have saved significant time and simulate realistic attack workflows
What is our primary use case?
I have used Gophish in a project where I created a phishing email and sent that phishing email to my other email.
In this project, I was simulating the scenario of a phishing simulation, demonstrating how a phishing attack happens from both the attacker's perspective, as well as the blue teamer's perspective. I set up the recipient email template and links, submitted what my sender email was, what the victim's email was, and I completed the whole setup in Gophish to execute a phishing attack.
Apart from this project, I have used Gophish for activities including video editing, browsing, and mapping.
What is most valuable?
The best feature of Gophish is that you can create images of your workstations, and I have made an instance from which I created an image that I saved, allowing me to automatically run up the website or servers as I put in some executable commands.
The automation work with Gophish reduces my efforts and manpower, letting the servers turn on automatically whenever I need to start this image.
Using Gophish has helped me reduce my efforts and make more requests, allowing me to conduct many more phishing attacks in a shorter period. For example, without Gophish, creating a phishing email would take me at least two to three hours, but with Gophish, you can simply copy-paste the templates and send multiple phishing emails within a few minutes. What took me two to three hours can be done in 15 to 25 minutes.
I have saved time and resources using Gophish. If I did all the phishing activities manually, it would have taken a lot of time, with time being the most efficient thing I have saved through Gophish.
What needs improvement?
The one improvement I would like to see in Gophish is the booting up of the images, as it sometimes takes a lot of time and could be improved.
I chose a rating of 8 out of 10 for Gophish because it is an interesting tool, but there are some drawbacks, such as the booting up of images which takes a lot of time, although everything else is good.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this tool for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not experienced any downtime or crashes with Gophish; it performs well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Gophish can handle larger projects or more users and performs well.
How are customer service and support?
I have never reached out for help to customer service, but I hope it will be good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Gophish was the first tool I used for phishing.
How was the initial setup?
As a free user, I did not incur any costs. I just had to download Gophish, and everything else was straightforward.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Gophish was my first option. I tried it and found it to be a great tool.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for anyone looking into using Gophish is to give yourself some time to understand all the services. At first, you might not grasp everything, but gradually you will learn everything, which makes this an awesome tool. I have given Gophish a rating of 8 out of 10.
Streamlined phishing simulations have boosted red team efficiency and automated targeted campaigns
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Gophish is simulating phishing campaigns and using it in red team engagements.
In a red team engagement, you set up Gophish, specify your phishing scenario, configure your email server and landing page, start your Gophish server and then send your emails. When the targets enter their credentials, you receive them in Gophish.
What is most valuable?
The best features Gophish offers include its extensibility. I think the best feature is the extensibility, as Gophish makes it super easy to edit emails, replace fields, and automate landing page extraction and displaying.
I typically make use of Gophish's extensibility through the automation of webpage extraction and the webpage simulation. The inputting of targets' names and information into emails automatically stands out as a particular customization I have set up.
Gophish has positively impacted my organization by making it very easy to set up and start phishing campaigns. Before Gophish, you had to develop an infrastructure, start a mail server, build a landing page from scratch, customize, create and customize emails, and you had to repeatedly send each email differently. There were a lot of hiccups and problems, but with Gophish, it is very easy to start a campaign and to change from campaign to campaign, to receive credentials or anything that you want from the campaign.
Since using Gophish, the number of campaigns has increased dramatically. Before, we would do a phishing simulation in about two to four weeks. But now, using Gophish, we can start and finish a phishing simulation in a week, in about four days. So there is three weeks of time saved. For efficiency, before, you needed three team members to build a campaign, focusing on landing page development, infrastructure work, and creating the scenario. But now, just one person can do three jobs.
What needs improvement?
Gophish could be improved by adding a section where you can manage payloads, so executables, and receive sessions; that is what is missing from it. It does not handle lists well either, so when you have a big list of email addresses or users, it crashes, perhaps in the sending of the emails or somewhere else, but it crashes. It would also be great if you added spam detection and prevention capabilities, so the emails you are using in your campaign do not get blacklisted.
I do not think the user interface needs major improvements, as it is great. Sometimes, the difference between opened emails and sent feedback is a little bit confusing, but overall, I think it is great.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Gophish from the beginning of my career, so basically six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Gophish is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We did not really have to scale because we had small campaigns, so I do not have an answer to that question about scalability.
How are customer service and support?
We did not really use customer support because we are technicians and we fixed all the technical problems ourselves.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not previously use a different solution; we just relied on self-developed scripts and solutions, everything was built in-house. We switched because at one point it was not sustainable and was not as efficient as a commercial product.
What was our ROI?
There has been a return on investment; we need fewer team members to do the same engagements. Before, you needed three people for an engagement, but now just one person can manage. So there definitely was a lot of money saved.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was great; I do not have anything to complain about.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Gophish, we evaluated Evilginx, but we decided to go with Gophish because it was more professional and more extensible.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others looking into using Gophish to give it a try because it is really useful. It is definitely better than using your own solution because it is maintained by a team of competent developers that know what they are doing. I gave this review a rating of eight out of ten.