Voice of the Customer for Email Security

30 June 2026 - ID G00853963 - 4 min read
By Peer Community Contributor
The high volume of email-enabled social engineering attacks, along with organizations’ inability to quantify detection efficacy, demands multilayered email security platforms. This note guides cybersecurity leaders to learn from ratings and reviews shared by their peers on Gartner Peer Insights.

Peer Insights Voice of the Customer

Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer evaluates vendors in a given technology market by applying a specific methodology to aggregated end-user reviews. Vendors are then positioned into four quadrants based on two criteria: User Interest and Adoption (x-axis), and Overall Experience (y-axis) (see Figure 1). See the Methodology section for details.
Along with the historical peer-based perspective represented in this document, Gartner has a related expert-led Magic Quadrant for Email Security.
Figure 1. Voice of the Customer for Email Security
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
All vendors are classified under specific quadrants based on their “overall experience,” and “user interest and adoption.” The Customers’ Choice quadrant in the upper right represents the highest overall experience, and maximum user interest and adoption. Strong Performer is in the upper left. Aspiring is in the lower left. Established is in the lower right. Eligible vendors as of [March 2026] — Customers’ Choice vendors: Abnormal AI, Darktrace, Sophos; Strong Performer vendors: Fortinet, IRONSCALES, Trend Micro; Aspiring vendors: Barracuda, Check Point Software Technologies, KnowBe4, Microsoft, Mimecast; and Established vendors: Proofpoint.

Reviewers’ Willingness to Recommend

Gartner Peer Insights reviewers rate their willingness to recommend each vendor. Figure 2 compares vendors according to the reviewers’ willingness to recommend them.
Figure 2. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Willingness to Recommend
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
Eligible vendors compared based on their “overall reviews” and reviewers’ “willingness to recommend.”

Vendors’ End-User Rating Summaries

Figures 3 through 14 summarize key information for each vendor included in the “Voice of the Customer”:
  • Overall Rating and rating distribution
  • Other ratings covering specific aspects of the experience with the vendor
Figure 3. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Abnormal AI Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Abnormal AI.
Figure 4. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Barracuda Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Barracuda.
Figure 5. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Check Point Software Technologies Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Check Point Software Technologies.
Figure 6. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Darktrace Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Darktrace.
Figure 7. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Fortinet Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Fortinet.
Figure 8. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, IRONSCALES Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for IRONSCALES.
Figure 9. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, KnowBe4 Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for KnowBe4.
Figure 10. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Microsoft Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Microsoft.
Figure 11. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Mimecast Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Mimecast.
Figure 12. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Proofpoint Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Proofpoint.
Figure 13. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Sophos Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Sophos.
Figure 14. Voice of the Customer for Email Security, Trend Micro Vendor Summary
Source: Gartner (June 2026)
This graphic provides a snapshot of the vendor's rating details, including average rating, number of reviews, reviewer willingness to recommend, a rating histogram, and a breakdown of reviewers' company sizes, industries and geographic regions.
Read all Peer Insights user reviews for Trend Micro.

Market Definition

Gartner defines an email security platform as a product that secures email infrastructure. Its primary purpose is to protect against malicious messages (phishing, social engineering, malware) or unsolicited messages (spam, marketing). Other functions include email data protection; domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance (DMARC); investigation; and remediation through a dedicated console. These platforms may also support nonemail collaboration tools, such as those for document management and instant messaging.
Email security platforms protect an organization’s email from spam, phishing, malware attacks, account takeover and data loss. They may provide capabilities for data loss prevention, encryption, domain authentication and security education, as well as advanced protections against business email compromise. These platforms give cybersecurity teams visibility into email-related security incidents, support investigation and automated remediation, and enable management of both inbound and outbound email delivery. They often integrate with other network, identity and endpoint security controls, and may also support collaboration tools and email relay capabilities.

Methodology

A full description of the methodology can be found on the Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer Methodology page.
Voice of the Customer includes vendors with products aligned to the market that have 20 or more eligible published reviews (and 15 or more ratings for “Capabilities” and “Support/Delivery”) during the 18-month consideration period ending 31 March 2026. Reviews from vendor partners or companies with less than $50 million in revenue are excluded.
In the email security market, Gartner Peer Insights published 2,913 reviews and ratings during the consideration period.
The data used in this report is drawn from reviews on Peer Insights, a free peer review and ratings platform that regularly publishes new reviews. The Voice of the Customer methodology uses a snapshot of reviews data from a defined time frame and does not automatically update as new reviews are published. The external Peer Insights site will always have the most updated peer view of the vendors and products in this report.
The numerical ratings scores in each vendor summary graphic (shown as “Rating by Category”) are best interpreted as sample statistics with a reasonable margin for error and not as exact values.