The Best Secure Email Gateway for MSPs: CloudFilter vs. Barracuda and Proofpoint

Let’s be frank. Most MSPs live in a messy, multi-tenant reality.

Each client has its own policies, exceptions, and tolerance for disruption. One works in a heavily regulated industry, another is halfway through a migration, and a third is still running legacy systems alongside Google Workspace, Proton for Business, Zoho Mail, and other cloud services.

Many of the traditional secure email gateway solutions out there weren’t designed for the realities of MSP environments and workflows. That means more repetitive admin work for your team, more help desk tickets, and more time spent troubleshooting.

Email filtering affects your margins, not just your clients’ security posture. And with the wrong gateway, the real cost isn’t just the license. It’s the time your team spends working around the platform’s limitations, fixing the problems it causes, and keeping things running smoothly.

In this post, we’ll break down some of the most popular secure email gateways for MSPs. We’ll show you why outdated technology and enterprise-level complexity can mean more work for your team. We’ll also help you find the one email filtering solution that was actually designed for the needs of MSPs.

Barracuda: Hardware Retrofitted for the Cloud

Barracuda has been part of the gateway conversation for a long time. For most MSPs, Barracuda is familiar. It’s established. It’s part of the stack.

But familiar doesn’t always mean user-friendly.

Barracuda started as a hardware appliance company, offering email protection that ran on an actual physical box bolted into a server rack.

When the market shifted to the cloud, Barracuda didn’t rebuild their platform for modern multi-tenant workflows. They simply moved their appliance-based design online.

That explains why a lot of the MSPs we talk to lament about slow load times and an interface that’s dated and hard to use.

Then there’s the cost. Bundled tiers, add-on SKUs, renewal changes, and repackaging all affect Barracuda’s monthly service fee. Community chatter also reveals growing frustration with aggressive sales tactics and account management turnover.

Proofpoint: Complex Enterprise Solution

Proofpoint is enterprise software, and acts like it. Which isn’t an insult. It’s the product’s strength.

For large organizations with dedicated security teams, Proofpoint’s deep functionality and complex controls can be a good fit.

For MSPs, on the other hand, simplicity is more important.

Which is why a lot of folks were disappointed when Proofpoint replaced its MSP gateway solution, Essentials, with the new Proofpoint 365 Total Protection. The new solution offers additional Microsoft 365 functionalities, but also more complexity and administrative overhead.

Not all MSPs are trying to run enterprise security programs. They need to protect clients from spam, phishing, malware, and other email threats without requiring a manual workaround for every release request, remediation step, or policy exception.

CloudFilter: Email Filtering Designed for MSPs

Mailprotector’s secure email gateway, CloudFilter, was designed with MSPs’ multi-tenant administrative needs in mind. It provides deep email filtering control, without the headache.

While other enterprise-focused solutions contain configuration options that are redundant, contradictory, or just plain overwhelming, CloudFilter was designed to work out of the box—while also providing the flexibility to customize the platform to work for your team and clients’ needs.

Email filtering policies can be configured at the reseller level and cascaded downward. Set a policy once and CloudFilter applies it across all client accounts automatically. You can also customize it for a specific client, group, or user when needed.

CloudFilter’s email filtering engine then evaluates each message across multiple signals, rather than making a single pass/fail decision.

That helps MSPs quiet inbox noise while ensuring legitimate mail doesn’t pile up in quarantine. If a message is deemed questionable, CloudFilter allows users to preview it safely and, when admins allow, release it with one click.

Now, users can handle straightforward quarantine decisions themselves instead of opening a help desk ticket. When technicians do need to step in, they can immediately see why a message was held.

Real-time logs also help techs trace the message path to quickly pinpoint and resolve delivery issues faster. And if you have questions, Mailprotector’s U.S.-based support team is ready to help, giving you the self-sufficiency you need to further improve service margins.

CloudFilter doesn’t just filter inbound threats. It also scans outbound email for spam and viruses before they can damage a client’s domain reputation. For clients that need additional outbound protection, CloudFilter’s SafeSend feature adds DLP rule templates, compliance controls, and attachment blocking.

More Than “Just” Email Filtering. Complete Inbox Protection in One Tool.

Want to take your MSP’s email offerings even further than traditional filtering? Mailprotector has you covered with a full suite of email security products, including Bracket for painless email encryption and Radar for DMARC health checks and more.

Now you can offer clients more email protection as their needs change, without the add-on costs of bringing another vendor into the mix.