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Fortinet FortiMail vs Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiMail
Ranking in Email Security
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortra's Clearswift Secure ...
Ranking in Email Security
31st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiMail is 2.7%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway is 1.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiMail2.7%
Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway1.3%
Other96.0%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Abhimanyu Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cybersecurity Engineer at Kyndryl
Targeted email filtering has reduced spam and phishing and now saves significant investigation time
The best features of Fortinet FortiMail include its techniques and tactics, which are highly effective compared to other solutions such as Microsoft 365. Although Fortinet FortiMail may not be as advanced in some aspects, it is well recognized for its strong performance in handling spam and phishing. It performs thorough mail scanning and also offers a sandboxing feature that enhances protection. Fortinet FortiMail has had a positive impact on my organization by significantly reducing unwanted email activities such as spam and phishing. It provides accurate detection and generates results that often exceed what can be achieved through manual analysis. Since deploying Fortinet FortiMail, I have observed a reduction in investigation time by at least 20 to 30 percent.
PC
Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Stable, but malware needs improvement and customer support is poor
They need to improve the malware in the product. I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support. The support is poor, the supplier takes a lot of time and it's expensive. We have some issues here when I contact the supplier, it takes a lot of time for them to get back to us but there's no solution. I am now looking at Symantec as a possible alternative.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"After three months of evaluating FortiMail, it has exceeded our expectations and we will definitely continue using it."
"Through Fortinet FortiMail, we can perfectly authenticate each local mail service and mail release so that only authenticated mail goes out from our domain."
"We found the initial setup to be mostly straightforward."
"The important feature is the application control, which makes administration much easier. It also has an intrusion prevention feature. There's also the wireless functionality, which works well with Huawei devices."
"I love the integration between Fortinet products."
"Technical support is very good."
"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."
"This solution is good for small and medium enterprise companies."
"Ability to create your own content-filtering policies with relative ease."
"Go for it! I think it's an excellent product with great technical support."
"We use a few features for web proxy, and another feature is the email content filter and malware for our internal policy in the email content."
"A stable solution."
 

Cons

"The product should work on licensing and provide more detail once the license is selected for the customer."
"The solution could improve by making the UI more user-friendly and increasing spam and threat detection capabilities."
"I have little to say about possible improvements, but the configuration for content blocking could be better."
"Limited ability to upgrade hardware may lead to some performance issues that might otherwise be improved."
"The IDE feature in Fortinet is not as good as the rest of the product because it's very difficult to deploy it."
"Such kinds of things, raised from the point from the objective actually, we are using Fortinet FortiMail. We don't find any kinds of challenge or difficulties, but Fortinet FortiMail is more efficient and more effective for us. I don't know for other client, but for us, Fortinet FortiMail is very effective Like, for instance, if it is possible, let's say some kind of high threat is actually encountered if it could be possible to SMBs in our smartphone, or mobile apps, kinds of thing, if Fortinet FortiMail is available to monitor the thing using from our mobile phone from our smartphone. If such kinds of things are truly included, it will be more or good for us."
"A room for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is that it only has a hardware version. I also didn't find the solution scalable, so that's another area for improvement."
"An additional feature that could be added is a pop-up screen notifying you that an email has been blocked, without having to double click on it to take you there it could provide you with a summary explaining why it was on hold or why was it spam when you hover over it with your cursor."
"Malware needs improvement."
"I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support."
"FTP server and TRUST Manager functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FortiMail is not cheap."
"Price-wise, you get what you pay for in Fortinet FortiMail. Apart from the licensing costs, no additional expenses are attached to the solution's pricing."
"Compared to its competitors, Fortinet's products are available at a higher price range."
"This is a good solution and value for the money."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"In terms of licensing, we are using a virtual machine license for the single virtual server which it runs on. Doing it this way enables us to cut costs by only licensing FortiMail for our exact use case. If you need to expand in future, you can later buy extra licenses per virtual machine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Retailer
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
I think they should improve Fortinet FortiMail on-premises by enhancing its user interface. Additional features they could have in the future would include advanced analytics capabilities. I do thi...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiMail?
I do have a partnership with Fortinet. I have been both a partner and reseller.
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Also Known As

FortiMail
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiMail vs. Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.