Comparison
Email security an MSP can operate, price, and explain
How MailThreatZero compares with traditional cloud email security across deployment, threat detection, multi-tenant operations, data control, integrations, retention and cost structure.
Capabilities depend on deployment configuration. This page marks what is included in the per-domain price and what is optional, and the detail on each row says where it applies.
Vendor capabilities and packaging change frequently. Comparison last reviewed 2026-09-12. Verify licensing and product edition against a current quote before purchase.
Feature availability changes over time. MailThreatZero intentionally distinguishes generally available capabilities from features that are still being validated or developed — the feature status page lists the maturity of every capability, and nothing is marked as supported here on the strength of being planned. Competitor columns describe the general shape of standard offerings and are hedged deliberately: plans, tiers and licensing change, so verify anything that decides your purchase against a current quote, including ours.
Where MailThreatZero differs
Capabilities in the running console, not positioning statements. Each one changes how an MSP prices, operates or explains email security.
One price per domain, whatever the headcount
A protected domain costs the same with five receiving addresses or two hundred: MailThreatZero pricing is based on protected domains rather than charging separately for every mailbox, with up to 250 receiving addresses per domain, aliases counting toward them. Onboarding a customer's staff, an acquisition or a seasonal intake does not move the security line on your own margin sheet, while each domain stays within its included 250-address allowance.
Every engine's score, and what it found
The console shows each engine's raw and weighted score and what that stage actually found — "Reply-To domain mismatch", "Display name domain mismatch", "Dangerous file type" — against the threshold that decided the action. A stage that did not run says so, with the reason, rather than looking like a pass.
Your own AI and VirusTotal accounts
AI analysis runs on your own OpenAI or Anthropic account, and attachment reputation on your own VirusTotal account. You control the provider account, can review usage there, and pay the provider directly at your own rates. MailThreatZero adds no markup to that usage, and AI can be turned off per domain.
Watch a customer's real mail before enforcing on it
Monitor Mode, per domain: every message is scored and recorded and delivered anyway, so you can tune a customer's policy against their actual traffic with nothing being blocked while you do it.
Policy scoped to the domain, not the tenant
Thresholds, which engines run, allow and block lists, DLP, link rewriting, QR reading and retention are all set on the domain. A law firm and a haulage company under the same MSP account do not have to share a policy.
Continuous validation of the filtering pipeline
Automated health checks continuously validate the filtering pipeline and the enabled scanning services, alerting on failure. A filter that quietly stops working is the failure nobody notices, so the product watches its own.
Protected domain reputation, included and explained
Your own protected domains are monitored, not just the senders mailing them: blocklist listings of their own sending servers, SPF, DKIM and DMARC health, receivers' DMARC results, DNS and registration problems, with history and alerts, across every customer domain from one platform. The score lists every point it loses and why; a source that cannot be checked is shown as unknown rather than clean, and shared provider infrastructure is never held against the domain. It is part of the per-domain price.
The comparison
Seven dimensions, four products, one dataset. Every claim about another vendor cites that vendor's own page and the date it was checked. Not verified means their page does not state it — it is not a statement that the capability is missing.
- Included Included in the named product and edition.
- Optional setup Available in this edition, and requires configuration or a connection you provide.
- Separate product or plan Requires a different product, plan or edition.
- Beta Built and covered by tests, not yet verified against a live customer tenant.
- Not available The vendor's own documentation states this is not in the named edition.
- Not verified The cited page does not state it either way. Not a statement of absence.
| Dimension | MailThreatZeroProtected domain | Microsoft Defender for Office 365Plan 1 | Microsoft Defender for Office 365Plan 2 | Cloudflare Email SecurityAdvantage / Enterprise / Enterprise + PhishGuard | Hornetsecurity 365 Total ProtectionPlan 1 (Business) - Plan 4 (Compliance & Awareness) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mail-flow placementWhere the product sits decides what it can stop before a mailbox ever sees it. | IncludedInline secure gateway. MX points at the gateway, which scans before relaying to your existing mail platform, so a refusal happens during the SMTP conversation and the message never reaches a mailbox.our own product | IncludedInline in Microsoft 365's own mail flow: Microsoft states incoming messages pass through connection filtering and the other protection layers before delivery. No MX change is involved.Source checked 2026-10-07 | IncludedInline in Microsoft 365's own mail flow: Microsoft states incoming messages pass through connection filtering and the other protection layers before delivery. No MX change is involved.Source checked 2026-10-07 | IncludedCloudflare states: "Deploy inline, via API, or both - combining pre-delivery email processing, real-time link analysis, and post-delivery retractions". All three modes are documented; none is missing.Source checked 2026-09-12 | Optional setupThe cited page describes a "Hybrid mode" offering "reliable pre- and post-delivery protection", without stating MX, connector or API topology.Source checked 2026-09-12 |
| Detection featuresWhat is inspected, and by how many independent engines. | IncludedFive core stages - network and reputation, sender authentication, malware and attachment analysis, spam, phishing and content analysis, and optional AI analysis - combined into one weighted decision. Content, header, phishing, attachment and QR analysis are available per domain. Every stage that is enabled, applicable and reached runs; one that did not run is reported as such, never as a pass.our own product | IncludedOn top of the built-in features for all cloud mailboxes: anti-phishing policies with user and domain impersonation protection, mailbox intelligence impersonation protection, phishing email thresholds, Safe Attachments, and Safe Links.Source checked 2026-09-12 | IncludedEverything in Plan 1, plus attack simulation training and priority account protection.Source checked 2026-09-12 | IncludedPhishing, business email compromise, multi-channel attacks across email, messaging and collaboration tools, malware and ransomware, and evasive link-based attacks, using "AI, global threat intelligence, and expert-driven rules".Source checked 2026-09-12 | IncludedSpam, malware and phishing filtering, Advanced Threat Protection, sandboxing, URL rewriting, quishing detection, and business email compromise detection.Source checked 2026-09-12 |
| InvestigationWhether a decision can be explained afterwards, message by message. | IncludedPer-message filter breakdown showing every stage's contribution and what it found, message tracking, and campaign grouping from one verdict.our own product | IncludedReal-time detections, the Email entity page, user tags including Priority account, URL trace, and Defender for Office 365 reports. Microsoft states every level of the ladder can protect, detect, investigate and respond.Source checked 2026-09-12 | IncludedEverything in Plan 1, plus Threat Explorer instead of Real-time detections, Threat Trackers, Campaigns, advanced hunting on Teams messages, and incident and alert investigation in Microsoft Defender XDR.Source checked 2026-09-12 | IncludedEmail search shows the reasons for a disposition, SPF, DKIM and DMARC validation, and each link and attachment with its own disposition. The documentation does not name an edition.Source checked 2026-10-07 | IncludedEmail Live Tracking shows per-message details, including the AI Security Analyst's verdict and remediation reasons (release notes, 22 April 2026). The release notes do not say which plans include it.Source checked 2026-10-07 |
| Searching delivered mail for an indicatorFinding every message already delivered that matches a URL, hash, sender or campaign - which is a question about the gateway's own records, and needs no mailbox access. | IncludedIndicator sweep over what the gateway recorded as mail passed through - by URL, hostname, file hash, sender, QR destination or campaign fingerprint. It reads the gateway's own records, so it needs no mail platform connection.our own product | IncludedReal-time detections filters delivered mail by URL, attachment SHA256, sender and delivery location, going back up to 30 days.Source checked 2026-10-07 | IncludedThreat Explorer has the Plan 1 filters plus actions to move delivered messages or delete them from mailboxes (requires the Search and Purge role).Source checked 2026-10-07 | IncludedLimited: search delivered mail by keyword, subject or sender domain over a date range, then move up to 1,000 messages at once. Searching by URL or file hash is not stated.Source checked 2026-10-07 | Not verifiedThe cited page documents removing delivered mail. It does not separately describe searching the vendor's own record of delivered mail by indicator, so this is not verified either way from that source.Source checked 2026-09-12 |
| Removing a delivered copy from a mailboxActing on the copy sitting in the recipient's mailbox, which requires a connection to the mail platform that holds it. | BetaRequires a Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace connection, and is not yet verified against a live customer tenant. Without that connection, whether a copy is still in a mailbox is reported as unknown - never inferred, and never reported as zero.our own product | IncludedZero-hour auto purge (ZAP) for email is in the built-in features for all cloud mailboxes; Plan 1 adds ZAP for Teams.Source checked 2026-09-12 | IncludedAutomated Investigation and Response (AIR), including AIR from Threat Explorer and AIR for compromised users, plus removing users from Teams chats.Source checked 2026-09-12 | IncludedPost-delivery retractions, named on the cited page alongside continuous rescans.Source checked 2026-09-12 | IncludedAutoRemediate and Email Threat Response are named on the cited page, without further detail.Source checked 2026-09-12 |
| Multi-tenant operationsWhether one operator can run many customers without switching portals. | IncludedOne console across every protected domain, with role-based access per tenant.our own product | Not verifiedThe cited page does not describe multi-tenant or partner administration. | Optional setupMicrosoft Defender multitenant management gives partners incidents, alerts and threat hunting across customer tenants. It needs GDAP or Entra B2B access and is limited to 100 tenants; the cited page does not describe managing email policy across tenants.Source checked 2026-10-07 | Not verifiedThe cited page does not mention multi-tenant, MSP or partner management. | Not verified365 Multi-Tenant Manager is a separate Hornetsecurity product for Microsoft 365 onboarding, governance and compliance, not for managing email filtering. The cited pages do not describe multi-tenant management of 365 Total Protection itself either way.Source checked 2026-10-07 |
| Pricing unitWhat you are actually billed for - the number that scales with your portfolio. | IncludedPer protected domain, per month. $39 from one domain, $37 from 40, $35 from 100; from 250 domains by quote. One schedule for every account.our own product | Included$2.00 per user per month as a standalone subscription, paid yearly.Source checked 2026-09-12 | Included$5.00 per user per month as a standalone subscription, paid yearly.Source checked 2026-10-07 | Not verifiedThe cited page names three editions - Advantage, Enterprise, and Enterprise + PhishGuard - and states no price or billing unit. That is an absence of a published figure on this page, not evidence that none exists. | Not verifiedThe cited page states no price or billing unit. |
| Included vs additional licensingWhether the capability is in a subscription you already hold. | IncludedUp to 250 receiving addresses per protected domain - per domain, not shared across the account. Each distinct address that receives mail counts once. Mailboxes, users, aliases, distribution addresses and shared mailboxes all count toward that 250, so several aliases that deliver into one mailbox are still separate addresses, and there is no per-user component.our own product | IncludedMicrosoft states Plan 1 is included in some subscriptions aimed at small and medium businesses, giving Microsoft 365 E3/G3 and Business Premium as examples, so many tenants already hold it. Also sold as an add-on.Source checked 2026-09-12 | IncludedMicrosoft states Plan 2 is included in some subscriptions aimed at enterprises, giving Microsoft 365 A5/E5/G5 as examples. Also sold as an add-on.Source checked 2026-09-12 | Not verifiedThe cited page does not state which Cloudflare subscriptions include Email Security. | Not verifiedThe cited page does not state inclusion in any other subscription. |
Vendor capabilities, packaging and pricing change often — verify the current edition and commercial terms before you buy.
Why MSPs choose MailThreatZero
MailThreatZero is built for MSPs who want predictable pricing, clear verdicts and one console across every customer.
- Pricing that ignores mailbox count. A protected domain costs the same whether it holds four mailboxes or two hundred.
- An explanation for every verdict. Each stage's score and finding against the threshold it was judged on, for any message, without opening a support case.
- One console across every customer domain, rather than one tenant at a time.
- Monitor Mode, so you can watch a production domain be classified before anything is allowed to act on it.
- Your own AI account, your own analysis host, your own keys: you control them, and you pay those providers directly.
- Independence from your mailbox vendor. A second opinion in front of the platform is worth something precisely because it is not the platform.
Payment fraud: judged by who is writing, not just what they say
The expensive attack is not malware. It is an email saying a supplier’s bank details have changed — no link, no attachment, nothing for a scanner to find. Abnormal and Check Point built their businesses on it. Here is how MailThreatZero approaches it.
We build a picture of who each person actually corresponds with, per address rather than per domain, from delivered mail. The distinction matters: an attacker registering a near-miss of a supplier you really use passes a domain-level check the moment anyone at your company has emailed the real supplier. The fraud is aimed at one person in accounts payable, and whether that person has a history with that sender is what separates a genuine bank change from somebody stealing an invoice payment.
Payment language on its own scores nothing, however much of it there is. Your finance team discusses invoices; that is what a finance team does. It scores only when the words are corroborated by something about the sender — no history with this person, a near-miss of a domain you really deal with, authentication that failed, a reply that would go somewhere else. And the finding says which, in a sentence, rather than reporting a number.
Status: Beta. It is off by default and monitor-only when first switched on. Replaying 239 real delivered messages produced no false positives, so it stays quiet on legitimate mail. It moves to generally available once it has been measured against real payment-fraud traffic, which this gateway has not yet seen.
Want the technical details?
The summary above is designed for quick evaluation. The sections below explain how each capability is implemented, where the limitations are, and what varies by deployment or vendor edition.
Request a Demo Before You Commit
Run a customer domain in Monitor Mode to review classifications, policy behavior, and message-level decisions before enabling enforcement.
Verdicts recorded, not enforced
Each message is scored and recorded and the verdict is not acted on, so the evaluation runs on live production mail. That also means nothing is stopped while it runs; see what still applies.
Real findings, your traffic
You see what would have been quarantined or rejected on your own domains, with the per-engine breakdown behind each decision.
Tune, then enforce
Adjust policy, allow lists and which engines run per domain, then switch enforcement on when the results look right.
What the evaluation produces
Every evaluation ends in measurements you can check. At the end, you receive the number of messages assessed, proposed actions, administrator-confirmed false positives, confirmed missed threats, policy adjustments, and — where a connected tenant is used — the result of every mailbox action. Until those measurements exist, we do not publish a detection rate.
Specifically, the report states:
- Messages processed
- Would-deliver, would-quarantine and would-reject counts
- Administrator-confirmed false positives
- Administrator-confirmed missed threats
- Messages that disagreed with Microsoft Defender or the existing gateway
- Median investigation time
- Campaigns correlated
- Mailbox actions attempted, verified and failed
- Policy changes made before enforcement
Mailbox lookup, remediation and restoration are in beta testing on Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, so the mailbox-action figures appear only where an evaluation connects a tenant. The remaining measurements come from the gateway's own records and do not depend on a connector.
Running one platform in particular? The platform-specific detail is on Microsoft 365 email security and Google Workspace email security.
Keep Defender. Add another point of view.
Microsoft Defender can remain part of your security stack. MailThreatZero does not ask you to turn anything off.
Plenty of Microsoft 365 plans now include Defender for Office 365, so keep it. The case for a second layer is that two independent engines look at mail differently, and where they disagree is where you learn something.
What a separate layer adds:
- An independent judgement. Different engines, different reputation sources and a different scoring model, in front of your platform rather than inside it.
- Portfolio visibility. One console across every customer domain, rather than one tenant at a time.
- Explainable verdicts. Every stage's score and finding against the threshold it was judged on, for any message.
- Per-domain control. Thresholds, engines, geographic rules and retention set per customer, not per tenancy-wide policy.
- Monitor Mode. Watch what a second opinion would have done to your live mail before it changes anything.
- Predictable licensing. Per protected domain, so adding mailboxes does not change the bill.
We publish no figure for what Microsoft misses, because that is best measured on your own mail: run one domain in Monitor Mode and see where the two differ on your own traffic before deciding.
What deploying in front of Microsoft 365 involves → The same for Google Workspace →
Check any of these claims
Each capability below links to documentation saying what it does, when it runs, what it uses and how it affects the score — so a claim in the table above can be checked rather than believed.
Attachment analysis
Antivirus, structure, macros, archives and multi-engine reputation. Behavioral analysis is a separate optional integration needing a provider key you supply.
QR code protection
Decoded from images, PDFs and Office documents, then assessed through the same pipeline as any link.
Click-time link protection
Rewritten links are re-checked at the moment of the click, and delivered links are re-evaluated on a schedule.
Post-delivery removal
Built and tested, and in beta testing on Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. It becomes generally available once verified against a live Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenant.
Explainable scoring
Every stage's raw score, weight and the threshold it was judged against, recorded per message.
Architecture
Which interfaces carry mail and which do not, tenant isolation, and what deployment involves.
Deployment and capability notes
Brief clarifications where a capability depends on how the gateway is deployed.
These rows come from the same capability registry as the Deployment & Capability Matrix on the Features page, which lists every capability and what each one needs.
| Capability | Availability | Requirement / notes |
|---|---|---|
| Works by default 1 | ||
| Static and structural attachment analysis | Included | Included: signature scanning, document and macro analysis and attachment policy. Multi-engine reputation and behavioral analysis run on your own provider account (below). |
| Switched on or configured per domain 1 | ||
| Link protection and delayed URL re-analysis | Optional | URL analysis at delivery is included. Link rewriting and click-time checking are set per domain. |
| Needs a mail-flow change 2 | ||
| Outbound DLP | Deployment required | Outbound mail must route through the gateway: applications and devices submit on port 587 with a per-domain credential. |
| Outbound review queue | Deployment required | Outbound mail must route through the gateway. |
| Needs a journal rule 1 | ||
| Journal ingestion (internal mail capture) | Beta testingDeployment required | Needs a journal rule on your mail platform and the archive add-on. Not yet enabled for customers. |
| Needs a connected platform 1 | ||
| Post-delivery removal with verification | Beta testingIntegration required | Needs a connected Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenant. Every action is a move, never a delete. |
| Needs your own third-party account 2 | ||
| Behavioral attachment analysis (VirusTotal, Joe Sandbox, or a self-hosted CAPE host) | External service | Your own provider account or analysis host. File submission is separately opt-in, off by default. |
| Bring your own AI provider, and run without AI entirely | External service | Optional, on the provider and credentials you choose, enabled per account and disabled per domain. You pay your provider directly; the per-domain subscription does not move with usage. |
| Add-on 1 | ||
| Email archiving | Add-on | Paid add-on, charged per gigabyte retained. Message tracking, quarantine and the per-message investigation record (kept 30 days) come with the subscription; searchable long-term retention, legal hold, case preservation, journal ingestion and write-once retention are the archive add-on. |
See how MailThreatZero fits your mail flow, hosting model and customer base
Monitor Mode scores your real mail and records what would have happened, without enforcing the verdict. That is a more useful evaluation than any table on this page.
Vendor capabilities and packaging change frequently. Comparison last reviewed 2026-09-12. Verify licensing and product edition against a current quote before purchase.