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MailGuard · Comparison

Barracuda alternative: Conbool and Barracuda side by side.

Barracuda Email Protection as a US vendor with three plan tiers, Conbool as a German suite with nine modules per mailbox. Eight questions, every answer sourced and dated.

Request a demoMailGuard in detailAs of September 2026
At a glanceAs of September 2026

What changes when you switch.

  • Three plan tiers, archiving and awareness only in the top oneModules per mailbox, bookable individually
  • Encrypted mail through a pickup portalS/MIME and OpenPGP straight to the inbox
  • Contracting party in California, two components in a US regionConbool GmbH in Germany, everything in the EU
The same scope in the mail channel. The difference is how the licence is cut, how mail reaches the recipient, and who is at the end of the contractual chain.
Fits when you care about:German contracting partyS/MIME and OpenPGPGoBD archivingOperation in your own data centre

In three sentences

What actually matters.

Within the mail channel both cover the same ground: filtering, BEC protection, encryption, archiving, backup, awareness and continuity. The differences sit in four places. Barracuda bundles into three plan tiers, Conbool books modules per mailbox. Barracuda delivers encrypted mail through a pickup portal, Conbool through S/MIME and OpenPGP into the inbox. Two Barracuda components run in a US region only, per the vendor. And two disciplines, secure file exchange and central signatures, Barracuda does not carry at all.

Owner and contracting party: Barracuda has belonged to KKR since August 2022.

Barracuda Networks is based in Campbell, California. KKR announced completion of its acquisition from Thoma Bravo on 16 August 2022, placing a US investor at the end of the ownership chain. For transfers to the United States Barracuda points to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and the Data Privacy Framework, and for data outside the US to its own discussion of the 2018 US CLOUD Act. None of this changes where your mail flow runs, but it does change which legal regime the contracting party is subject to. Conbool is an owner-managed German company with no parent outside the EU.

Quelle: öffentliche Pressemitteilungen des Mutterkonzerns.

Eight questions, eight answers.

Every statement about Barracuda sourced and dated. Every Conbool claim verifiable in a demo.

Where is the data held and who is the contracting party?

Conbool

EU data centres, ISO 27001, no sub-processors outside the EU. The contracting party is Conbool GmbH in Germany, owner-managed, with no parent outside the EU. No component sits in a different region from the mail flow. On request the same suite runs in your own data centre.

BarracudaBarracuda Email Protection

The service runs on AWS with a selectable region. For Email Gateway Defense Barracuda names Frankfurt and London among others. For Impersonation Protection and Incident Response the same document names AWS US East as the only currently available region. The contracting party is Barracuda Networks, Inc. in Campbell, California.

Source: "Barracuda Email Protection SaaS Service Description", 30 July 2026, section "Data Center Security and Data Residency", plus the Global DPA in the Barracuda Trust Center. For US transfers Barracuda points there to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and the Data Privacy Framework, and for data outside the US to its own discussion of the 2018 US CLOUD Act.

Why it matters: for a record of processing activities and a NIS-2 assessment, the server location is not the only thing that counts, so is who sits at the end of the contractual chain. Components in diverging regions belong in the documentation separately.

How is the licence cut?

Conbool

Modules per mailbox. Each mailbox gets exactly what it needs, all on one platform with one portal, one audit log and one contract. Multi-tenant capable with separate policies per tenant.

BarracudaBarracuda Email Protection

Three tiers: Advanced, Premium, Premium Plus. Filtering, BEC protection, DMARC reporting, encryption, the emergency mailbox and DLP are in all three. Microsoft 365 backup only from Premium. Archiving and awareness only from Premium Plus.

Source: barracuda.com, plans page Advanced / Premium / Premium Plus, retrieved September 2026. For MSP customers Barracuda lists awareness and attack simulation there as an add-on managed service.

Why it matters: the tier couples disciplines together. Whoever needs only the archive buys awareness with it. Whoever needs only awareness pays for the archive.

How does encrypted mail reach the recipient?

Conbool SecureMail

S/MIME and OpenPGP are applied at the gateway. The message lands in the recipient's normal mailbox and is read in their normal client. The platform manages certificates and keys, S/MIME also per domain.

BarracudaBarracuda Email Protection

Through the Barracuda Message Center: the message is stored encrypted there, the recipient collects it over HTTPS and sets a password on first access. Replies travel through the portal too. S/MIME and OpenPGP are not named in these descriptions.

Source: barracuda.com, plans page row "Email Encryption" and the Email Encryption product page, plus campus.barracuda.com, as of January 2026. Whether your plan covers additional methods should be confirmed with the vendor.

Why it matters: a pickup portal works, but it moves a step of work to the other side. Anyone writing to clients or authorities who would rather not create another account notices it in the reply rate.

Which DLP patterns ship predefined?

Conbool MailGuard

DACH detectors as standard: German IBAN with checksum validation, VAT numbers for DE and AT, Swiss UID and AHV number, German tax ID and social insurance number. Custom patterns per tenant. Matches are blocked, quarantined or delivered encrypted.

BarracudaBarracuda Email Protection

Barracuda names credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, HIPAA data and customer lists as examples, and in the gateway documentation HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley. Which patterns ship for German, Austrian and Swiss identifiers is not stated there.

Source: barracuda.com, plans page row "Data Loss Prevention", and campus.barracuda.com, as of January 2026. Please verify the specific DACH patterns with the vendor.

Why it matters: Social Security numbers and HIPAA are US identifiers. German ones otherwise get rebuilt as regular expressions. An IBAN check without checksum validation reliably produces false positives.

Are large attachments and central signatures covered?

Conbool SecureFiles and Disclaimer

SecureFiles delivers large and confidential files through a separate channel, with expiry, password and a collection record, from Outlook and Thunderbird or entirely without the mail path. Disclaimer applies signatures centrally and server side, including on replies and mobile devices.

BarracudaBarracuda

The product directory lists under Email Protection: Email Protection, Security Awareness Training, Email Encryption, Microsoft 365 Backup, Cloud Archiving and Data Inspector. A product for exchanging large files and one for central signatures are not listed there.

Source: barracuda.com/products, full product directory, retrieved September 2026. Whether Barracuda covers these disciplines through partners should be confirmed with the vendor.

Why it matters: both arise anyway. Left out of the package, they mean a second contract, a second portal and a second audit trail. For GDPR and NIS-2 evidence that fragmentation is the expensive part.

What happens when the mail system goes down?

Conbool Continuity

Inbound mail is stored additionally as it passes through. If the target system fails, the team reads and replies through a dedicated web interface using the usual sender address, and everything flows back into the mailbox afterwards. Getting in independently requires a password to have been set. A readiness view shows in advance who is still missing one.

BarracudaBarracuda Email Continuity

The emergency mailbox is included in all three tiers, sending and replying included. The documentation names three limits: automatic shutdown after 96 hours, messages visible for 30 days, and with LDAP authentication an offline LDAP server locks users out.

Source: campus.barracuda.com, Email Gateway Defense, page "Email Continuity", as of March 2026, plus the plans page on barracuda.com.

Why it matters: 96 hours is ample for most outages. What decides it is the sign-in route, for both vendors: an emergency route on the same failed directory is not one. Have it demonstrated beforehand what your people sign in with during an outage.

How is Microsoft 365 backed up?

Conbool 365 Backup

Mailboxes and online archives, OneDrive, SharePoint including lists, Teams channels, personal chats, Planner and Entra ID on one schedule. Individual messages and files come back selectively. Runs outside the Microsoft environment, retention freely set, bookable as its own module.

BarracudaBarracuda Microsoft 365 Backup

Scope per the plans page: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, OneNote, Teams and Groups, with Entra ID at no extra charge. Plus point-in-time recovery and file scanning. Included from Premium, not in Advanced.

Source: barracuda.com, plans page, rows "Unlimited Microsoft 365 Backup" and "Point-in-time data recovery", retrieved September 2026.

Why it matters: the scopes sit close together. A recovery plan needs three figures, and they belong in writing: storage location, retention period and committed recovery time.

How is archiving set up?

Conbool Archive

Audit-proof under German commercial and tax law: immutable storage, hash-chain verification in the audit log, automated deletion policy, retention per mailbox or group. Connected through a journal rule. Access by web, an add-in for Outlook and Thunderbird, or an end-user view. From Germany or in your own data centre.

BarracudaBarracuda Cloud Archiving

An indexed cloud archive with retention policies, search, role-based permissions, legal hold and export. For the Europe region Barracuda names a data centre in Germany. Included only in Premium Plus. The German GoBD rules are not named on the product page.

Source: barracuda.com, Cloud Archiving product page and plans page row "Cloud Archiving", plus campus.barracuda.com, "Data Centers by Region", retrieved September 2026. A statement on GoBD should be obtained in writing.

Why it matters: audit-proof status is not decided by retention length but by immutability, traceability and a documented deletion policy. That is exactly what a tax audit asks for, in writing.

Migration checklist

The switch in five steps.

Two steps are easily missed: exporting the archive before the contract ends, and switching over the recipients who have so far collected your mail from the Barracuda Message Center.

  1. 1. Record the plan tier and term

    Which tier is in use and when does it expire? That determines which disciplines are active at all and which Conbool modules are needed.

  2. 2. Save the policy sets

    Export quarantine and delivery rules, lists, DLP and encryption policies from Barracuda Cloud Control. They serve as the blueprint. Rules built only because DACH patterns were missing usually fall away.

  3. 3. Export the archive, before giving notice

    Barracuda states in its own service description that customer data is generally kept for thirty days after the contract ends to allow export. Schedule this before the notice, not after.

  4. 4. Move the MX and switch the encryption path

    MX to Conbool, outbound back to Microsoft 365 or Exchange through a connector, Barracuda as a second MX during transition. Important: tell the recipients who used to collect from the Message Center beforehand.

  5. 5. Wind the Barracuda tenant down

    Switch off after thirty days without mail volume. Secure the audit log and reports first. Only switch off the Microsoft 365 backup once the first complete Conbool run has finished.

Awareness and Microsoft 365 backup are replaced inside the suite. Both are among the nine Conbool modules and need no further contract.

Licensing model

Plan tier or module: the real difference.

Conbool: modules per mailbox

Finance gets encryption and the archive, sales gets SecureFiles and signatures, everyone gets MailGuard. No module drags another along. Adding one later is a single step, with no recut of the contract.

Barracuda: three plan tiers

Advanced, Premium, Premium Plus. Microsoft 365 backup is included from Premium, archiving and awareness only from Premium Plus. Whoever needs one of those disciplines also buys the others in that tier.

Source: barracuda.com, plans page, retrieved September 2026. Both vendors quote on request, a public list comparison is not possible.

Decision guide

When Conbool, when Barracuda.

Conbool fits when …

  • you want to book modules per mailbox rather than buying, through the tier, what you do not need.
  • encrypted mail should arrive in the normal mailbox, with no account in a pickup portal.
  • DACH identifiers and GoBD archiving are needed as standard.
  • a German contracting party with no parent outside the EU matters, or operation in your own data centre.

Barracuda fits when …

  • you want security well beyond email from one vendor: firewall, SecureEdge, web application firewall and Managed XDR are all in the portfolio.
  • you want to buy a round-the-clock managed security operation. Managed XDR with its own SOC is something Conbool does not cover.
  • you prefer clearly separated tiers and your requirements land cleanly on one of them.
  • running Barracuda contracts or appliances make a replacement commercially unattractive.

Related

Conbool MailGuard by industry and use case.

NIS-2 E-Mail-Sicherheit

Schutzmaßnahmen nach NIS-2 mit Audit-Log und KRITIS-konformer Dokumentation.

Learn more

CEO-Fraud-Schutz

Verhaltensanalyse stoppt gefälschte Geschäftsführer-Mails, bevor Zahlungen ausgelöst werden.

Learn more

GoBD-konforme E-Mail-Archivierung

Revisionssicher nach HGB und AO, mit automatisiertem Löschkonzept und Hash-Ketten-Audit.

Learn more

Hornetsecurity-Alternative

Deutsche MailGuard-Alternative nach der Proofpoint-Übernahme.

Learn more

Phishing-Schutz

BEC, Spear-Phishing und QR-Code-Phishing erkennen und entfernen.

Learn more

Phishing-Simulation

Was durch den Filter kommt, mit dem Team üben statt hoffen.

Learn more

Ransomware-Schutz E-Mail

Mehrstufige Anhang-Filter und URL-Reputation gegen Ransomware-Kampagnen.

Learn more

Spam-Filter Unternehmen

Spam und unerwünschte Massenmail mit DACH-Heuristiken filtern.

Learn more

CEO-Fraud-Schutz

BEC und CEO-Fraud-Attacken über Authentifizierungs-Layer abwehren.

Learn more

DANE und TLSA

Manipulationssichere Transportverschlüsselung nach BSI TR-03108, gegen Downgrade und MITM.

Learn more

Directory-Harvesting-Schutz

Abwehr von Adress-Sammlern, bevor gültige Postfächer in Spam-Datenbanken landen.

Learn more

Also compared

Further Barracuda alternatives, side by side.

Barracuda is frequently weighed against Mimecast, Proofpoint, Hornetsecurity and Microsoft Defender.

Frequently asked questions

See Conbool in your own setup.

A 30-minute demo. Nine modules per mailbox. EU hosting in Germany, or in your own data centre.

Request a demoMailGuard in detail

Sources and fairness note

All statements about Barracuda come from the vendor's public sources: the plans page and product pages on barracuda.com, the service description dated 30 July 2026, the Global DPA in the Trust Center, the documentation on campus.barracuda.com and announcements by Barracuda and KKR. Where a source does not state something, that is said explicitly.

As of September 2026. Product scopes change. For your decision, ask both vendors directly and have the answers confirmed in writing.

Barracuda, Barracuda Networks and Barracuda Message Center are trademarks of Barracuda Networks, Inc. or its group companies. Conbool is a trademark of Conbool GmbH. This page is an editorial comparison and not official Barracuda material. There is no business relationship.