Proofpoint Essentials Plan Comparison
The problem: Six plans, overlapping feature names, and a plus-tier structure that does not simply stack. It is easy to pay for a plan that lacks the one control you actually needed.
This page lays every capability against every plan so you can see exactly where each feature switches on.
Read this before you choose. The plans do not form a simple ladder. The plus variants add message retraction, pre-delivery URL scanning, warning tags, and business email compromise defence. A non-plus plan does not carry those, however far up the range it sits. Professional does not include Email Warning Tags or Advanced BEC Defense, but Advanced+ does. If those controls matter to you, the plus column is the one to read.
Capability by Plan
A check mark means the capability is part of that plan at no extra charge. Scroll sideways on a narrow screen.
| Capability | Business | Business+ | Advanced | Advanced+ | Professional | Professional+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core filtering | ||||||
| Inbound and outbound filtering | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Data loss prevention filters | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| URL Defense (links checked at click time) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Attachment Defense reputation scanning | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| End-user quarantine portal | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| If your mail platform goes down | ||||||
| Emergency Inbox (browser access while the platform is down) | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days |
| Instant Replay (resend recent messages on demand) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Deeper inspection | ||||||
| Full attachment sandboxing (files opened in isolation) | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Outbound email encryption | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Social media account protection | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Plus-plan controls — these do not carry into the non-plus plans | ||||||
| Predictive URL Defense (links checked before delivery) | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| One-Click Message Pull (retract a delivered message) | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Email warning tags (banner on suspicious mail) | — | — | — | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Advanced business email compromise defence | — | — | — | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Long-term retention | ||||||
| Email archiving | — | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Available on any plan | ||||||
| Security awareness training | Optional add-on | |||||
Choosing Between Them
- Business covers the baseline: filtering both ways, DLP, click-time link checking, and a 30-day emergency inbox.
- Business+ is the cheapest way to get message retraction. If your worry is a phishing mail that lands in fifty inboxes before anyone notices, this is the step that matters.
- Advanced adds sandboxing and outbound encryption. This is the level for anyone handling regulated or sensitive material.
- Advanced+ adds warning tags and business email compromise defence on top of that. Choose it if wire fraud or executive impersonation is a live risk for you.
- Professional adds archiving to the Advanced feature set. Note it does not carry the plus controls.
- Professional+ is the complete set.
Not sure? Tell us what you are actually worried about and how you are regulated, and we will point at one plan rather than six.
A Note on Continuity
The Emergency Inbox above is a feature of the Proofpoint filtering layer. It is not the same as StrataMail Continuity, which gives your users a shadow mailbox and branded webmail, nor StrataMail Backup MX, which queues inbound mail without giving users access to it. Those are separate services and can run alongside Proofpoint if you need them.
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