Rspamd vs Sophos Secure Message

Rspamd is an email security engine for filtering phishing, business email compromise, malicious attachments, and spam. It scores messages using reputation, sender authentication, content analysis, and machine learning. Authentication checks cover SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and ARC; malware scanning can use ClamAV or commercial antivirus engines. Administrators can define custom rules through the Lua API and configurable maps and selectors. Rspamd works with mail transfer agents including Postfix, Exim, and Sendmail, and its ClickHouse and Elasticsearch integrations provide visibility into attack patterns and detection rates. It is designed for gateway deployment and can run on-premises, keeping message data in the operator's environment without a mandatory vendor cloud. The detection engine is open source under Apache 2.0 and is available for Linux, macOS, and self-hosted use. Rspamd says its event-driven C core scans hundreds of messages per second per core and can scale from a single server to billions of messages a day. The open-source engine is listed at free. Scale costs £100 a month, with 5K mailboxes; hosted and enterprise plans have custom pricing. Premium plans offer support from core engineers, with enterprise SLA options.

Sophos Secure Message is part of Sophos Email, a cloud service for protecting inboxes from phishing, business email compromise, spam, and email-delivered malware. Sophos Email uses AI and machine-learning models, natural-language processing, sender authentication, URL rewriting, and attachment sandboxing to detect threats. Post-delivery protection can retrieve messages later identified as malicious after they reach inboxes. Organizations can set Secure Message policies for selected users, groups, domains, and external recipients. Outbound policies support TLS, S/MIME, push encryption, and portal encryption. With portal encryption, recipients can read and reply to encrypted messages through a secure web portal without maintaining their own encryption infrastructure. Multi-rule data-protection and content-control policies can detect sensitive email data and encrypt it automatically. Sophos Email integrates with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace and connects threat telemetry with Sophos MDR and XDR. Secure Message policies cannot be configured in Sophos Email Monitoring System mode. A free trial is available through an active Sophos Fusion account or the trial form. Pricing is on request, and there is no free plan.