10 Proofpoint Competitors and Alternatives (2026): Security Awareness Training Platforms Compared

People are involved in 62% of breaches, according to the Verizon DBIR 2026 (full disclosure: Hoxhunt is one of the report’s data contributors). If you are a security leader, you probably already know this, and you are likely choosing an employee security training tool, either for a first purchase or at renewal. What you should be looking for is a platform that changes what your employees do when a real phishing email, call or Teams message arrives. Below, we compare Proofpoint ZenGuide with ten alternatives to help you find that platform.

Here is how users rate the most reviewed of those alternatives on G2 (October 2026), next to Proofpoint ZenGuide:

• Hoxhunt: 4.8/5 across 3,775 reviews
• KnowBe4: 4.6/5 across 2,410 reviews
• MetaCompliance: 4.6/5 across 1,125 reviews
• Proofpoint ZenGuide: 4.5/5 across 337 reviews

Hoxhunt also ranks #1 on G2’s list of the highest-rated security awareness training for enterprises, meaning organizations with more than 1,000 employees, both overall and in North America, Europe and Asia.

For ratings of every major security awareness training platform, not only the Proofpoint alternatives, see our guide to the best security awareness training platforms.

Proofpoint alternatives compared (2026): at a glance

Here are ZenGuide and the ten alternatives side by side, so you can see quickly which ones are worth a closer look. For each platform, “What it is” says what the vendor sells, and “What to validate” lists what to check in a demo or pilot before you buy. The ratings come from G2’s security awareness training category, read in October 2026. Hoxhunt’s 4.8 comes from 3,775 reviews, more than any other platform here.

How to choose a Proofpoint ZenGuide alternative

Every security awareness training vendor will tell you its training works. The way to find out is to ask each one the same questions and have them prove the answers in a demo or a pilot with your own employees. The questions below show whether a tool changes what employees do, which attacks it can simulate, how it fits your systems and your team, and what you will really pay. Ask them about ZenGuide too, so you compare every option on the same terms.

Top Proofpoint alternatives for security awareness training

Here is our verdict on each platform and what it rests on: what users report after living with the tool, what each vendor sells and how its quote works. We start with Proofpoint ZenGuide, then the ten alternatives.

Proofpoint ZenGuide: training inside the Proofpoint platform

Proofpoint ZenGuide is Proofpoint’s security awareness training tool: lessons and simulated phishing attacks that teach employees to spot and report phishing. Proofpoint sells it as part of Collaboration Security Prime, a Proofpoint bundle for email, collaboration tools and cloud apps.

What users report: ZenGuide holds 4.5/5 across 337 reviews on G2 (October 2026).

Both are worth testing in any alternative too: ask each vendor how the content changes for an employee in their second year, and check in the pilot how much of the content you can adapt yourself.

Pricing: quote on request. Because ZenGuide comes inside a bundle, ask what it costs on its own.

Hoxhunt: adaptive, behavior-based training

Hoxhunt combines security awareness training with adaptive phishing simulations: each employee gets a simulation roughly every 10 days, and the difficulty rises as their skills improve. As more employees report phishing, your security team gets more emails to check, so Hoxhunt also sells Incident Response Automation, which checks them automatically.

What users report: Hoxhunt holds 4.8/5 across 3,775 reviews on G2 and ranks #1 on G2’s list of the highest-rated security awareness training for enterprises, organizations with more than 1,000 employees (October 2026). It is also first on that list in North America, Europe and Asia, and its G2 profile shows G2’s Fall 2026 Best Results badge for enterprise.

Pricing: per employee. Your quote depends on your headcount and the capabilities you need, after a scoping call of 30 minutes (Hoxhunt pricing).

KnowBe4: security awareness training with published prices

KnowBe4 sells security awareness training and phishing simulation.

What users report: KnowBe4 holds 4.6/5 across 2,410 reviews on G2 (October 2026).

In the pilot, check whether the content suits your more technical users, whether simulations stay unpredictable after a few cycles, and how easily your admins find their way around the admin panel.

Pricing: published for 25 to 1,000 seats, from $1.63 to $3.75 per seat per month on a three-year contract (KnowBe4’s pricing page, checked in October 2026, dates these prices May 2026). Above 1,000 seats, KnowBe4 gives a quote on request.

Mimecast Engage: training from Mimecast, an email security vendor

Mimecast Engage is Mimecast’s security awareness training, sold alongside its email security.

What users report: On G2, where it is listed as Mimecast Security Awareness Training, it holds 4.1/5 across 44 reviews (October 2026).

If you shortlist Mimecast Engage, check in the pilot how much detail its reports give for each employee, and how much of the content you can adapt yourself.

Pricing: two plans, Engage Core and Engage Pro, both quoted on request.

Cofense PhishMe: training from Cofense, an email threat defense vendor

Cofense PhishMe is Cofense’s security awareness training platform. Cofense also sells email threat defense products.

What users report: PhishMe has few public reviews. It holds 4.4/5 across only 5 reviews on G2 (October 2026), and the written reviews on TrustRadius date from 2021 to 2023.

Ask Cofense to put you in touch with customers your size, and to show you which simulation types your license includes.

Pricing: quote on request.

SoSafe: security awareness training with a published starting price

SoSafe sells security awareness training and phishing simulation.

What users report: SoSafe holds 4.5/5 across 804 reviews on G2 (October 2026).

The second reviewer would like phishing emails tailored to each employee. If you shortlist SoSafe, ask SoSafe how the training changes for an employee in their second year, and check in the pilot which content you can change yourself.

Pricing: the Advanced plan starts from €625 per month, billed annually, with 50 seats included. The Core plan is quoted on request.

MetaCompliance: training paired with policy management

MetaCompliance sells security awareness training plus policy management software, which distributes company policies and keeps a record of who has read them.

What users report: MetaCompliance holds 4.6/5 across 1,125 reviews on G2 (October 2026).

If you shortlist MetaCompliance, have your admins set up and send a full round of training and simulations in the pilot, so they test the interface they would work in.

Pricing: quote on request.

Infosec IQ: training from Infosec Institute

Infosec IQ is Infosec Institute’s security awareness training and phishing simulation platform. Infosec Institute also sells skills and certification training for security, IT and development teams.

What users report: Infosec IQ holds 4.5/5 across 654 reviews on G2 (October 2026).

If you shortlist Infosec IQ, ask your admins to run the pilot themselves, from setting up a round of training and simulations to reading the results, so they judge the admin screens before you sign.

Pricing: quoted on request, for three plans: Standard, Enterprise, and Infosec IQ + Skills, which adds Infosec Institute’s skills training.

NINJIO: training built on animated video episodes

NINJIO sells security awareness training built on animated video episodes of 3 to 4 minutes. Phishing simulation is a separate product, PHISH3D.

What users report: NINJIO holds 4.8/5 across 389 reviews on G2 (October 2026).

If NINJIO is on your shortlist, ask the vendor which simulation types PHISH3D includes. In the pilot, check how much of each simulation you can change yourself, and how easy the portal is for your admins and employees to use.

Pricing: quote on request. Because PHISH3D is a separate product, ask whether your quote includes it.

Ironscales: an email security vendor that also sells training

Ironscales sells email security for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace: software that scans incoming email for phishing. It also sells security awareness training and phishing simulation, included in its Complete Protect plan or as a separate training package.

What users report: Ironscales holds 4.7/5 across 71 reviews on G2 (October 2026), on one listing that covers both its email security and its training.

If you shortlist Ironscales, ask Ironscales to put you in touch with customers your size that use the training, and to show you which simulation types and training content your plan includes.

Pricing: quote on request. If you are not buying Complete Protect, ask how much the training package adds to your quote.

Adaptive Security: training, phishing simulation and email security

Adaptive Security sells security awareness training, phishing simulation and email security.

What users report: Adaptive Security holds 4.9/5 across 141 reviews on G2 (October 2026). Outside G2 it has few public reviews: Gartner Peer Insights shows a single review.

Ask Adaptive Security to put you in touch with customers your size, and ask those customers whether more of their employees report phishing now than before they started using it.

Pricing: per seat, quoted on your employee count and the products you choose.

Which Proofpoint alternative fits your situation?

The right Proofpoint alternative depends on your situation: what you need from your training and how you want to buy it. Here is each situation next to the platforms to look at, and why.

How much do Proofpoint alternatives cost?

Only KnowBe4 and SoSafe publish prices. With every other vendor, Hoxhunt included, you get a price by asking for a quote, and what you pay depends on how many employees you have, how long the contract runs and which plan or products you choose.

Hoxhunt does not publish a price because your quote depends on two things: how many employees you have and which capabilities you need. On a 30-minute scoping call, you will go through both and see the employee experience and the admin dashboard live, so you will end the call with a full quote and a demo (Hoxhunt pricing).

To compare the quotes on the same basis:

Replacing Proofpoint email security or Proofpoint ZenGuide? Two different decisions

Proofpoint is a cybersecurity company that sells several separate products. Three matter when you decide what to replace:

• Email security: software that scans incoming email for phishing and malware. Products like this are also called email gateways.
• Proofpoint ZenGuide: its security awareness training tool, with lessons and simulated phishing attacks that teach employees to spot and report phishing.
• Report Suspicious and CLEAR: Report Suspicious, formerly called PhishAlarm, is the ZenGuide button employees click to report a suspicious email. CLEAR is the Proofpoint product that processes those reports for your security team.

Because these are separate products, you can replace ZenGuide and keep Proofpoint’s email security. Replacing the email security itself is a bigger decision, with its own comparison: Gartner Peer Insights publishes user reviews of email security products.

To keep Proofpoint’s email security and move to another security awareness training tool, whoever runs your email system, usually IT or the security team, has to plan for two changes:

• Proofpoint has to let the simulations through. Proofpoint’s email security checks every incoming message, so it has to be told that the new tool’s simulated phishing emails are safe. This setting is called an allowlist rule. Without it, Proofpoint will block the simulations as if they were real phishing, and your employees will never see them.
• Employees can end up with two ways to report. When you replace ZenGuide, its Report Suspicious button may stay installed in your employees’ email, next to the new tool’s way of reporting. Two ways to report confuse people and split the reports between two systems, and an employee who reports a simulation the wrong way can be counted as failing it. Before the switch, agree which button stays and which team receives its reports. If CLEAR processes your reports today, decide what does that job afterwards.

Check your contract as well: ask Proofpoint what your agreement includes and how the price changes if you drop ZenGuide, so you know how switching affects your bill.

Switching from Proofpoint ZenGuide: renewal timing and a parallel run

Time the switch to your renewal, and test the new platform on a small group of employees before everyone moves. Run it in this order:

How Hoxhunt differs

We built Hoxhunt to reduce human risk, the chance that an employee falls for a phishing email, a fake call or a deepfake, by changing what your people do when a real attack arrives and proving that change to your board. Here is what that means in practice.

Success is measured by who reports real threats

In Hoxhunt data, when employees get security awareness training four times a year, roughly 10% of them report phishing. Reporting above 20% typically comes from a program built to change behavior, with frequent practice and instant feedback (Hoxhunt Phishing Trends Report 2026, p.33). Hoxhunt’s dashboards show who reports a phishing email, who clicks it and who never responds, so the number you take to your board shows how employee cyber behavior is changing.

Difficulty adapts to each person

Every employee gets a simulation roughly every 10 days, and its difficulty, timing and scenario type adjust to that person. Hoxhunt’s agentic reasoning engine, the AI behind the simulations, picks each one to match the person and the threats they face. An AI agent also writes new spear phishing, messages aimed at one specific person, because attackers now write those with AI too. Strong performers get harder scenarios as their skills improve, so the program stays challenging for the people who would otherwise tune out.

Simulations beyond the inbox

Simulations cover email, SMS, callback phishing, messages on Microsoft Teams and deepfake video. Simulated voice phishing calls to employees’ phones are also available, in English, in the countries where Hoxhunt holds local numbers, at extra cost.

These channels matter because an email gateway only sees email. In Hoxhunt’s simulations, mobile has a 19% failure rate, over three times the 6% on desktop (Phishing Trends Report 2026, p.9).

Content you build from your own policies

Content Studio turns your policies, procedures and existing materials into training in under 60 seconds. It sits on top of a library of 300+ ready modules, translatable into 40+ languages, with compliance training tracks for PCI DSS (payment card data), HIPAA (US health data), DORA (EU rules for financial firms) and GDPR (EU data protection). Ready courses for annual refreshers, new hire onboarding, executives, specific job functions and specific regulations launch in a few clicks and stay editable.

The program runs itself

Enrollment, reminders, manager escalations and completion tracking run automatically, and Hoxhunt puts the time this saves at 13 hours a week of training operations. Setup is quick as well: reviewers rate Hoxhunt 9.7 out of 10 for ease of setup, against 8.7 for Proofpoint (Hoxhunt security awareness training).

At Uber, a two-person team has run 100,000+ phishing simulations across 500+ scenarios, and the time to resolve everyday security and policy questions fell from days to seconds.

Reported emails get checked and cleaned up

Employees report with one click in Outlook or Gmail and get feedback straight away. With Incident Response Automation, sold separately, each reported email gets a verdict on whether it is safe or malicious, and on Microsoft 365 a confirmed malicious campaign can be removed from every inbox, so the extra reports do not bury your security team. For teams that use Proofpoint’s Report Suspicious button and CLEAR today, this is the part of Hoxhunt that does the same job. Our guide to automating the response to phishing your employees report covers that workflow.

Results after switching from older training

These customers replaced an older security awareness training program with Hoxhunt.

Proofpoint alternatives FAQ

How we evaluated

We started from the platforms Gartner Peer Insights lists as Proofpoint ZenGuide alternatives, KnowBe4, Cofense, Mimecast Engage and Infosec IQ among them, and added six vendors that also sell security awareness training: Hoxhunt, SoSafe, MetaCompliance, NINJIO, Ironscales and Adaptive Security. G2 ratings and review counts were read in October 2026. User quotes come word for word from G2, Gartner Peer Insights, TrustRadius and Capterra, each with a link to its source. Vendor facts, plans and prices come from each vendor’s own product and pricing pages, read in October 2026, so you can check every figure yourself. Hoxhunt wrote this guide; where we describe Hoxhunt, we use our own product pages and published customer cases.

_Sources

_{Reviews: Proofpoint ZenGuide alternatives on Gartner Peer Insights, Proofpoint ZenGuide on Gartner Peer Insights, SoSafe on Gartner Peer Insights, Infosec Institute on Gartner Peer Insights, Ironscales on Gartner Peer Insights, Adaptive Security on Gartner Peer Insights, Email security market on Gartner Peer Insights, Security awareness training category on G2, Enterprise ranking on G2, Security awareness training software guide on G2 Learn, Ironscales on G2, KnowBe4 on Capterra, Mimecast on TrustRadius, Cofense PhishMe on TrustRadius, Infosec IQ on TrustRadius, NINJIO on TrustRadius.}

_{Vendors: Proofpoint ZenGuide, Proofpoint ZenGuide Report Suspicious, KnowBe4 pricing, Mimecast Engage Core and Engage Pro, Cofense PhishMe, SoSafe pricing, MetaCompliance policy management, Infosec IQ pricing, NINJIO AWARE, NINJIO PHISH3D, Ironscales pricing, Adaptive Security pricing, Attack simulation training on Microsoft Learn.}

_{Hoxhunt: Phishing Trends Report 2026, security awareness training, phishing training, pricing.}