Avanan review

Avanan is a cloud security platform for email and collaboration apps. It connects through native APIs and checks messages and files before they reach inboxes or shared folders, rather than requiring mail to be routed through changed MX records. The platform is designed to cover phishing, malware, data loss and account takeover across connected services.

Its feature set includes machine-learning and natural-language processing for impersonation, credential theft and spear-phishing; sandboxing for attachments and URLs; and monitoring for suspicious logins, user behavior and unauthorized mail rules. Avanan also scans messages and uploaded files for data loss risks, inspects chat and storage apps, and can find and remove malicious messages after delivery. Those are broad capabilities, but the available information does not specify which apps, integrations or policies are included in each plan. Buyers should confirm coverage for their particular email and collaboration setup before switching.

Avanan’s main appeal is the breadth of protection around email and connected collaboration tools. Its listed capabilities include pre-delivery checks for phishing, malware and suspicious links, plus post-delivery removal and account-takeover monitoring. That gives security teams more to work with than a filter that only decides whether to block a message at the gateway. API-based inspection can also leave existing MX records in place, according to a Reddit discussion comparing Avanan with Proofpoint.

Detection is the feature users praise most. In one r/msp thread, commenters who said they had used both products described Avanan’s phishing detection and investigation detail favorably compared with Proofpoint. Those are individual reports, not independent test results, and another commenter stressed that no email security product is bulletproof. Still, the reports point to useful operational value: explanations for why a message was flagged and access to message details when investigating a false positive. Avanan’s post-delivery remediation and inspection of files and chat content may also help teams looking beyond inbox-only protection.

Buying costs are hard to assess. The available pricing information lists Protect, Advanced Protect and Complete Protect, but monthly and annual prices, billing units, seat limits and usage limits are not published. A 14-day free trial is listed; no free plan is listed. Archiving, Incident Response as a Service and DMARC are add-ons, with prices not published. The plan descriptions distinguish basic, advanced and complete email protection, but do not spell out which features separate them. That makes it difficult to compare tiers or calculate the cost of a migration before talking to sales.

There are also management and email-authentication questions to resolve. In an r/msp discussion, one poster described Avanan as potentially clunky to manage while considering Mesh Security. A separate MSP thread alleges problems with outbound mail and email authentication; it is a user report, not confirmation that every deployment has the issue. Ask Avanan or your reseller how outbound mail is handled, what setup changes are required, and which collaboration apps and controls your quoted plan covers. The published information does not publish plan caps, so get them in writing.

Avanan’s prices are not published, so we can’t give you a starting cost or calculate the jump between tiers. The available pricing data lists Protect for teams seeking email protection, Advanced Protect for teams needing advanced email protection, and Complete Protect for teams seeking complete email protection. It does not list monthly or annual prices, per-seat rates, or seat and usage limits. The data is marked low confidence, so confirm current terms with Avanan before budgeting.

A 14-day free trial is listed for each plan; there is no free plan listed. Add-ons include Archiving, Incident Response as a Service (IRaaS), and DMARC, but their prices are also unpublished. The billing note says monthly and annual prices are not published; it does not establish which billing options are available. Ask for a written quote that breaks out the base plan, add-ons, billing term, and any minimums. Without those details, comparing tiers or estimating renewal costs is guesswork.

Avanan connects through native APIs and checks email and collaboration traffic before delivery, according to the published product description. That makes connected apps, permissions, and policy setup the obvious items to clarify during onboarding. The available material does not document migration steps, supported connectors, setup time, or how existing security policies transfer, so we can’t estimate the effort more precisely.

Lock-in is hard to assess from the published details here. Data export options, retention terms, and what happens to quarantined or archived data after cancellation are not specified. Get those answers in writing before switching, especially if you plan to use Archiving or need records for compliance.

We don’t have Reddit posts or comments in the published material, so we can’t responsibly report why users leave Avanan. Ask the vendor how to export data and remove API access, and confirm how protection behaves during cutover and after cancellation. Those are the practical exit questions the available information leaves open.