Agari Brand Protection (now part of Fortra) is a comprehensive email security platform designed for large enterprises. Its DMARC reporting and enforcement capabilities are deeply integrated into a broader suite that includes advanced threat intelligence, anti-phishing, and brand protection.
We have found that Agari provides a highly automated approach to DMARC implementation and management, offering granular visibility into email authentication results and potential spoofing attempts. It extends beyond basic DMARC, helping organizations mitigate advanced email threats and safeguard their brand reputation.
ELK DMARC is an open-source, self-hosted DMARC reporting tool built on the ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) stack. It primarily focuses on ingesting and visualizing DMARC aggregate reports, providing a powerful platform for data analysis and custom dashboard creation.
Our experience shows that ELK DMARC offers the flexibility of the ELK stack, allowing users with technical expertise to tailor their DMARC monitoring to specific needs. It's a robust solution for those who prefer to maintain full control over their data and infrastructure, and who value customization over a managed service.
ELK DMARC
How easy is each product to use
User experience
ELK DMARC
Agari Brand Protection offers a polished and intuitive user interface tailored for enterprise security teams. The dashboards are designed to present complex DMARC data in an actionable format, making it accessible even for users who are not deep DMARC experts.
We found the guided workflows and automated recommendations within Agari to be particularly helpful for progressing through DMARC adoption and policy enforcement. The focus is on simplifying the management of a large-scale email ecosystem.
ELK DMARC's user experience is inherently tied to the ELK stack. This means that while Kibana offers powerful visualization capabilities, setting it up and maintaining it requires a good understanding of Elasticsearch queries, Logstash configurations, and Kibana dashboard design.
For users familiar with the ELK stack, the experience is highly customizable and rewarding, but for those without this background, there's a steep learning curve. We see it as a tool for technical users who want fine-grained control over their DMARC data and presentation.
ELK DMARC
Which product has the best support
Support
ELK DMARC
Agari, as an enterprise solution, provides dedicated customer support, often including account managers and professional services to assist with DMARC implementation, policy optimization, and ongoing management. We've experienced their support to be comprehensive, albeit sometimes requiring patience, especially with complex enterprise environments.
They typically offer various support tiers with Service Level Agreements (SLAs), ensuring timely responses and expert assistance for critical issues. This is crucial for organizations where email security is a mission-critical function.
ELK DMARC, being an open-source project, relies primarily on community support. Users can find assistance through its GitHub repository, where they can submit issues, ask questions, and contribute to the project. There's no dedicated support team or formal SLAs.
Our direct experience with open-source tools like ELK DMARC shows that the quality and speed of support can vary. It's dependent on the activity of the community and the project maintainers. This model suits organizations with in-house expertise capable of troubleshooting and resolving issues independently.
ELK DMARC
Who should use each product
Suitability
ELK DMARC
Agari Brand Protection is best suited for large enterprises and organizations (SMB: Cross, Enterprise: Tick) with complex email infrastructures, high-volume sending, and a strong need for advanced email security and brand protection. It's ideal for those who require a managed service, comprehensive threat intelligence, and a polished user experience.
MSPs (Managed Service Providers: Tick) catering to enterprise clients or needing to offer a premium, fully-managed email security service would find Agari suitable due to its robust feature set and support infrastructure. It consolidates DMARC with other email security layers.
ELK DMARC is an excellent choice for organizations with strong in-house IT capabilities and a preference for open-source solutions (SMB: Tick, Enterprise: Cross). It's particularly well-suited for those looking for a cost-effective DMARC reporting solution where the primary costs are associated with infrastructure and internal operational expertise.
For MSPs (Managed Service Providers: Tick) with significant technical resources and a desire to build customized DMARC monitoring for clients, ELK DMARC offers the flexibility. However, it requires a commitment to managing the underlying ELK stack and may not scale as easily for a vast number of disparate clients without significant automation.
ELK DMARC
How does Agari Brand Protection compare with ELK DMARC?
ELK DMARC
DMARC report analysis
Analysis of DMARC aggregate and forensic reports.
Comprehensive and automated analysis with actionable insights.
Raw data analysis with customizable Kibana dashboards.
Source detection
Identifies legitimate and illegitimate email sending sources.
Automated discovery of sending sources for policy setup.
Visualizes sending sources from DMARC reports.
Forward detection
Ability to identify and account for email forwarding.
Built-in intelligence to handle forwarding scenarios.
Data can be parsed and visualized to identify forwarding.
Spoof detection
Identifies and categorizes email spoofing attempts.
Advanced spoofing detection and threat intelligence.
Identifies DMARC failures indicative of spoofing.
Notifications and alerts
Automated alerts for DMARC policy changes or anomalies.
Configurable alerts for suspicious activity and policy enforcement.
Customizable alerts through the ELK stack components (e.g., Watcher).
Reporting
Generates various reports on DMARC status and performance.
Professional, executive-level reports.
Customizable reports via Kibana dashboards.
API
Application Programming Interface for data integration.
Robust API for integration with other security tools.
Leverages Elasticsearch API for data access and integration.
Multi-tenancy
Manages DMARC for multiple separate organizations/domains.
Designed for managing multiple clients or domains efficiently.
Typically a single-instance deployment, multi-tenancy requires custom configuration.
SPF flattening
Helps manage SPF record lookup limits.
Offers managed SPF record services to stay within limits.
Not a core feature, requires manual SPF management.
Hosted DMARC
Provides DNS records and hosting for DMARC.
Managed DMARC DNS records as part of the service.
Requires users to host their own DMARC DNS records.
BIMI
Brand Indicators for Message Identification support.
Supports BIMI implementation and monitoring.
Not directly supported, requires manual configuration.
MTA-STS/TLS-RPT
Support for Mail Transfer Agent Strict Transport Security and TLS Reporting.
Integrated features for advanced email transport security.
Requires separate tools or manual configuration.
Blocklists and reputation
Monitoring of IP and domain blocklists and sender reputation.
Integrated reputation monitoring and blocklist checks.
Not a primary feature, would require external integrations.
AI copilot
AI-powered assistance for DMARC management and threat detection.
Leverages AI for advanced insights and automation.
Does not include AI-powered assistance.
DNS monitoring
Monitoring of critical DNS records for changes or misconfigurations.
Proactive monitoring of DMARC-related DNS records.
Requires separate tools for comprehensive DNS monitoring.
Self hostable
Option to host the DMARC reporting solution on private infrastructure.
Provided as a cloud-based, managed service.
Designed specifically as a self-hosted solution.
Free trial/free tier
Availability of a free trial or a permanently free service tier.
Does not typically offer a public free trial or tier, enterprise focus.
Open-source software, effectively a free tier (excluding infrastructure costs).
Drawbacks and what to watch out for
Agari Brand Protection, while powerful, can be prohibitively expensive and complex for smaller organizations, with support sometimes reported as slow. ELK DMARC, conversely, demands significant technical expertise and ongoing maintenance of its underlying infrastructure, potentially incurring hidden operational costs for those without dedicated IT staff. It also lacks the dedicated support and advanced features of a commercial platform.
We have pulled the average ratings from G2 for each product, and also included the most recent negative reviews for each product in full. Positive reviews tend to have less detail and have a higher chance of being fraudulent, so negative reviews are a better signal for your decision.
4 / 5(1)
ELK DMARC
0 / 5(0)
Descent Email Security
4.0 / 5
What do you like best about Fortra DMARC Protection?
I am a new user of cloud email protection and I am extremely fond of the added security layer it offers to the users of office 365. Most amazing feature is the added notification whenever a suspicious mail is there. I have observed that the other folder segregation doesn't always work in the office 365 but here it works like magic.
What do you dislike about Fortra DMARC Protection?
The policies are a bit off to curate for an individual from a non tech background. And the support provided by the team are a little slow. Rest everything is up to the mark and I'll still continue to use it further.
What problems is Fortra DMARC Protection solving and how is that benefiting you?
It is enabling an added security layer to the emails with confidential content to make it a little better and secure for all the individuals within an organization.
G2 is the most popular review platform for DMARC products, so this is a strong signal that this product is not popular.
Pricing
Agari Brand Protection typically involves significant enterprise contracts, while ELK DMARC is open-source, incurring only infrastructure and operational costs for self-hosting.
ELK DMARC
Small
Up to 10k emails / month
Contact for pricing
Self-hosted, resource costs apply (e.g., 8GB RAM)
Medium
Up to 100k emails / month
Contact for pricing
Self-hosted, resource costs apply (e.g., 8GB RAM)
Large
Up to 1 million emails / month
Contact for pricing
Self-hosted, resource costs apply (e.g., 8GB RAM)
Enterprise
Over 1 million emails / month
Contact for pricing
Self-hosted, resource costs apply (e.g., 8GB RAM)
Suped hard sell incoming!
Still not satisfied with Agari Brand Protection or ELK DMARC?
4 / 5(1)
