Mimecast is a cybersecurity company that focuses on protecting business communications, particularly through email security and cyber resilience solutions. In today’s digital environment, email remains one of the most frequently used attack vectors by cybercriminals. Mimecast helps businesses defend against phishing, malware, ransomware, and impersonation attacks, while also ensuring continuity and compliance in their email systems.
Founded in 2003, Mimecast has grown into a trusted name for organizations worldwide looking to secure their email infrastructure and protect sensitive communications. Its platform provides layered security, combining threat detection, business continuity, and archiving capabilities into one integrated service. This helps businesses not only prevent cyberattacks but also recover quickly when incidents occur.
Features
Mimecast offers a wide range of features focused on security, resilience, and compliance for email and collaboration tools.
One of the platform’s standout capabilities is its targeted threat protection. This feature uses advanced threat intelligence and machine learning to block malicious links, weaponized attachments, impersonation attempts, and business email compromise attacks. It scans email content in real time to detect and neutralize threats before they reach users.
Mimecast also provides secure email gateway services that filter out spam, viruses, and unwanted messages with high accuracy. This ensures only legitimate communication makes it to the inbox, helping reduce user fatigue and risk of phishing clicks.
In terms of resilience, Mimecast enables email continuity, which means that even if the primary email server goes down, employees can still send and receive emails through Mimecast’s cloud platform. This business continuity feature is vital for minimizing downtime and maintaining productivity during outages or maintenance windows.
Another critical area is compliance and archiving. Mimecast retains email communications in a tamper-proof archive, making it easier for organizations to meet legal and regulatory requirements. It also supports fast e-discovery and search functions, which are useful for audits or internal investigations.
The platform integrates well with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and other major email systems, ensuring a seamless layer of security without disrupting everyday workflows.
How It Works
Mimecast sits between an organization’s email system and the outside world. When an email is sent to or from the company, it passes through Mimecast’s cloud-based infrastructure, where it undergoes inspection and filtering.
Incoming emails are analyzed for threats using a combination of signature-based detection, heuristic analysis, and threat intelligence. Mimecast’s sandboxing technology can also open and analyze attachments in a safe environment to detect hidden threats. URLs are rewritten and scanned in real time when users click on them, helping protect against delayed or time-sensitive attacks.
In addition to security filtering, emails are automatically archived for compliance. Messages are stored in encrypted, immutable formats and can be quickly retrieved using advanced search capabilities.
During any service interruption to the primary email server, Mimecast’s continuity feature allows users to access their messages via a secure web portal, mobile app, or desktop plugin. This ensures communication doesn’t stop even in the event of a server crash, migration, or network failure.
Mimecast also uses AI and threat intelligence gathered from millions of users globally to continuously update its defenses and stay ahead of new threats.
Use Cases
Mimecast is widely used by organizations that rely heavily on email communication and want to protect against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
One of the most common use cases is protection against phishing and business email compromise. Mimecast blocks these types of attacks before they can trick employees into clicking malicious links or sharing sensitive data.
Companies in regulated industries such as healthcare, legal, and finance use Mimecast to ensure compliance with laws around data retention and auditing. The secure email archiving feature helps organizations meet these obligations while maintaining fast and reliable access to historical emails.
Another use case is for organizations undergoing digital transformation or cloud migrations. As they move to cloud email platforms like Microsoft 365, they often need additional layers of security, continuity, and archiving that Mimecast provides.
Mimecast is also beneficial for IT teams looking to reduce administrative overhead. By consolidating multiple tools—email security, continuity, archiving, and compliance—into a single platform, teams can manage security more efficiently and with greater visibility.
Pricing
Mimecast does not publish fixed pricing on its website, as costs depend on the size of the organization, the number of users, and the services required. Typically, pricing is based on a per-user, per-year subscription model. Customers can choose different service bundles, including email security only or a more comprehensive suite that includes archiving and continuity.
To get accurate pricing, businesses need to contact Mimecast directly or work through an authorized reseller. Mimecast does offer demos and consultations to help organizations understand which solutions best fit their needs and budget.
Strengths
Mimecast’s major strength lies in its multi-layered approach to email security. It doesn’t just block spam or viruses—it offers deep protection against advanced threats like phishing, ransomware, and domain spoofing. This is especially important as attackers become more sophisticated in how they target organizations.
The platform’s continuity feature ensures that email communication never stops, even if the primary service is down. This gives Mimecast an edge in helping businesses maintain operations during outages.
Its secure archiving solution is also a strong point. With legal and compliance pressures increasing, having fast, reliable access to archived email data is a must. Mimecast delivers this in a user-friendly and scalable way.
Another strength is the seamless integration with Microsoft 365 and other leading platforms. This allows companies to enhance their cloud email with advanced protection without complicating IT infrastructure.
Drawbacks
While Mimecast is feature-rich, it can be more complex to set up initially compared to simpler email security tools. Organizations with limited IT staff may need assistance during implementation to configure it properly for their environment.
The platform’s broad feature set may also be more than some small businesses need, especially if they are only looking for basic spam filtering. In such cases, Mimecast’s more advanced solutions might not be cost-effective.
There have also been occasional concerns about false positives—legitimate emails mistakenly marked as suspicious. While this is a common challenge for all email security providers, fine-tuning Mimecast’s filtering rules is necessary to minimize disruptions.
Additionally, pricing transparency can be a challenge for buyers trying to compare options quickly. Without public pricing tiers, interested customers must go through the sales process to get a quote.
Comparison with Other Tools
Compared to traditional email security tools like Barracuda or Proofpoint, Mimecast offers more comprehensive protection bundled into one solution. Proofpoint is known for its targeted threat intelligence and data loss prevention, but Mimecast stands out with its strong focus on continuity and archiving, making it a more complete platform for enterprise use.
Barracuda offers strong spam filtering and threat detection but may not offer the same level of integrated continuity and compliance tools found in Mimecast.
When compared to Microsoft 365’s native security features, Mimecast adds an important layer of defense. While Microsoft offers basic protection, it may not catch more sophisticated attacks that Mimecast is designed to detect and prevent.
Mimecast also offers a strong user experience and centralized management, which helps security teams streamline their workflows across multiple features.
Customer Reviews and Testimonials
Mimecast receives strong reviews from customers across industries. On platforms like G2 and Gartner Peer Insights, users consistently highlight the reliability of its threat detection, the value of having email continuity, and the ease of managing email archiving for compliance.
Many IT administrators praise how Mimecast reduces the number of phishing incidents and supports fast forensic investigations when an incident does occur. Compliance officers also appreciate the platform’s secure archiving capabilities and its support for legal hold and e-discovery functions.
There are also positive notes about Mimecast’s support team, which is described as responsive and knowledgeable. Some users mention a learning curve during the initial setup, but most agree that the long-term benefits are well worth the investment.
Conclusion
Mimecast offers an all-in-one solution for businesses looking to secure their email communication and strengthen their overall cyber resilience. In a world where email threats are becoming more sophisticated and persistent, Mimecast stands out with its layered protection, continuity features, and compliance-ready archiving.
Whether you’re a mid-sized business or a large enterprise, Mimecast provides the tools to protect against phishing, ensure business continuity, and maintain regulatory compliance with minimal disruption to users.
