Top 5 Cofense Alternatives for Security Awareness Training

Cofense is a well-known name in the cybersecurity world, offering powerful security awareness training (SAT) and phishing simulation tools. For large enterprises with deep security teams and substantial budgets, it can be a capable solution. But what if that doesn’t sound like you?

You might be exploring Cofense alternatives because you’ve encountered the challenges that many growing businesses face with enterprise-grade software. The high costs, complex quote-based pricing, and significant administrative overhead can be major hurdles for smaller IT teams and Managed Service Providers (MSPs). If you're seeking a solution that is more accessible, easier to manage, or specifically designed for the MSP channel, you’ve come to the right place.

Discovering the perfect security awareness platform is an opportunity to find a true partner for your growth. The best choice depends entirely on your business model, company size, and security goals. This guide will help you explore the top Cofense competitors - Symbol Security, KnowBe4, Proofpoint, IRONSCALES and  Mimecast - so you can make an informed decision and build a stronger human firewall.

Quick Comparison: Top Cofense Alternatives at a Glance

For those who want a high-level overview, this table provides a snapshot of the top platforms. This will help you quickly identify which solutions might be the best fit before diving into the details.

Now that you have a high-level overview, let's dive into the detailed analysis of each platform, starting with our top recommendation for MSPs and SMBs.

1. Symbol Security

Symbol Security is a modern, human-centric security awareness platform that stands out by being purpose-built for the unique needs of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, Symbol focuses on delivering an effective, affordable, and incredibly easy-to-use solution that empowers organizations to turn their employees into a robust line of defense.

Key Features of Symbol Security

• MSP-Centric Multi-Tenant Platform: Manage all your clients from a single, intuitive dashboard. The platform is designed from the ground up for resale, with features for separate billing, co-branding, and client-specific campaign management.
• Threat-Intel-Driven Phishing Simulations: Move beyond generic templates with realistic phishing campaigns based on actual, trending attacks seen in the wild. This makes employee testing more relevant and effective.
• Integrated Training & Policy Management: The platform combines phishing tests with a library of micro-learning videos and a policy management feature. You can distribute key security policies, track employee acknowledgment, and centralize compliance tasks.
• Actionable Risk Reporting: Track your organization's progress with clear dashboards and a quantifiable risk score. Measure your phish-prone percentage and training completion to demonstrate a real return on your security investment.

Strengths: Where Symbol Security Shines

• Managed Program Services for a Hands-Off Approach: For organizations with limited resources or expertise, Symbol offers managed services for security awareness training to oversee the entire security awareness program. 
• Partner-Focused Model: Symbol Security empowers a channel of partners, including Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) and Virtual CISOs (vCISOs), to deliver their solutions, often with white-labeling options.
• Simplicity and Ease of Use: The clean and modern user interface is a breath of fresh air. You can set up a phishing campaign or enroll users in training in just minutes, which is a massive benefit for SMBs and MSPs without a full-time training administrator.
• Transparent and Competitive Pricing: Symbol breaks the mold with clear, public pricing on its website. It even offers a generous free tier for up to 15 users, allowing you to use the core platform indefinitely. This is a powerful advantage over the "Contact Sales" gates of most Cofense competitors.
• Real-World Threat Intelligence: By basing simulations on active threats, the training becomes more impactful. Employees are tested against the sophisticated lures they will actually face, increasing the practical value of the program.
  
  

Limitations to Consider

• Less Established Brand Recognition: Compared to other industry players, Symbol Security has a lower market profile.
• Fewer Advanced Enterprise Features: The platform prioritizes simplicity, meaning it lacks some of the highly complex, granular features required by global enterprises, such as intricate API workflows or deep SIEM integrations.

Pricing Structure

Symbol Security offers per-user based pricing as well as a separate, custom pricing model that is available for MSPs.

Best Use Cases:

Symbol Security is the ideal choice for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) looking to grow their security stack and for small to medium-sized businesses (15-500 employees) who need an effective, affordable, and easy-to-manage solution.

2. KnowBe4

KnowBe4 is the 800-pound gorilla in the security awareness training space. As the world's largest platform, it is known for its massive scale and its "human firewall" philosophy, heavily influenced by its late Chief Hacking Officer, Kevin Mitnick. It competes directly with Cofense in the enterprise market, offering an incredibly vast set of features and an enormous content library.

Key Features of KnowBe4

• Massive Training Content Library: KnowBe4’s library is unparalleled, featuring thousands of interactive modules, videos, games, and posters in multiple languages to cover nearly any security or compliance topic imaginable.
• Advanced Phishing Simulations: The platform provides thousands of phishing templates, including automated campaigns based on real-world attacks. It also offers "vishing" (voice phishing) simulations to test against phone-based attacks.
• PhishER Incident Response: The Phish Alert Button (PAB) allows users to report suspicious emails, which can then be automatically analyzed by the PhishER platform. This light SOAR tool helps security teams triage and respond to real threats more efficiently.
• Comprehensive Risk Scoring: KnowBe4 calculates a "Phish-prone Percentage" and an individual "Risk Score" for each user, allowing security leaders to track improvement and identify high-risk employees.

Strengths: Where KnowBe4 Shines

• Unmatched Content Variety: The sheer volume of training and phishing content is KnowBe4’s biggest strength. This allows large, global organizations to keep training fresh and localized.
• Integrated Incident Response: The PhishER tool is a major differentiator that closes the loop between user reporting and security team response, making it more than just a training tool.
• Strong Community and Brand: KnowBe4 has built a powerful brand and community through active marketing, webinars, and thought leadership, adding credibility beyond the software itself.

Limitations to Consider

• High Cost and Complex Pricing: KnowBe4 is a premium solution. Its pricing is quote-based and tiered, with the most valuable features locked behind expensive Platinum and Diamond plans, making it too costly for most SMBs.
• Significant Management Overhead: The platform’s extensive feature set can be overwhelming. Maximizing its value requires a dedicated training administrator, which makes it a heavy lift for smaller IT teams or MSPs managing multiple clients.
• Inconsistent Content Quality: With such a large library, some users report that the quality of the training modules can be hit-or-miss, with some content feeling dated or overly simplistic.

Pricing Structure

Pricing is quote-based and not publicly listed. It is structured in tiers (Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond) that progressively unlock more features, with the most effective tools like PhishER reserved for the highest, most expensive tier.

Best Use Cases:

KnowBe4 is built for the mid-market to large enterprise sector, especially organizations in regulated industries that have the budget, security maturity, and dedicated staff to manage a complex, feature-rich platform.

3. Proofpoint

Proofpoint is a cybersecurity titan, famous for its enterprise-grade email security solutions. Its Security Awareness Training platform, acquired from Wombat Security, is just one component of a much larger, fully integrated security suite. For organizations already invested in the Proofpoint ecosystem, it offers a powerful, consolidated option for managing human risk alongside technical controls.

Key Features of Proofpoint

• Targeted Attack Protection (TAP): This is Proofpoint's best-in-class sandboxing technology, which analyzes email attachments and URLs to detect unknown and zero-day threats before they reach the user.
• Integrated Information Protection: The platform combines email security with Data Loss Prevention (DLP), email encryption, and archiving, allowing for a single policy engine to govern inbound and outbound risk.
• Security Awareness Training (SAT): Proofpoint provides realistic phishing simulations and targeted training modules, with the ability to automatically enroll users who interact with real threats detected by the Proofpoint gateway.
• Threat Response Auto-Pull (TRAP): This feature automatically finds and quarantines malicious messages that were delivered to user inboxes before a threat was identified, enabling powerful post-delivery remediation.
  
  

Strengths: Where Proofpoint Shines

• Unmatched Threat Detection Efficacy: Proofpoint's greatest strength is its ability to stop threats that other systems miss, thanks to its vast threat intelligence graph and powerful sandboxing.
• Comprehensive, Integrated Platform: The ability to combine top-tier email security, DLP, archiving, and SAT under a single vendor is a powerful advantage for large organizations looking to reduce vendor sprawl.
• Incredibly Granular Control: The platform offers security professionals an extraordinary level of control to create highly specific rules for filtering, DLP, and encryption, perfect for complex enterprise environments.

Limitations to Consider

• Extreme Cost and Complexity: Proofpoint is a premium solution with a premium price tag, placing it out of reach for most SMBs. Its admin console is notoriously complex and requires skilled, dedicated personnel to manage effectively.
• Not Built for SMBs or MSPs: This is a Fortune 1000 solution. The high cost, steep learning curve, and lack of a multi-tenant MSP model make it completely unsuitable for the SMB market or most MSP service offerings.
• "Legacy" Architecture: As a traditional Secure Email Gateway (SEG), Proofpoint requires changing MX records, a more complex deployment model compared to newer API-based solutions.

Pricing Structure

Proofpoint does not offer public pricing. It uses a highly modular, quote-based subscription model. Annual contracts for mid-sized enterprises often run into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Best Use Cases:

Proofpoint is built for large enterprises, Fortune 1000 companies, and government agencies with mature security programs, dedicated security teams, and the budget to invest in a best-in-class, integrated security suite.

4. IRONSCALES

IRONSCALES presents an innovative, AI-driven approach to email security. Instead of focusing solely on training, it operates as an Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES) platform that emphasizes post-delivery threat detection and automated remediation. Its unique philosophy is to combine the power of artificial intelligence with crowdsourced human intelligence to stop the phishing attacks that slip past traditional gateways.

Key Features of IRONSCALES

• AI-Powered Post-Delivery Remediation: IRONSCALES integrates via API with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace to analyze emails already in the inbox. Its AI detects anomalies and can automatically "claw back" malicious emails from all recipients.
• Crowdsourced Threat Intelligence: When a threat is confirmed at one company, that intelligence is immediately shared across the entire IRONSCALES customer network, proactively protecting everyone from the same zero-day attack.
• Contextual "Teachable Moments": If a user clicks a simulated phish or reports a real one, the platform delivers a short, in-the-moment training message. This just-in-time learning is highly effective at reinforcing good security habits.
• Automated Incident Triage: The system automatically clusters multiple user reports of the same suspicious email into a single incident, reducing the manual workload and alert fatigue for security teams.
  
  

Strengths: Where IRONSCALES Shines

• Excellent at Catching Modern Phishing: By focusing on behavioral analysis inside the inbox, IRONSCALES excels at detecting sophisticated, payload-less attacks like Business Email Compromise (BEC) that traditional filters miss.
• Powerful Human + AI Hybrid Model: The combination of AI detection and community-sourced threat intelligence creates a dynamic, self-learning defense system that is incredibly fast and effective.
• Ease of Deployment: As an API-based solution, deployment takes just minutes and doesn't require complex MX record changes, allowing it to easily supplement existing security layers.
• Major Efficiency Gains for SOC Teams: The high degree of automation in triage and remediation is a game-changer for lean IT and security teams.

Limitations to Consider

• More of a Technical Tool: IRONSCALES is framed more as a SOC tool for email remediation than a comprehensive human risk management platform. Its focus is less on holistic training programs and policy management.
• Lacks an Explicit MSP-First Focus: While usable by MSPs, the platform was not purpose-built for the multi-tenant resale model in the same way that a solution like Symbol Security was.
• Less Comprehensive Suite: IRONSCALES is hyper-focused on email security and lacks the broader features of some competitors, such as advanced archiving, DLP, or web security.

Pricing Structure

Pricing is not public and is provided via a custom quote. It is a per-user, per-year subscription model, with unofficial estimates ranging from $2 to $7 per user per month depending on the package.

Best Use Cases:

IRONSCALES is an ideal fit for small to mid-market organizations using Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace who need to automate their phishing response and strengthen their technical defenses against modern email threats.

5. Mimecast

Mimecast is another enterprise-grade, all-in-one platform that combines email security, archiving, and business continuity. Like Proofpoint, it is a heavyweight in the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) market, offering an integrated suite of services designed for large organizations with complex compliance and resilience needs. Security awareness training is one module within this much broader (and more expensive) ecosystem.

Key Features of Mimecast

• Integrated Security, Archiving, and Continuity: Mimecast's core value is its unified platform. It offers threat protection, a perpetual cloud archive for eDiscovery, and a mailbox continuity service to keep email running during an outage.
• Targeted Threat Protection (TTP): This suite includes advanced security features like URL rewriting, attachment sandboxing, and impersonation detection to combat spear-phishing and BEC.
• Industry-Leading Information Archiving: The tamper-proof cloud archive offers unlimited storage and retention, with incredibly fast search capabilities perfect for legal and compliance teams.
• Mailbox Continuity: This is a standout feature. If your primary email service goes down, Mimecast provides users with a web portal to continue sending and receiving emails, ensuring business resilience.
  
  

Strengths: Where Mimecast Shines

• Best-in-Class Business Continuity: The mailbox continuity feature is a major advantage, providing a level of resilience against outages that many competitors can't match.
• Powerful and Mature Archiving: For regulated industries, Mimecast's archiving and eDiscovery tools are often the primary reason for adoption, far surpassing native Microsoft 365 or Google capabilities.
• Single-Pane-of-Glass Management: The unified admin console allows administrators to manage security, archiving, and continuity from a single interface, simplifying vendor management.

Limitations to Consider

• Notoriously Complex Admin Console: The depth of features comes at the cost of simplicity. The admin console is widely regarded as dense and having a steep learning curve, requiring significant administrative overhead.
• Premium Price Tag: Mimecast is an expensive, enterprise-grade solution. Its price point and complexity make it unsuitable for small businesses or those without dedicated IT staff.
• Aggressive Filtering: Mimecast's default filters can be overly aggressive, leading to a high number of false positives (legitimate emails being quarantined), which can be a source of frustration for users and admins.

Pricing Structure

Mimecast does not publish pricing. It operates on a per-user, per-month subscription model with tiered bundles. Ballpark estimates typically range from $3 to $9+ per user per month.

Best Use Cases:

Mimecast is aimed at mid-sized to large enterprises, particularly those in heavily regulated industries like finance, legal, and healthcare that require a robust, all-in-one platform for security, archiving, and continuity.

How to Choose the Right Cofense Alternative for You

Finding the right platform is an opportunity to improve your security posture and streamline your operations. To make the best choice, consider these key questions:

1. Are you an MSP? If the answer is yes, your needs are unique. You require a platform built for resale, with a multi-tenant dashboard, co-branding, and a pricing model that supports your business. Of all the options, Symbol Security is the only one designed from the ground up for this purpose.
2. What's your company size and budget?

• SMB (under 500 employees): Your primary needs are effectiveness, affordability, and ease of use. A complex, expensive platform will only create more work. Look for solutions with transparent pricing and low administrative overhead. Symbol Security's clear pricing and free tier are perfect for this segment.
• Large Enterprise (1000+ employees): You likely have the budget, dedicated staff, and complex compliance needs to justify a feature-rich platform like KnowBe4, Proofpoint, or Mimecast.

3. What is your primary goal?

• Holistic Human Risk Management: If you want to combine employee testing, training, and policy management into one cohesive program, platforms like Symbol Security and KnowBe4 offer an integrated approach.
• Purely Technical Email Defense: If your main goal is to add an AI-powered safety net to stop threats automatically, tools like IRONSCALES are designed for advanced email remediation.

Picking The Right Cofense Alternative for You

While Cofense remains a powerful tool for the enterprise, the security landscape is filled with excellent Cofense alternatives better suited for different needs, budgets, and business models.

Enterprise giants like KnowBe4 and Proofpoint offer vast but complex and costly platforms. AI-first tools like IRONSCALES provide a formidable technical defense but lack the comprehensive human-focused training features.

For Managed Service Providers and small-to-medium businesses, the choice becomes clear. Symbol Security delivers the perfect balance of powerful features, intuitive ease of use, and transparent, affordable pricing. It provides everything you need to build a strong human firewall without the complexity and prohibitive cost of enterprise-grade solutions. It's the clear winner for organizations that need an effective security awareness program that just works.

Ready to see how an MSP-centric security awareness platform can transform your business and empower your users? Try Symbol Security for free for up to 15 users today!