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Cybersecurity · head to head

Delinea vs Proofpoint

Delinea logo

Delinea

Cybersecurity

Privileged access management from the merged Thycotic and Centrify

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Proofpoint logo

Proofpoint

Cybersecurity

Email security and data protection suite from a private company owned by Thoma Bravo, licensed per user with modules sold separately.

From
$6/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Delinea the Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.; Proofpoint licensing is per user per year with each capability as a separate stock item, so the platform shown in a proof of concept is normally several products, and adding awareness training, data loss prevention or insider threat monitoring later is a fresh negotiation rather than enabling a feature.
  • They diverge on capability: Delinea covers Secret Server, Proofpoint covers Inline secure email gateway.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Delinea and Proofpoint actually diverge.

Attributes where Delinea and Proofpoint differ
AttributeDelineaProofpoint
Starting priceOn request$6/month
Pricing modelquotesubscription
PlatformsWeb, Windows, Linux, macOSEmail, Cloud, Web
FoundedUnknown2002

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Cybersecurity).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Delinea

  • Secret Server
  • Privileged session recording
  • Privilege Manager
  • Server PAM
  • Discovery
  • DevOps secrets
  • Behaviour analytics

Only in Proofpoint

  • Inline secure email gateway
  • Attachment sandboxing
  • URL rewriting and click-time analysis
  • Threat Response Auto-Pull
  • Email Fraud Defense
  • Security awareness training
  • Insider Threat Management
  • Enterprise DLP

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Delinea

  • An organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotatednot Proofpoint
  • A mid-market IT team that abandoned a heavier PAM rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeksnot Proofpoint
  • A company removing local administrator rights from every workstation after a ransomware incidentnot Proofpoint
  • An audit finding that shared service account passwords are stored in a spreadsheet and used by contractorsnot Proofpoint

Proofpoint

  • A regulated organisation that needs a filtering layer, DMARC enforcement and archiving with an auditable trail across all threenot Delinea
  • An organisation that suffered a business email compromise and must show its board a control that stops delivery rather than remediating afterwardsnot Delinea
  • Concentrating stronger controls and training on the specific individuals who actually receive targeted attacks rather than applying uniform policynot Delinea
  • Retracting a phishing message from thousands of mailboxes after the verdict changes, including copies that were forwarded internallynot Delinea

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Delinea

  • The Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.
  • Modules are licensed separately by different units, per privileged user for the vault and per endpoint for privilege management, which makes total cost hard to model and easy to underestimate at scale.
  • Delinea does not publish rates, so buyers benchmark against third party and public sector listings; expect list prices to be negotiable by a wide margin, which means the first quote is not the price.
  • Thoma Bravo ownership since 2021 has coincided with firmer renewal pricing, and buyers with a single-vendor PAM estate have little leverage once credentials are inside the vault.
  • Migrating out of a privileged access vault is a genuinely hard project because every automated process that fetches a secret has to be repointed, so the switching cost is real and the vendor knows it.

Proofpoint

  • Licensing is per user per year with each capability as a separate stock item, so the platform shown in a proof of concept is normally several products, and adding awareness training, data loss prevention or insider threat monitoring later is a fresh negotiation rather than enabling a feature.
  • It sits inline with MX records pointed at it, so any service degradation is a mail outage for the entire organisation, and both migrating on and migrating off are cutovers with queueing, rollback planning and a real risk of message loss.
  • Most customers on Microsoft 365 E5 or Google Workspace Enterprise are already paying for native filtering, so Proofpoint is a second licence layered over a capability the organisation owns, and that comparison is raised by finance at every single renewal.
  • The administration console carries a decade of acquisitions: the classic gateway policy routes and filters do not share a model with the newer module interfaces, rule evaluation is order-sensitive in ways that surprise untrained administrators, and mistakes there silently change what is delivered.
  • Quarantine management is a standing helpdesk workload because legitimate bulk mail, invoices and supplier notifications are held, and unless end-user digests are configured and users are taught to use them, the security team becomes the mail release desk.

Pricing, plan by plan

Delinea

On request
  • Secret Server$undefined/year
    • Priced per privileged user, tiered by edition
    • Cloud or on premises deployment
    • Session recording in higher editions
  • Privilege Manager$undefined/year
    • Priced per endpoint
    • Local admin rights removal and application elevation
    • Licensed separately from Secret Server
  • Server PAM$undefined/year
    • Priced per managed server or per privileged user
    • Just-in-time server access
    • Licensed separately

Proofpoint

$6/month
  • Email Protection$6/month
    • Per user
    • Advanced threat detection
    • Data loss prevention
  • Compliance$8/month
    • All Email Protection
    • Archive & search
    • eDiscovery
  • Advanced Threat$10/month
    • All Compliance features
    • Targeted attack detection
    • Behavior analytics

Which should you pick?

Choose Delinea if

  • You need secret server.
  • You work on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS.
  • You also want privileged session recording.
Delinea review

Choose Proofpoint if

  • You need inline secure email gateway.
  • You work on Email, Cloud, Web.
  • You also want attachment sandboxing.
Proofpoint review

Questions people ask

Is Delinea or Proofpoint better?
Neither clearly leads. Delinea starts at On request and Proofpoint at $6/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Delinea or Proofpoint?
Delinea starts at On request and Proofpoint at $6/month.
Does Delinea or Proofpoint run on more platforms?
Delinea runs on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS. Proofpoint runs on Email, Cloud, Web.
What is Delinea best used for?
Delinea is most often used for an organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotated, a mid-market it team that abandoned a heavier pam rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeks, a company removing local administrator rights from every workstation after a ransomware incident, an audit finding that shared service account passwords are stored in a spreadsheet and used by contractors. Of those, an organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotated and a mid-market it team that abandoned a heavier pam rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeks are not what Proofpoint is typically brought in for.
What can Delinea do that Proofpoint cannot?
Delinea covers Secret Server, Privileged session recording, Privilege Manager, Server PAM. Proofpoint covers Inline secure email gateway, Attachment sandboxing, URL rewriting and click-time analysis, Threat Response Auto-Pull.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Delinea: Is Delinea the same as Thycotic?

Delinea is the merged company formed from Thycotic and Centrify in 2021. Secret Server is the former Thycotic product; the server access products come from Centrify.

Proofpoint: Does it replace Microsoft Defender for Office 365?

Functionally it overlaps heavily, and running both means paying twice for filtering. Most Proofpoint customers on Microsoft 365 keep Defender licensed because it is bundled in E5 and use Proofpoint as the inline gateway. Expect to justify that duplication annually.

Delinea: Is pricing published?

Not by Delinea. Public sector frameworks have listed Secret Server Cloud around 348 GBP per user per year, which is a reference point, not a quote.

Proofpoint: Who owns Proofpoint?

Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm, which took the company private in 2021. It has continued to acquire since, including Tessian, Normalyze and Hornetsecurity, which is why the portfolio spans so many adjacent categories.

Delinea: Does one licence cover endpoints and servers?

No. Secret Server, Privilege Manager and Server PAM are separately licensed on different units. Scope all three if your requirement spans them.

Proofpoint: Do I have to change my MX records?

For the gateway, yes. That is what makes it inline and able to block before delivery. Some newer capabilities integrate through the mailbox API instead, but the core protection model is MX-level.

Proofpoint: Is security awareness training included?

No, it is a separate subscription. It integrates well with the threat data, so training can target the users actually being attacked, but it is a distinct line item on the quote.

Proofpoint: What does Threat Response Auto-Pull actually do?

It removes messages from mailboxes after delivery when the verdict changes, including copies that users forwarded internally. It is the answer to the case where a link was clean at delivery and weaponised an hour later.

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