Softwr

Cybersecurity · head to head

Proofpoint vs Soketi

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
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Soketi logo

Soketi

Developer Tools

Self-hosted, Pusher-compatible WebSockets server with a stalled maintenance record

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Soketi has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: 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.; Soketi maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
  • They diverge on capability: Proofpoint covers Inline secure email gateway, Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Proofpoint and Soketi actually diverge.

Attributes where Proofpoint and Soketi differ
AttributeProofpointSoketi
Starting price$6/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsEmail, Cloud, WebLinux, macOS, Windows
CategoryCybersecurityDeveloper Tools
Founded2002Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

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 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

Only in Soketi

  • Pusher protocol compatibility
  • Presence and private channels
  • Horizontal scaling
  • App management backends
  • Webhooks
  • Prometheus metrics

What people use each for

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

Proofpoint

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

Soketi

  • A Laravel application that already uses Echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime providernot Proofpoint
  • Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Proofpoint
  • A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Proofpoint
  • A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Proofpoint

Where each one falls short

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

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.

Soketi

  • Maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
  • Dependency drift on Node and uWebSockets.js will eventually force you to fork or migrate, and that cost is unbudgeted at the point you adopt it.
  • There is no commercial support to buy, so a production incident at three in the morning is entirely your problem with no escalation path.
  • Scaling beyond a single node needs Redis and careful configuration, and getting presence channels correct across nodes is a genuine source of subtle bugs.
  • It implements the Pusher protocol rather than tracking it, so any protocol feature Pusher adds later will not appear, and the compatibility guarantee slowly decays.

Pricing, plan by plan

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

Soketi

Free
  • SoketiFree
    • MIT licensed
    • Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
    • No vendor billing

Which should you pick?

Choose Proofpoint if

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

Choose Soketi if

  • You need pusher protocol compatibility.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want presence and private channels.
Soketi review

Questions people ask

Is Proofpoint or Soketi better?
Neither clearly leads. Proofpoint starts at $6/month and Soketi at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Proofpoint or Soketi?
Soketi has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $6/month for Proofpoint and Free for Soketi.
Does Proofpoint or Soketi run on more platforms?
Proofpoint runs on Email, Cloud, Web. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Soketi for free?
Yes. Soketi has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Proofpoint starts at $6/month.
What is Proofpoint best used for?
Proofpoint is most often used for a regulated organisation that needs a filtering layer, dmarc enforcement and archiving with an auditable trail across all three, an organisation that suffered a business email compromise and must show its board a control that stops delivery rather than remediating afterwards, concentrating stronger controls and training on the specific individuals who actually receive targeted attacks rather than applying uniform policy, retracting a phishing message from thousands of mailboxes after the verdict changes, including copies that were forwarded internally. Of those, a regulated organisation that needs a filtering layer, dmarc enforcement and archiving with an auditable trail across all three and an organisation that suffered a business email compromise and must show its board a control that stops delivery rather than remediating afterwards are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
What can Proofpoint do that Soketi cannot?
Proofpoint covers Inline secure email gateway, Attachment sandboxing, URL rewriting and click-time analysis, Threat Response Auto-Pull. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

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.

Soketi: Is Soketi still maintained?

Barely. The maintainer has stated that available time is very limited and releases have been sparse; treat it as community-maintained.

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.

Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?

No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.

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.

Soketi: What does it cost?

Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.

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.

Soketi: What are people moving to?

Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.

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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