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Email Security Software · Rank #9 of 10

Material Security

Post-delivery email protection, reduces the blast radius of compromised mailboxes.

By Material Security, Inc. · Founded 2017 · Redwood City, CA · private

Material Security is a modern challenger founded in 2017, building post-delivery email protection that reduces the blast radius of compromised mailboxes. The product's thesis: pre-delivery filtering will always miss some attacks, so the durable defensive posture is to assume mailboxes will be compromised and to architect them to limit damage when they are. Material does this by re-encrypting historical sensitive email at rest, requiring step-up authentication to retrieve it, and by hardening Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace configurations against the post-takeover playbook (forwarding rules, OAuth grants, mailbox delegation). Best fit for security-mature organizations specifically prioritizing account takeover containment as a layer above their inline SEG or Defender. Trade-offs: niche positioning makes it a complement rather than a replacement, Narrower customer base than Abnormal, and the value is in containment rather than detection.

Visit Material Security Vendor pricing Compare to Sublime Security
Best for

Security-mature organizations (1,000-50,000 employees) that have accepted that mailboxes will eventually be compromised and want to limit the blast radius, particularly financial services, legal, and high-IP-value verticals.

Worst for

Organizations still without an inline SEG / Defender layer (Material does not replace pre-delivery filtering), cost-sensitive buyers (premium pricing), or buyers wanting one product for both detection and containment (Abnormal wins on detection breadth).

Vendor Trust Score

Is Material Security a trustworthy vendor?

8.4/10
High trust
Pricing transparency
Published rates; no hidden fees
6.5
Contract fairness
Reasonable terms; no auto-renew traps
8.0
Incident response
How they handle outages and breaches
9.0
Post-acquisition behavior
Customer treatment after M&A or PE
9.0
Executive stability
Leadership churn over 24 months
9.0
Roadmap honesty
Public commitments held
9.0
Trust signal log
  • 2022-02-15
    Series C raised $100M led by Founders Fund at $1.1B valuation
  • 2024-09-22
    Posture management capability expanded for M365 and Google Workspace hardening
  • 2025-06-12
    Customer wins reported in financial services and legal verticals on ATO containment thesis
  • 2026-02-08
    Niche positioning continues as complement to inline SEG; not replacement
Vendor Trust is scored independently of product quality. A great product from an unfair vendor still earns a low trust score.
Review Intelligence

What 240 reviews actually say

Synthesized from G2, Capterra, Reddit, Trustpilot. Patterns >15% prevalence shown.

Last synthesized
2026-04-30

Praise patterns

  • Containment-first thesis is genuinely differentiated
    78% →
  • Re-encryption of historical sensitive email valuable
    64% →
  • Posture management hardening reduces ATO blast radius
    51% ↑
  • Fits financial services and legal verticals
    47% →

Complaint patterns

  • Niche positioning, complement not replacement
    41% →
  • Smaller deployed base versus Abnormal
    38% →
  • Detection breadth thinner than Abnormal
    31% →
  • Brand recognition lower in evaluations
    31% →
Sentiment trend (6 months)
86/100 +2 pts
12
01
02
03
04
05
Patterns are extracted from review corpus and human-verified. We surface trends, not anecdotes.
Verified Pricing

What buyers actually pay

64 anonymized deal disclosures · last updated 2026-04-30

Contribute your deal price
Company size Median annual
500-2,500 mailboxes $48,000
2,500-10,000 mailboxes $168,000
Verified pricing is crowdsourced from buyers under anonymity guarantees. Vendor-listed prices are validated against actual deals quarterly.
Compliance & Security

Auto-verified certifications

Verified 2026-05-01
SOC 2 Type II
ISO 27001
HIPAA
GDPR
CCPA
PCI DSS
FedRAMP

Editorial: Strengths

  • Post-delivery email protection, unique containment thesis
  • Re-encrypts historical sensitive email at rest, requires step-up auth
  • Hardens M365 / Google Workspace against post-takeover playbook (forwarding, OAuth, delegation)
  • Right call for security-mature organizations focused on ATO containment
  • Modern analyst UX
  • Founder-led with transparent product thesis

Editorial: Weaknesses

  • Niche positioning, complement to inline SEG, not replacement
  • Less penetration than Abnormal
  • Behavioral detection thinner than Abnormal (Material is containment-first)
  • Best-fit narrows to security-mature organizations
  • Brand recognition lower than Abnormal in enterprise evaluations
  • Pricing partially transparent; channel-controlled

Key features & integrations

  • +Post-delivery email protection, unique containment-first thesis
  • +Re-encryption of historical sensitive email at rest
  • +Step-up authentication for sensitive email retrieval
  • +M365 / Google Workspace posture management (forwarding, OAuth, delegation hardening)
  • +Account takeover detection and remediation
  • +Phishing detection (post-delivery)
  • +Auto-remediation across the tenant
  • +Integration with SSO/MFA providers
60+ integrations
Microsoft 365Google WorkspaceOktaMicrosoft SentinelSplunkPagerDuty
Geography supported
Global; strongest in US, EU, UK
Best fit
500–50,000 employees · Security-mature organizations focused on ATO containment
Editorial deep-dive

Read our full ranking of Email Security Software

Material Security ranks #9 in our editorial review of 10 email security software platforms. The deep-dive covers methodology, comparison tables, decision matrix, migration scoring, and FAQs.

Read the full ranking

Closest alternatives in Email Security Software

#8
Sublime Security
Open-format detection rules (MQL); modern challenger for detection-engineering teams.
★ 4.8 partial
#10
Vade
French ML-anchored email security; strong European mid-market and ISP fit.
★ 4.6 partial
#7
Avanan
Cloud-anchored API-integrated email security; tight Check Point Infinity integration.
★ 4.7 opaque
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