Abnormal AI vs Sublime Security
This is the real choice in email-based payroll diversion, not a name-brand vs. no-name situation, both catch the payload-free 'update my direct deposit' email that a spam filter waves through. The difference is who does the tuning. Abnormal is a fully hands-off behavioral engine: no free tier, per-mailbox quotes, and onboarding that commonly runs five figures in professional services, but you're not expected to read a detection rule, ever. Sublime is free for your first 100 mailboxes and shows you exactly why it held a message, detections-as-code you can read and tune yourself, which is either its best feature or wasted potential depending on whether anyone on your team will actually open the rule editor. If nobody will, you're just running Sublime's strong defaults for free, which still beats paying for Abnormal you're not using well. Start with Sublime; upgrade to Abnormal once mailbox count or risk tolerance justifies paying someone else to do the tuning for you.
| Pricing model | custom-quote | freemium |
| Starting point | Contact the vendor for current pricing — Abnormal is premium, quote-only email security with no free tier, priced per mailbox on employee count plus paid onboarding (professional services commonly $5k-$25k+) | Genuinely free for your first 100 mailboxes, no credit card and no MX change |
| Best for | Any business that processes direct-deposit change requests by email or Slack and wants to stop social-engineering-driven payroll diversion before it happens. | Small and mid-size teams on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace that want serious, tunable BEC and payroll-diversion protection they can turn on for free and grow into. |
| Countries | United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia | United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia |
| Editorial score | 8/10 | 8.4/10 |
Abnormal AI
- Targets the single most common real-world payroll fraud vector for SMBs: social engineering by email
- Behavioral detection catches attacks with no malicious payload, which slip past traditional email security
- Sits upstream of payroll, stopping the fraudulent request before it's ever acted on
- This is an email security purchase, not a payroll or HR tool, different budget owner and evaluation process
- No visibility into payroll data itself, it only stops the request from being convincing
- Enterprise pricing and sales process, no public numbers to compare against
Sublime Security
- A real free tier (100 mailboxes) and no MX change, so a small team can switch it on today without a security project
- The open engine shows you why a message was flagged and lets you tune it, no black box
- Targets the behavioral tells of payroll-diversion BEC, the payload-free attacks a spam filter waves through
- Above 100 mailboxes pricing is quote-based, with no public number to compare against
- Detections-as-code only pays off if someone on your side will actually use it
- Still an email-security layer, it stops the request landing convincingly, it doesn't audit payroll records