AD Tripwires vs IMAP-Honey: 2026 Comparison
AD Tripwires is a commercial honeypots & deception tool by Horizon3.ai. IMAP-Honey is a free honeypots & deception tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best honeypots & deception fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Mid-market and enterprise security teams that treat Active Directory as a detection problem, not just a hardening problem, should evaluate AD Tripwires. It deploys honeypot objects directly into AD to catch reconnaissance and lateral movement before it reaches production assets, and the integration with Horizon3.ai's NodeZero platform means you validate that your tripwires actually work against your real attack surface. Skip this if your team lacks the AD expertise to maintain decoy objects or if you're looking for a tool that also handles response automation; AD Tripwires is detection and alerting only.
Security teams running mail servers in isolated lab environments or threat intelligence operations will get the most from IMAP-Honey, since it's free and requires zero dependencies beyond a basic Linux box to spin up fast credential traps. The 25 GitHub stars and syslog integration suggest it's been field-tested by researchers who need protocol-level deception without licensing friction. Not worth deploying if you need alerting sophistication, cross-protocol coverage beyond mail, or any kind of vendor support; this is a lightweight tactical tool, not a platform replacement.
