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Avanan vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.4
Avanan improved email security, reduced phishing, increased user trust, enhanced mobile protection, and boosted ROI and revenue growth.
Sentiment score
6.4
Cisco Secure Email enhances ROI with robust security, reducing disruptions and downtime from cyber threats, despite perceived high costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.1
Avanan's customer service is highly responsive, professional, and proactive, with excellent communication and extensive support staff knowledge.
Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Secure Email support is praised for its responsiveness and expertise, though experiences can vary based on assigned engineers.
Cisco's tech support can be hit or miss, depending on the engineer you get.
The support is pretty decent, with a rating of eight out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Avanan integrates with Office 365 and Google, praised for scalability, admin capabilities, and efficient email protection across diverse organizations.
Sentiment score
7.2
Cisco Secure Email provides scalable solutions for seamless user migration and system growth, with reliable cloud service options.
The on-premises hardware is not very scalable, but switching to the SaaS offering is expected to improve scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Avanan is highly praised for its stability, efficiency, security, minimal maintenance, seamless Microsoft 365 integration, and reliable AI-based scanning.
Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Secure Email is praised for reliability, consistent performance, easy maintenance, and high user satisfaction with stable uptime.
Based on my experience, the stability of Cisco Secure Email is very strong.
 

Room For Improvement

Users feel Avanan needs improvements in Active Directory dependency, email quarantining, AI logic, training, UI, performance, pricing, mobile app, and integrations.
Cisco Secure Email's high cost, complexity, poor interface, and limited integration impact usability, requiring AI and service enhancements.
The solution should better analyze the actual content rather than only focusing on the email header or origin.
It would be beneficial to have the functionality of the Email Threat Defense integrated into the Email Security Gateway so customers don't have to buy two products for full email protection.
 

Setup Cost

Avanan provides flexible pricing for Office 365, with straightforward setup and costs between $4 to $8 per user.
Cisco Secure Email is priced higher, but users find its extensive features and security benefits justify the cost.
Its cost is bundled with other Cisco products.
The licensing is a mess and needs sorting out.
The pricing structure is good as it is user-based or email client-based, which is positive for clients.
 

Valuable Features

Avanan provides advanced malware and phishing detection, 24/7 cloud protection, easy integration with Microsoft 365, and ensures secure communications.
Cisco Secure Email provides comprehensive threat management with advanced filtering, intuitive management, and seamless integration, enhancing email security effectively.
It also possesses multiple modules for spam detection, malware detection, and threat intelligence, which are valuable in categorizing emails and determining actions.
It is highly effective in catching phishing and spam emails.
It covers everything through email, like antivirus, IDS, and IPS.
 

Categories and Ranking

Avanan
Ranking in Email Security
16th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (26th)
Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Avanan is 3.7%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 6.1%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Robert Melendez - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances email security and has a very simple and easy-to-use UI
Spam protection is the most valuable feature. We have implemented the tool to enhance our email security. It helps prevent phishing attacks. The anomaly detection capabilities are baked into the security platform. The product integrates wonderfully with Microsoft 365. It's built right on a cloud platform and works almost natively. The solution has a very simple and easy-to-use UI. The tool appears extremely powerful and has a good solid feature set. It catches things that are bad for my environment. The user interface is good the way it is. If the solution continues down that path, I see no problems with the way it is going. It feels like a mature product.
Kostas Karidas - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps prevent security breaches but fails to improve in the area of AI
I have not noticed any impressive advanced threat protection mechanisms in the tool. I don't know if there are any AI features in the product. I don't know if there is any other technology embedded in the solution. Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats. My company has seen plenty of scenarios where Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats, spam emails, and fraudulent domains. The product is good for dealing with spam emails, and it can take care of more than 100 spam emails per day. A huge number of spam emails are monitored with the help of Cisco Secure Email. I would not recommend the product to other businesses because you need to have some kind of expertise in configuring and knowing a bit about the tool's GUI. The tool also lacks in the area of AI mechanics. If I would like to have an overview and review another solution, I would go for another product other than Cisco Secure Email. I can definitely suggest others to look at the product and review it, but I would also recommend that they compare it with the other solutions in the market. I wouldn't prioritize Cisco Secure Email over other tools. Either the support partner of the product or I take care of the tool's maintenance phase by looking into the configurations and doing some fine-tuning. I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Avanan?
Spam protection is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with Avanan?
Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments. Barracuda provides backup and retention of emails and Microsoft 365’s backup and retention services. I've brought this up with the vendor. They told me t...
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Email?
Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Email?
The pricing structure is good as it is user-based or email client-based, which is positive for clients.
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Email?
The user interface of the Email Security Gateway ( /products/security-gateway-reviews ) should be improved. It would be beneficial to have the functionality of the Email Threat Defense integrated i...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Find out what your peers are saying about Avanan vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.