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Avanan vs Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

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 Threat D...
Ranking in Email Security
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Threat Defense is 1.1%, up from 1.0% 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.
Enrique-Diaz Jolly - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides comprehensive threat protection with suggestions for modernizing controls
I use the email gateway as the core of the email exchange between the Internet and our domain. The email gateway serves as the email exchanger The product offers protection, email security, anti-spam, and antivirus. It includes threat intelligence with advanced malware protection and many…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Email Attachment Protection detects any insecure files and quickly blocks them to prevent the spread of viruses to other secure documents."
"This technology is one of Check Point's acquisitions, and it is currently a powerful tool that provides all the protection that is not found in other tools."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its effectiveness. When scanning incoming emails for threats it can in an automated fashion, quarantine suspicious attachments."
"It can retract unsafe emails and remove them from the entire communication channel."
"The customizable rules allow you to change aspects."
"If we look at four to five years ago, we had close to six or eight people click a link in an email per month. Now, we are probably down to about five or six clicks a year, if not less."
"Email encryption enhances end to end security of any data before it passes through the networking system."
"It is simple to deploy this platform and interact with the set features."
"The product offers protection, email security, anti-spam, and antivirus."
"The features and functionalities are much better than Microsoft's in-built Defender plan."
"The ability to see east-west traffic is its most valuable feature. Traditionally, email defense focuses on north-south, inbound-outbound, egress-ingress traffic. With Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, it's able to quickly identify, track, tag, and categorize emails that are internal. That can typically give us visibility into if there's an internal compromised account (for example). Someone can then use that internal compromised account to email additional accounts with either malicious software or links, but internal within that Office tenant. Effectively, that email message never leaves the tenant. Any of the mail gateways really do not have any method or way of seeing this traffic since it's not leaving the environment."
"The solution is stable."
"Secure Email Threat Defense's scalability is good."
"On ease of use, it rates very high. It's something that I was able to get into without really looking at any documentation. I wanted to see what it felt like before I started looking at any documentation on how to use it, and it was very easy to use. It works very smoothly. The user experience is very intuitive. They did an amazing job on that."
"I would say it's very comprehensive, with multiple antivirus OEMs, virus encrypt features, encryption, and more."
"Regarding stability, Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is very stable."
 

Cons

"When sending bulky emails, the system slows down and takes a long time before it responds effectively to our requests."
"It should also offer a quick backup in case any email is wrongly quarantined or deleted to ensure no data loss."
"Being cloud first and because we are in the movie business, we use a lot of Macintoshes. So, there is absolutely no reason for us to have Active Directory whatsoever. However, if you are using Office 365, you must have Active Directory in order to reset passwords. Even though we have a single sign-on provider, we must have Azure Active Directory for Office 365, which is really stupid. As a cloud application, you would think that I don't need Active Directory, which I don't need for anything else except Office 365. We have one server inside that space to help us manage Active Directory just for Office 365. This is a very sore point, but it is what it is."
"The customer service team could come up with clear tutorials on how to use this platform to help new teams."
"They should come up with a mobile application so that it can be more flexible."
"The system response in a slow computing device affects performance when sending and receiving emails."
"It is complicated for new users unfamiliar with the modern cloud networking infrastructure."
"Familiarization with performance for new teams may take a long time."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The product's complexity at times results in redundant rule sets that are difficult to untangle, highlighting the need for streamlined management systems and a more user-centric approach to system configuration."
"From a technical point of view, Cisco is far behind in terms of cybersecurity, and it has to improve very much."
"There is still room for improvement in terms of integrations with other Cisco tools and non-Cisco tools. There is also some room for improvement needed in terms of the reporting."
"Customers will benefit greatly from monthly billing because the majority of customers today use the cloud, be it Office 365, or Google Cloud."
"We encounter issues while searching for missing emails."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox can improve by adding advanced phishing, then the solution would become the best in the market. However, this could increase the price even more. Additionally, if CES with domain protection could be added it would be an even better solution."
"The tool gives false positives and it needs to be more accurate. I would like to see AI as a new feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Having the flexibility and modeling to do the pricing that best fits the needs of the organization is incredibly ideal. That is what Avanan does. They know exactly how many users are using it, etc. We can tune the invoicing associated with how we are using the product so we can charge it back to the shows appropriately."
"Good pricing arrangement as an SaaS offering."
"The pricing of Avanan is reasonable."
"The product is not the cheapest in the market."
"Avanan’s price is comparable to Barracuda."
"The solution’s pricing is manageable."
"It is expensive compared to other vendors."
"The feedback from vendors and customer is that it is expensive."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox does not have any competition with Sophos, Trend Micro, or other vendors of the world. However, there is a pricing premium for the solution. One has to look at it from that angle that while they are buying Cisco, there will be a premium, and Cisco justifies that premium value. That's why they're charging a high price."
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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
23%
Healthcare Company
8%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Secure Email Threat Defense?
The pricing for Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is relatively high. For an organization that already has the legacy system, it makes sense to continue hosting it. However, new organizations might...
What needs improvement with Secure Email Threat Defense?
Modernization is an area that could be improved for Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, as some features have lagged behind newer competitors, potentially offering more advanced analysis capabilitie...
What is your primary use case for Secure Email Threat Defense?
The main use case for Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is as a gateway for email traffic into and out of the organization. It serves as the primary conduit for emails, providing content filtering,...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, Cisco CMD, Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
Luiss University, Lone Star College, T-Systems, Magyar Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about Avanan vs. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.