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Blue Coat ProxySG [EOL] vs Zscaler Internet Access comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

iboss
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
Blue Coat ProxySG [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zscaler Internet Access
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (3rd), Internet Security (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
SS
Information Security Engineer at M.Tech
Granular control over website access has lead to decreased bandwidth and increased performance
If you have previously worked on the product then it is quite simple. However, if you are new to it then the implementation is a little bit tricky. On the Cloud Proxy, the deployment takes less than one day. If you are using the ProxySG or the on-premises solution, it will take one to two weeks depending on the policy configuration, the size of the organization, and what kinds of policies are needed. The number of staff you need to maintain the solution depends on the size of the organization, and how many changes occur on a daily basis. If you have one thousand employees then you need at least one employee to look after it.
VikasTiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at Anthology
Cloud security has transformed remote access and now supports zero trust for all users
The best features Zscaler Internet Access offers are Secure Web Gateway, URL filtering, SSL inspections, and policy-based access control. I find myself relying on Secure Web Gateway, URL filtering, SSL inspection, and policy-based access control the most because these are the main and top-most features I use regularly. Zscaler Internet Access has all of these types of features for securing all internet access and web inspections, allowing me to control all traffic through these features. Zscaler Internet Access features include a Secure Web Gateway for URL filtering, file type control, and inline SSL inspections. The second feature is a cloud firewall with Layer 3 to Layer 7 filtering control and stateful inspections. No hardware inspection or hardware firewall is required. I can also perform segmentations by users, location, and application. There is a cloud CASB solution available as well. Additionally, there is an advanced threat protection feature with signature-based behavioral detections, inline IPS, and zero-day threat protections. The cloud sandboxing solution scans unknown files and provides machine learning-based verdicts to prevent zero-day malware delivery in my environment. There is also a DNS security feature that provides DNS tunneling detections, malicious domain controls, and faster threat containment at the DNS layer. The data protection feature includes inline DLP and CASB-style cloud app control, data sovereignty enforcement, and browser isolation, which executes risky sites in isolated cloud browsers and prevents endpoint compromises. Zscaler Internet Access has positively impacted my organization by reducing the dependency on on-premises hardware and improving security posture, enabling faster user onboarding, and providing better performance for remote users. It has resulted in a drop in security incidents related to web threats and improved visibility into user activity. An area for improvement includes fine-grained troubleshooting tools, better policy simulations, and optimizations around initial configuration complexity.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."
"iboss is definitely very good in terms of service."
"This product is solid, fairly easy to use, and reliable."
"The students were always protected, and the content filtering worked very well, seeming to work better than other products we had tried previously."
"Proxy Solution and ADN, specifically its integration capability with Blue Coat Director to apply seamless policy across all of Blue Coat, along with intuitive proxy policy deployment using VPN and the ability to forward-chain your proxy, make it overall a good solution though growth requires automation support."
"Since the implementation of this solution, the bandwidth has decreased and the performance in terms of Internet access has increased."
"Proxy Solution and ADN and their integration capability with Blue Coat director are positive features."
"Customer Service: Blue Touch support is top notch and very responsive when I opened service requests."
"It features intuitive proxy policy deployment using a VPN."
"It's a great solution for high load enterprise infrastructure to protect company networks from web threats."
"The functionality of this solution is one of the best, and it is leading the market."
"We were able to monitor users' social media behavior and control certain activities to be allowed on the social media, which helped to prevent data loss and other activities that could result in a negative impact to the organization."
"All internet access flows through the Zscaler proxy, regardless of whether people are in office or remote, so I have greater control site access and I minimize the number of compromises that we experience to almost none."
"I would recommend Zscaler Internet Access due to its ease of use and deployment, with a user-friendly interface."
"Having a centralized firewall that protects the whole topography is quite awesome when you also have users that are not on the plan because it actually improves visibility of those users."
"Zscaler covers all the features needed to replace a VPN or proxy solution; they are good, and they've been on the market for 15 years now, so they are mature enough."
"The solution’s customer service is good."
"One feature that is valuable to me from an implementation point of view is that it's very easy to implement."
"What I like most about Zscaler Web Security is that we can have our users protected from internet threats and viruses even when they're not connected to our network."
"Zscaler Internet Access is less expensive than competitors like Palo Alto, offering a premium service justified by security enhancements and cost-effective scalability."
 

Cons

"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"iboss can be improved because the integration could be better; you need to import all the sites that you access today, and there are a few problems whenever you import thousands of websites, making the integration process messy for the users."
"It is stable, but due to growth, it can sometimes be less stable than wanted."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"We cannot automate the product since the IP address can only be assigned after acquisition of the serial number."
"Blue Coat advertises the ProxySG as a WAF, but it really isn’t."
"It lacks deployment over multiple platforms and integration with SDN architecture."
"There were benefits but the evolution is slow, hence wanting to move on with the product."
"They need to improve the intellectual analysis for APT vectors from web."
"It would be great if the product had inbuilt queuing for Quality of Service."
"The GUI works, but could be better."
"The OS capabilities and WSL support could be improved."
"The solution is quite expensive. It's around double what others are offering."
"Zscaler should provide adjacent services, which would be complementary to their current offering that could to be more pragmatic for a customer. For example, if you take Akamai, you get multiple sets of services, all depending on the customer and the strategy and the complexity and the problems. In some areas, they are more varied in terms of coverage."
"Zscaler Internet Access can improve by having more option for filtering policy which is currently only ip based (location policy)."
"The pricing is an issue. It is expensive if you have all of your users in the same location. It is expensive compared to other firewalls on the market."
"Zscale is providing a proxy IP, and most government sites will block traffic from a proxy. Also, we see some performance issues on the cloud side during DC failover."
"One thing that needs to be improved is their presence in China. I'm not sure if that's a Zscaler thing or if it's a problem with all vendors in this space, but it would be nice to have better coverage in China. This concern is a common one for vendors across the board when dealing with the Chinese market."
"In every cloud service in the world, you have multiple upstream internet providers to create diversity so that if one of your providers fails, your network just continues. In South Africa, there is only one upstream provider, and that's not right. That that's a problem."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"Additional features, such as Flash Proxies, have their own licensing fees that depend on what the requirements are."
"Price-wise, the tool is reasonable compared to the other products in the market but it is not a very low-priced tool. The solution does provide value for money."
"The pricing is fair based on its competitive market."
"It is costlier than other solutions."
"If we need any extra features, the price will increase."
"Roughly, we might spend $70,000 a month on the solution. We don't pay for anything beyond the standard licensing fee."
"We have found the solution to be expensive."
"Our monthly fee is around R3000."
"There are multiple bundles: enterprise, business, and transformation. Transformation includes all the features, but recently I've seen a few more line items that are additional costs. Overall, it's expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
7%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise15
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
iboss could be improved by making the dashboard more user-friendly, providing more detailed real-time alerts, and imp...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
iboss is primarily used for cloud security, helping to protect users when they access websites and cloud applications...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
The pricing and licensing for iboss were reasonable for the security features. The setup costs were manageable, thoug...
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Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...
Which is better, Zscaler internet access or Netsckope CASB?
We researched Netskope but ultimately chose Zscaler. Netskope is a cloud access security broker that helps identify ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler Internet Access?
We have not purchased Zscaler Internet Access through the AWS Marketplace; the licensing process was handled separate...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
No data available
ZIA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.
Global Technology and Material Manufacturer
Ulster-Greene ARC, BanRegio, HDFC, Ralcorp Holdings Inc., British American Tobacco, Med America Billing Services Inc., Lanco Group, Aquafil, Telefonica, Swisscom, Brigade Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Zscaler and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.