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Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

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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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
20th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (15th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (11th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (13th), Access Management (12th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (8th), ZTNA (3rd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Check Point Anti-Spam and E...
Ranking in Email Security
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 5.2%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Email5.2%
Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade0.7%
Cloudflare One1.5%
Other92.6%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
AimanSayyed - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Lead at DigitalTrack Solutions Pvt Ltd
Has significantly reduced phishing threats through proactive monitoring and centralized visibility
A specific example of how Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade helps protect my organization from spam or phishing is when I log in to my management console of the Check Point tool and I open the email security blade logs, and I see all the overnight status of spam, what was the spam message volume, how many phishing attempts were made, and what kind of attachments were quarantined. This gives a real-time threat intelligence and advanced detection of phishing attacks. Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade offers a very easy-to-use dashboard and a proactive approach. Whatever trends are observed will directly inform us. The dashboard is very easy to understand. It gives a spam detection summary where it provides a visual representation through pie or bar graphs for spam suspected or clean mails. I also really appreciate the quarantine summary as it is very descriptive and gives a quick insight into the user complaints, compliance, and backlog. The system health, such as the CPU and update types of status of signatures, is also very well represented, so it does not cause any overload. Integration with SIEM or SOC dashboards, such as QRadar which we use in the organization, is very easy via Syslog exports. This gives centralized visibility, so you do not need to check with all the other devices as one device will give you a centralized overview. Smart events are also very configurable and will give us notifications or mitigation actions, which is beneficial.
KS
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
Email security has protected financial data and provides clear tracking for every branch message
The areas of Cisco Secure Email that could be improved or enhanced are the slowness in the console. I don't think it was a database error or something, but we feel some slowness in configuring DLP and other content filters compared to other consoles. It may have been due to on-premises, but it was much noisy at some times while configuring DLP. When we tried to configure a DLP policy, the console became much slower. In that case, we cannot see what had happened in the mail which was blocked at that time. It may take nearly an hour to get back to normal while configuring policies. That is the major issue in the product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Using Cloudflare One makes my work quite easy because for DDoS protection, all I need to do is understand the OSI model and click; it makes it easier than trying to write a command line or use a Linux command."
"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."
"What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection."
"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."
"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."
"Cloudflare is by far the most effective solution that I have come across."
"Clover is the best product globally."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform removes the risk of exposing the applications to the public."
"Anti-spam and malware phishing are valuable features of the solution."
"It does a better job of recognizing spammers."
"It has provided us with an easy way to avoid invasive mail."
"When sharing files with my colleagues, it provides a comprehensive report on the security status of the document."
"The best features of Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade are its security features, which help the team perform their daily tasks without having to concern for potential security breaches."
"It's a fairly old solution, however, that has been updated over time to become one of the best manufacturers of security solutions."
"It is certainly very beneficial for a small business and works best in combination with other Check Point blades, such as the Data Protection Blade that protects against data loss via email."
"One of the standout features of the product is a significant reduction in false positives, achieved through the implementation of artificial intelligence for detecting malware, phishing attempts, and spam emails."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Gateway has allowed our users to be able to concentrate on the emails that they do receive. Previously, our users had to deal with nine million additional emails across the organization, which is nearly 1,000 emails per user to have to deal with a month. That's a massive amount for our staff to deal with and probably several hours of their time. We have a lot of clinical staff, being a hospital. We want to make our staff as productive as possible. By removing a lot of that spam and phishing type emails, this allows them to do their job."
"It is doing its work. It is doing what it was actually designed to do. It has ensured we don't have business email compromises, and it has also ensured that our brand Galaxy is unique all year round."
"It has the ability to tell us, after an email has been delivered, where else it went, once it got inside. Maybe it's something we wanted it to stop and it didn't stop it, but it notified us later that it was something that it should have stopped. It can give us a trajectory of all the other places that it went internally and it can tell us what files were transferred as well."
"I can customize the configuration and policies."
"What I find the most valuable about Cisco Secure Email is that the logs are not that difficult to see even if you're not used to them. The logs are reasonably readable and diagnosing the problem is not too hard with them."
"It has the IMS engine, Intelligent Multi-Scan engine, and it does a good job, right out-of-the-box, of blocking the vast majority of things that should be blocked."
"Capital expenditure is a significant consideration, and the impact on major expenditures prompts a careful analysis before onboarding the new product."
"The tech engineers are very knowledgeable."
 

Cons

"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."
"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
"The software has automated alerts, but the automated alerts are not available in the mobile app."
"The UX/UI could be more friendly."
"The technical team could improve services by ensuring when there are changes they inform enterprise users of effective upgrades."
"The pattern used to filter emails could be improved"
"The solution's technical support is an area with shortcomings that need to be improved for the better."
"The customer support for Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade rates at 6 out of 10. Sometimes the Check Point support has issues as they do not respond immediately when I log a ticket and sometimes they lag."
"There could be an extension of the trial period to 60 days."
"One area where Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade can be improved is the knowledge base configuration."
"The learning curve is steep, and the initial level configuration could be a bit complex."
"We have Microsoft and we have the E5 licenses, they have more EDR responses on certain emails. That's something that Cisco ESA on the cloud doesn't have. They don't do anything about MITRE attacks. They only detect if there is a malicious email or a threat and they remove it."
"Cisco Secure Email can be improved from the administrator's point of view. Usually, you have to work with different areas, and they can try to make it easy for the administrator to use different functions."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability."
"The user interface of the Email Security Gateway should be improved."
"I would like to see features like AI since it is currently an area that the product lacks."
"The interface is dated. It has looked pretty much the same for 15 years or so. It would be helpful to be able to do everything from one spot. The centralized quarantine and reporting are completely separate from policy administration."
"The graphical user interface is not user-friendly like other vendors. I find it very difficult at times to find some options on the UI."
"In some cases, detection is missed, leading to false positives where genuine emails are flagged as spam."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"This is a simple system with a very low cost and basic functions, which surely is ideal for a small company."
"The cost is competitive with other security products on the market."
"I rate the pricing as an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"Reasonably priced solution."
"For licensing, my company makes yearly payments, which is expensive."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"Choosing the correct set of licenses is essential because, without the additional software blade licenses, the Check Point gateways are just a stateful firewall."
"At times, we feel the pricing is a bit too high, but then, there is also room for discounts. We enjoy a lot of discounts, and that is why we are still with them. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is expensive."
"We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
"Compared to Cisco's on-prem service, the cost is the same, but you don't have to pay for the hardware and you don't have to maintain the system, as far as upgrades and hardware failures are concerned. It is cheaper to operate on their cloud service than it is to operate with their on-prem service."
"It is a relatively expensive option compared to other alternatives."
"In addition to the standard licensing, there is a cost for SMARTnet as well."
"There are additional fees for adding features."
"As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access provides secure access to internal applications for employees, external members of the organization...
What advice do you have for others considering Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access is one of the best integrations available. While about two hundred vendors offer similar services, ...
What needs improvement with Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade?
At this time, I do not see anything lacking in Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade. It is working...
What is your primary use case for Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade?
My main use case for Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade is to protect document or file links att...
What advice do you have for others considering Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade?
Any organization looking for the best email security solution should consider Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Securit...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
No data available
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
SF Police Credit Union (SFPCU)
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,546 professionals have used our research since 2012.