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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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (13th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (22nd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (9th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Check Point Anti-Spam and E...
Ranking in Email Security
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
46
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 (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.7%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade is 1.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 4.7%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Email4.7%
Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade1.5%
Cloudflare One1.7%
Other92.1%
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.
Adrian Cambronero - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at Interglobalmsp
Advanced email filtering has reduced phishing incidents and protects users across our organization
Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade works very well overall, but there are a few areas where it could be improved. One is the reporting interface; it is useful but could be more intuitive and provide clearer insights without needing to go through multiple menus. I would also like to see faster or more seamless updates to threat intelligence so the system reacts even more quickly to new phishing techniques. Regarding the reporting feature of Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade, I think the reporting and analytics could be more modern and integrated. The data is there, but a more customizable dashboard or clearer summaries would make it easier to present threats or justify decisions to management. Better visualization would really help. Another improvement I would like to see is deeper integration with the platforms we use, such as more seamless connections with our ticketing system or user directory. Everything works, but a deeper level of automation would be 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

"Cloudflare is by far the most effective solution that I have come across."
"Cloudflare Access is part of the Zero Trust philosophy."
"The capabilities of the software are strong enough for me to do what it's supposed to do. For me, we don't need to do a lot of configuration on our site. We just enable it and monitor it."
"It's a perfect solution from my perspective; it's easy to understand and easy to configure."
"The blocking feature is very good."
"We mostly use Cloudflare WAF, and gets basic Cloudflaire DDoS, caching as extra bonus . We like the factor these features are all integrated into 1 console, simple to manage."
"Cloudflare One has assisted in securing my remote workforce through a SASE solution with Cloudflare One and the Workers part, although I am not currently using the Workers component."
"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 Check Point Anti Spam and Email Security software blade is a one-stop solution for the restriction and blocking of endpoints and other software threats and completely blocks their entry into the system."
"Check Point offers us flexibility when it comes to customizing the configurations that we want to manage, thus allowing us to meet the specific needs of our company."
"Any organization looking for the best email security solution should consider Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade as one of the leading solutions currently present in the IT domain."
"The functionality is better."
"Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade has positively impacted my organization, as I can see that there is an improvement in our productivity and we are not wasting our time blocking spam, since the solution takes care of all these security features."
"The best features Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade offers are its position as a market leader, having the best anti-spam engine which blocks a lot of spam and provides us the best security with the AI use cases."
"It is easy to install, and the deployment is super easy as well."
"Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade has positively impacted my organization because unlike my previous dashboard, it shows pop-ups for bot activity or whenever malware or ransomware attacks occur in any system."
"This is a great product with wonderful support."
"The reasons I chose Cisco Secure Email Gateway are the interface is - it's easy to use - and the support is great."
"Compared with other mail security things, Cisco Secure Email was much better and easy to deploy also."
"Initially, the most valuable feature for us was the SenderBase Reputation, because that reduced the number of emails that were even considered by the system by a huge number..."
"The user interface was quite friendly, it was quite easy to use, unlike some other Cisco products. Anybody could use it. You don't have to be familiar with IT to be able to handle navigating it."
"IronPort really helped with the mail filtering and load balancing between the Exchange servers they had."
"Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution."
"It's flexible. There are a lot of rules and policies that can be easily applied for certain employees or certain mailboxes."
 

Cons

"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."
"They don't have a person to provide support for customers using the solution under their free plan."
"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."
"The response time for support must be reduced."
"From a logging perspective, it is still a bit difficult to see exactly what users are being blocked with the current views."
"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"I would like them to include a VPN feature to provide a secure connection to the data center."
"Automation could be improved where you can easily add a TLS and SSL certificate to an application or web app if the developer did not include it."
"The initial configuration is complex, but apart from that, everything works perfectly."
"Unfortunately, the product has not proved up to par."
"One thing which annoys me with the Check Point Anti-Spam and Email Security Software Blade is its customer support portal which still lags in service even after so many developments."
"Many would love to have this solution and be able to manage it from any device, including native applications or applications that can be installed on devices such as Android or iOS."
"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."
"A possible improvement for the solution would be to be able to implement artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to improve the accuracy of detecting spam and malicious emails that are constantly arriving."
"Installation time could be improved as it takes too long to install."
"I use the search all the time. Sometimes, it is hard to search for things and things are hard to find."
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky."
"One of the things that Cisco could improve on with IronPort is the support. Cisco doesn't really have enough engineers who have full, hands-on knowledge of IronPort. Knowledge of it is not something you can find easily compared to other security appliances."
"The area of license renewal should be improved. We normally renew our license every year. There is a feature called smart licensing, and I switched from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode because of what I thought smart licensing does. I thought it would make licensing renewal seamless and very swift, but ever since I've switched to smart licensing, each time I want to renew my license, it is a whole lot of headache. The process is not smooth, and I had to keep calling Cisco TAC to see how the issue can be resolved. At one point, I wanted to revert back to the legacy mode, but I can't revert. Once you switch from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode, you can't revert. They should improve on the visibility of the smart licensing mode so that it can indeed be smart and easier to use for the license renewal every year. That is one challenge."
"More than a few steps are required to apply rules and these are not essentially intuitive."
"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."
"Typically, in a phishing email, they try to use a name everybody's going to recognize, like the CEO's name or the CFO's name... With this appliance, the way it's designed at the moment, for us to really stop that with any level of confidence, we have to build a dictionary of all the names of the people we want it to check, and all the ways they could be spelled. My name would be in there as Phillip Collins, Phillip D. Collins, Phillip Dean Collins, Phil Collins, Phil D. Collins. There could be eight or 10 variations of my name that we'd have to put in the dictionary. There's no artificial intelligence to say "Phil Collins" could be all these other things, and to stop phishing from coming through in that way."
"I am not satisfied with the solution's reporting and logging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not that expensive."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"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."
"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."
"I rate the pricing as an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"The cost is competitive with other security products on the market."
"This is a simple system with a very low cost and basic functions, which surely is ideal for a small company."
"Reasonably priced solution."
"Choosing the correct set of licenses is essential because, without the additional software blade licenses, the Check Point gateways are just a stateful firewall."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"For licensing, my company makes yearly payments, which is expensive."
"The price is significantly high."
"Cisco Secure Email is expensive, but we get what we pay for."
"There are additional fees for adding features."
"We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
"Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
"The licensing is a mess and needs sorting out. I am not really concerned about the pricing because I only make recommendations, not buying decisions."
"We were using Proofpoint and then we switched to Cisco... reportability was one of the main reasons we switched, but the biggest one was cost. If you can get an equivalent functionality for a better price it's wise to do so. That's what our primary decision came down to: We could get equivalent functionality at a lower price point."
"It's adapted to the market. It's similar to other vendors. We at least don't have many problems regarding that because Cisco is adaptable on that side. When we present the solutions to the customers, we tend to achieve the goals that the customer has in terms of the budget for such implementations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
18%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...
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 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 areas of Cisco Secure Email that could be improved or enhanced are the slowness in the console. I don't think it ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Email?
We are using Cisco Secure Email to monitor the outgoing and incoming mail traffic in our financial institute. We have...
 

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: June 2026.
903,257 professionals have used our research since 2012.