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Cisco Duo vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.7
Cisco Duo enhances security and adaptability, reducing costs and downtime, benefiting remote work and boosting employee morale.
Sentiment score
6.7
Cisco Secure Email enhances security, reduces costs, and boosts productivity, providing ROI similar to preventive insurance against breaches.
I think Cisco Duo offers a good return on investment for startups, newer organizations, or those utilizing cloud-based applications.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Duo's support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge but critiqued for delays without service agreements and contact difficulties.
Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Secure Email is praised for its knowledgeable, proactive support with quick resolutions, despite occasional delays for some users.
I find Cisco's technical support to be good but not excellent.
However, the response time could be faster.
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
8.0
Cisco Duo's cloud-based design enables seamless scalability and integration, making it ideal for various organizational sizes and requirements.
Sentiment score
7.4
Cisco Secure Email excels in scalability, supporting large enterprises seamlessly, with minor hardware challenges noted by some users.
I believe Cisco Duo is very scalable because it is cloud-based.
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
Cisco Duo is praised for stability, seamless integration, proactive support, with most users rating its reliability highly.
Sentiment score
8.1
Cisco Secure Email is praised for reliability, stability, and efficiency, outperforming rivals with minimal issues and high user ratings.
Based on my experience, the stability of Cisco Secure Email is very strong.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Duo users seek improvements in telephony, integration, user experience, device management, customization, pricing, licensing, and technical support.
Cisco Secure Email needs UI improvements, simplified pricing and deployment, enhanced features, and streamlined management for better user experience.
Cisco should allow easier integration with third-party equipment because Cisco's own equipment is expensive.
Cisco Duo is a modern product that does not support older applications, lacking backward compatibility.
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

Cisco Duo provides flexible, user-based pricing suitable for any business, with additional costs for premium support and benefits from initial free trials.
Cisco Secure Email offers robust features and value, with prices varying based on services, usage, and licensing complexity.
The approximate cost is around eighty dollars per user.
The setup cost is reasonable, estimated at around six euros per month.
I find the pricing of Cisco Duo to be reasonable.
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

Cisco Duo provides seamless integration, robust security, and ease of use, enhancing operational efficiency and user experience for hybrid environments.
Cisco Secure Email offers strong spam and malware protection, seamless Active Directory integration, and customizable security features for effective threat management.
The simplicity and user-friendliness of the product have satisfied me and my customers.
This setup makes it scalable, as the deployment section is in the cloud, allowing the installation of agents according to needs.
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

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 6.6%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 1.6%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio
 

Featured Reviews

RyanDeppe - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce the risk of a breach and is easy to deploy and onboard
For our customers, Duo Security is a significant advantage because it provides them with a straightforward method to implement MFA across their entire environment. Moreover, once we delve into the more advanced features of Duo Security, it enables us as a partner to engage in ongoing discussions regarding security strategies with our customers. Initially, we may only introduce them to MFA during the onboarding process. However, as their security strategy evolves, we can leverage Duo to perform additional tasks such as risk-based assessments and deployments, thereby assisting in the development of their security measures. Duo Security helps secure our infrastructure. It serves as our gateway layer of protection, allowing us to understand who is logging in and why. We conduct risk-based assessments on each user to determine whether their actions are appropriate or not. Duo Security is not a comprehensive security solution, but it is undoubtedly a crucial component, a critical layer of security. This aspect resonates with our customers consistently. Their ability to reduce the risk of a breach is of utmost importance. It serves as the primary line of defense. Currently, credential gathering and leaks are widespread in the market. By implementing an MFA solution like Duo Security, we can effectively prevent these issues. When we put a stop to credential harvesting, it becomes much harder for attackers to infiltrate and navigate our network. Therefore, Duo Security acts as an excellent first line of defense. User authentication and device verification are the methods through which we envision our customers navigating in order to prevent identity-based attacks. Initially, when we employ Duo Security, it is a straightforward implementation of multi-factor authentication. As we progress, we enhance security measures by incorporating device risk assessment and potentially even regional assessment. This includes considerations such as whether the login is being attempted from a specific IP address. These gradual enhancements contribute to the establishment of an additional layer of protection. Thus, it is not necessary to implement a completely disruptive strategy right from the start. Instead, it is possible to gradually adopt and integrate this approach, following a crawl, walk, or run methodology. The Duo Security self-service portal helps free up our customers' IT staff time, allowing them to focus on other projects. As a Cisco partner, we have received feedback from our customers that the portal is highly interactive, enabling them to easily navigate and resolve issues. After setting up their Duo environment, we rarely receive callbacks for assistance, as the portal is intuitive and empowers users to handle everything they need on their own. The appealing aspect of Duo Security is its ability to establish trust for every access request, regardless of its origin. It is a cloud-based solution with excellent API integrations. It doesn't matter where or how a user logs in; Duo will be there to protect the user, whether it's through MFA, risk assessment, or similar methods. It is extremely beneficial to our customers that Duo Security considers all resources as external. Our customers frequently inquire about a zero-trust model, and this is a key component of it. Unfortunately, I would love to say that there is a simple solution for zero trust where we can just deploy this solution and be done with it. But that's not the case. It requires a layered approach, and that's what we convey to our customers. Duo Security is definitely a part of that. Duo Security has helped improve our customers' cybersecurity resilience. Internally, it protects our users from accessing sales operations-based environments. Additionally, our customers use it regularly to protect business-critical applications.
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
24%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What do you like most about Duo Security?
They are users who, as mentioned before, utilize RDPAP and MDPAP. It includes functionalities related to finance, specifically in single sign-on.
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

Duo Security
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.