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Cisco Duo vs WatchGuard AuthPoint MFA 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (3rd), Authentication Systems (2nd), Access Management (4th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), AI Data Analysis (3rd)
WatchGuard AuthPoint MFA
Ranking in Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Authorization Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 15.4%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WatchGuard AuthPoint MFA is 2.0%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo15.4%
WatchGuard AuthPoint MFA2.0%
Other82.6%
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
 

Featured Reviews

Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.
reviewer2245134 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Includes many security features and provides push notification feature
Technical support needs more people who have good technical skills and knowledge instead of just sharing documentation. We can refer to the documentation from our end. It will be easy for us to troubleshoot if they have someone with knowledge of how these boxes work. We contact technical support when we can't find the issue after referring to the documentation. So, when they offer us documentation, it makes no sense. We need someone with that knowledge level to understand the issue and at least recommend what needs to be done. Documentation sharing is something I can agree with. However, they share the document for any issue and ask us to refer to it. Having a TAC in place doesn't make sense if they don't want to resolve something in real time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a good solution for hybrid environments and VPN."
"The biggest benefit of Cisco Duo for my customers is the license because they count licenses for the user—one user can use many applications integrated with Cisco Duo."
"The most valuable feature is the ability for users to connect securely to the office using the VPN."
"For one of my clients, the ROI was somewhere between 25 to 27 percent in year one."
"The product is reliable and easy to use."
"I appreciate the secured push feature of Cisco Duo, which requires you to choose a number, because it enhances the security of your users, especially when combined with geolocation for a Verified Push, benefiting my company and our customers by making logins much more secure."
"The two-factor authentication is valuable because that is the use case for which we are using it."
"Cisco Duo benefits the company by increasing the security footprint, and it is easy to manage users, disable users, or bypass if needed in case of an emergency."
"Personal notifications are very easy to use."
"The token-based two-factor verification (2FA) for user logins is valuable. It's the primary reason we use AuthPoint, and I find it very effective."
"The WatchGuard firewall includes many security features, such as UDP, block filters, web filtering, and GeoBlock."
"It can be implemented as an app on the phone, rather than with a hardware token."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"The integrations are good."
"The approvals feature of this solution is very good; it is operated by just one button, and can be controlled from a mobile device if needed."
"WatchGuard AuthPoint is the multifactor authentication solution for our VPN and is our multifactor authentication piece to connect to our VPN back into our network."
 

Cons

"If you want easier management, Duo wouldn't meet that need."
"I wish that the support would be a little bit more prompt and a little bit more flexible because there are certain things that they will do and certain things they won't do."
"For the next release, Cisco Duo could be improved by adding touchless authentication and biometric features."
"The deployment experience was more difficult than we expected because we had some problems with the version of the OS that we have in our servers."
"Regarding the stability and reliability of the Cisco Duo solution, we have experienced some outages over the last few years that are significant because people can't log in."
"Regarding the pricing of Cisco Duo, we are actually leaving because of that. It's something that we are not going to continue with due to the cost."
"Cisco Duo is a really good product and I am very happy with it, but sometimes we have to authenticate multiple times, which may be part of our administration."
"It could be a little bit more intuitive when it comes to the sign-up process. I know they send out an email, but sometimes our users get a little confused. It could be an end-user problem, but Cisco could work on that a little."
"The product must enable administrators to restrict the privileges of remote users."
"It has been really great. We don't have any complaints about it at all. We've only had one or two very minor glitches, and they were just in passing."
"My only concern is the segmentation of services, which I understand is common in SaaS."
"Documentation on cloud could be improved."
"We would like the zero trust feature of this solution to be completed, with more details added and more laptop management capability."
"The solution should implement a tagging process, which will provide an extra layer of security for the devices connected to the VPN."
"Locking could be enhanced to be GDPR compliant."
"It's not so simple to configure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With regard to pricing, for a small business buying a one off, it's pretty expensive. If it's an enterprise that has thousands of employees, however, it's really nothing to protect your data because if your network goes down or it's breached, you're losing millions of dollars every minute. When it comes to a large enterprise, it's priced where it should be because you're talking business to business. You're not talking business to consumer."
"The product’s pricing is reasonable."
"I only need the solution for IT staff, which makes it relatively cheap. If I deployed it for the whole company, it would be costly, so it depends on the number of users. Duo Security is affordable compared to other products in the segment."
"Price-wise, the solution has been very, very reasonable...Licensing is the last thing I think about Duo Security because it's so easy, and I had no problems with it."
"It is affordable for what's coming to the table with it, but in this day and age, the cost is looked at under a microscope, and companies need to very finely define what is needed versus what is critical. In some cases, it might not be cost-effective for a company to have it. In a lot of other cases, it is the cost of doing business."
"Their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing costs."
"From a business perspective, it is a little bit costly. The licensing is on a per-user basis."
"I believe the licensing model is excellent as it offers flexibility to our customers, allowing them to adopt a crawl, walk, or run approach."
"The pricing, I believe, is around $3 a user a year. It is quite reasonable."
"We got the product at a low price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business63
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise79
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise2
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
It is a little bit expensive, but with security, we cannot compromise on it.
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
To improve Cisco Duo, we have some third-party hardware, and for integrations with that, we need more user-friendly integrations since third-party integration can present a lot of compatibility iss...
What needs improvement with WatchGuard AuthPoint?
It's so simple to configure. We have integration with the WatchGuard firewall.
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
AuthPoint
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Ellips, Mednet, Diecutstickers.com, Fletchers Solicitors
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. WatchGuard AuthPoint MFA and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.