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Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs TitanHQ SpamTitan 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

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (10th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Cisco Secure Email Threat D...
Ranking in Email Security
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TitanHQ SpamTitan
Ranking in Email Security
13th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (9th), Office 365 Protection (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 12.6%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is 1.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TitanHQ SpamTitan is 1.1%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
Enrique-Diaz Jolly - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides comprehensive threat protection with suggestions for modernizing controls
I use the email gateway as the core of the email exchange between the Internet and our domain. The email gateway serves as the email exchanger The product offers protection, email security, anti-spam, and antivirus. It includes threat intelligence with advanced malware protection and many…
Ricky Brewster - PeerSpot reviewer
Delivers reliable email security with minimal maintenance and valuable threat intelligence
If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said the user interface needed improvement, but we've just updated it. It looks really modern now, and it's a lot easier to use. At the moment, I don't have anything specific for improvement. Additionally, I would suggest different roles for users. We want the ability to lock down certain functions for certain user roles to prevent accidental changes, such as an apprentice accidentally deleting a customer.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications."
"The ability to respond to threats if very important."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"My experience with customer support and technical support for Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has been excellent."
"We use Microsoft Defender for its ability to integrate with existing business technologies, which is beneficial for protecting business areas."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"Defender for 365 is a comprehensive cloud-based solution. The value of the cloud is that you aren't alone. Threat intelligence and analytics are shared in the cloud. We don't have to find the solution alone. If you face an unknown threat with traditional solutions like Trend Micro and Symantec, you need to open a case and send your information to them to analyze forensically and identify the source of the attack."
"The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues."
"I highly recommend it as one of the best choices."
"It's very easy to deploy and configure."
"I would say it's very comprehensive, with multiple antivirus OEMs, virus encrypt features, encryption, and more."
"This solution is easy to use."
"Secure Email Threat Defense's scalability is good."
"It has an efficient email filtering feature."
"The ability to see east-west traffic is its most valuable feature. Traditionally, email defense focuses on north-south, inbound-outbound, egress-ingress traffic. With Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, it's able to quickly identify, track, tag, and categorize emails that are internal. That can typically give us visibility into if there's an internal compromised account (for example). Someone can then use that internal compromised account to email additional accounts with either malicious software or links, but internal within that Office tenant. Effectively, that email message never leaves the tenant. Any of the mail gateways really do not have any method or way of seeing this traffic since it's not leaving the environment."
"The features and functionalities are much better than Microsoft's in-built Defender plan."
"We really like the fact that we get a quarantine report because we can identify for ourselves which emails we want to keep and which we want to get rid of. It also gives us the option of directly allowing emails, which we really like. That way, the next time we get such emails, they're not blocked."
"SpamTitan learned faster than I thought it was going to, based on other products that I've used. There was a lot more feedback. The other products are based on the users, but this one, with its AI, seems to produce tremendous improvements day-to-day. I told the teams it was going to take two to three weeks but, within a week, we had dropped the amount of spam that was getting through."
"The user interface is great. Everything is in the browser; it is easy to set up and there are not a lot of tabs."
"The user interface for regular users is quite intuitive. The email report that they receive is pretty self-explanatory. The online interface for administrators is simple yet really quite effective. It's really a set-it-and-forget-it, and everything is available when needed."
"I like SpamTitan's email sandboxing. It is very effective and blocks almost 99% of spam. It also has zero-day threat protection."
"Another nice feature is how tailored it is so that I can adjust the domain reputation score. At certain times of the year we run marketing campaigns and I can raise the score a little bit and that way we get feedback more readily. And during Christmas time, when the bad guys try to pull people in, I can turn it down and make it a little bit tighter."
"It's cut down on our amount of spam."
"I have found the feature that creates seamless categorization of emails valuable. This is most likely done by having a large database to compare and to identify what are the domains that are currently spammers."
 

Cons

"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"We noticed that from time to time, Microsoft's stability does have problems. Sometimes the service goes up and down. Sometimes they change without prior notice."
"The product must provide better malware detection."
"There is room for improvement in terms of reporting."
"Configuration at the mid-level could be improved for the support team."
"There is a different console for different things; I just want one consolidated console."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's Mac functionality requires improvement to deliver the same level of protection found on Windows devices."
"Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically."
"We encounter issues while searching for missing emails."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The tool gives false positives and it needs to be more accurate. I would like to see AI as a new feature."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox can improve by adding advanced phishing, then the solution would become the best in the market. However, this could increase the price even more. Additionally, if CES with domain protection could be added it would be an even better solution."
"Customers will benefit greatly from monthly billing because the majority of customers today use the cloud, be it Office 365, or Google Cloud."
"The behavioral analysis capability of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is not particularly helpful for identifying new, evolving threats within my company, as it keeps flagging legitimate emails as malicious."
"The pricing could always be better."
"There is still room for improvement in terms of integrations with other Cisco tools and non-Cisco tools. There is also some room for improvement needed in terms of the reporting."
"Its GUI can definitely be improved. As the administrator of the product, the GUI isn't very logically built. If you need something, you don't have one menu where you can say, "Well, this relates to our customers," and manage everything for your customers in that interface. The naming and placement of some of the menus need improvement. For example, if I'm looking for a log to take a look at what has passed through the filter of a specific customer, I get these ZIP-packed files that I can't use for anything. I have to look under history instead. The naming of some of the features is off by a lot."
"They need to keep up with the latest technology and add new features as they arise, e.g., artificial intelligence, new and improved updated lists, or new ways of tracking spam. They need to just keep up so the product is effective. Because, if all of a sudden viruses or spam starts getting through, then we might have to look at something else. However, so far, it has kept up and done a great job. So, we are happy."
"There is no plugin for Outlook, which might be of an advantage so that you can just click on a link in Outlook that takes you right to your quarantine list. It doesn't have that at the moment."
"The overall GUI is utilitarian. It has a spreadsheet feel versus a nice software that is guided. I am sure they're going to improve it over time. It could look a little prettier. It needs some lipstick. They should get rid of unfamiliar words like ham and spam, helping the user to better understand what they are clicking through."
"SpamTitan is not particularly configurable. I basically have to accept their parameters for a lot of things."
"SpamTitan's logging features could be improved. The logs are hard to deal with because you need to download the log as a text file. Then you need to search through this text file to find what you need."
"The big issue that I've had is that the length of time that an email is kept in quarantine is only seven days and, in some cases, it is not even seven days... if I had a 20-day or 30-day repository, if someone came to me and said, "Hey, I can't get this back," I could end up getting it to them from the archive."
"The interface looks a little dated and could be modernized."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has become expensive."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"The solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."
"Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."
"Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"It is expensive compared to other vendors."
"The solution’s pricing is manageable."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox does not have any competition with Sophos, Trend Micro, or other vendors of the world. However, there is a pricing premium for the solution. One has to look at it from that angle that while they are buying Cisco, there will be a premium, and Cisco justifies that premium value. That's why they're charging a high price."
"The feedback from vendors and customer is that it is expensive."
"The pricing and licensing are acceptable. The licensing is somewhat different; TitanHQ gives us a peak cap of simultaneous users, which they calculate as the number of email addresses viewed through so many days or weeks. That's considered our number of users, but it isn't always a one-to-one relationship, making it harder to resell. We can't say precisely that the solution costs X per month per user, but that's how we present the price to potential customers, and we just ensure we receive more than we pay to TitanHQ. The licensing hasn't caused us any problems, but it would be better if the pricing were per-user. I know that's not easy to achieve on a technical level."
"They have different packages, services, or products that they sell. I would recommend it for small businesses to larger organizations, even enterprises, but not individuals."
"The price was great compared to other solutions that we looked at the time."
"They give you an update without charging you more for it, which is awesome. I like that a lot. It makes you feel appreciated as a customer."
"The pricing was a little bit below the average of what we were looking at."
"For the service, the pricing is reasonable."
"Compared to all of the others, including the solution we used previously, SpamTitan is cheaper."
"The price is good by today's standards. You actually get what you pay for."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
29%
Healthcare Company
7%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Microsoft is quite affordable with a lot of features available for any size organization.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS recor...
What do you like most about Secure Email Threat Defense?
Secure Email Threat Defense's scalability is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Secure Email Threat Defense?
Cisco's closest competition is Proofpoint. Both are in the same range in terms of pricing. Pricing is on the higher s...
What needs improvement with Secure Email Threat Defense?
The physical appliance has been discontinued, although the platform still exists. Improvements here and there could b...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TitanHQ SpamTitan?
The pricing model is reasonable money for the product. It is rated highly because of its affordability and its great ...
What needs improvement with TitanHQ SpamTitan?
If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said the user interface needed improvement, but we've just updated ...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, Cisco CMD, Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Luiss University, Lone Star College, T-Systems, Magyar Telekom
De Montfort University, Scope Services, Park County School District, NRC, Quality Smith, Toyota, CarTrawler, Videotron
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs. TitanHQ SpamTitan and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
858,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.