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Cisco Secure Email vs Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense 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)
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)
Cisco Secure Email Threat D...
Ranking in Email Security
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Cisco Secure Email is 5.2%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Email5.2%
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense1.2%
Cloudflare One1.5%
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.
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.
reviewer2541525 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Clawback feature performs well but analytics and integration capabilities need improvement
The integration capability with other threat intelligence platforms is not optimal, as I have experienced difficulty in sending logs to our SIEM. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense's flexibility could be enhanced while it mostly integrates with cloud solutions, but not on-premise. 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. Regarding room for improvement, the significant number of false positives should be addressed. The solution does not adapt to behavioral analytics and does not make changes when it sees a pattern.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Clover is the best product globally."
"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."
"Cloudflare Access is part of the Zero Trust philosophy."
"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."
"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."
"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 Zero Trust Platform removes the risk of exposing the applications to the public."
"Cloudflare is simple to use."
"Cisco's Secure Email integrates with Cisco Firewalls, utilizing the AMP as their anti-malware engine, which allows for information sharing between devices."
"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."
"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."
"Cisco Secure Email has strong inbound services."
"The filtering is definitely better at catching both spam and malicious messages, and there's a lot of extremely granular ability for setting up rules. You can do it the way you want to. The Microsoft solution tends to be pretty limited in how it allows some of that to be done."
"The added value of it is that every migration to a new version is initiated by the Cisco version itself, so that is a bunch of work that you don't have to do on the Cisco ESA system on-premise. As it becomes a safe platform, you don't need to invest anything in your own data center or in your upgrade path."
"I love the Advanced Malware Protection feature. It works very well... The appliance has more security such as SDF, DKIM, DMARC, and encryption."
"Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution."
"I highly recommend it as one of the best choices."
"It's very easy to deploy and configure."
"The advanced threat analytics and URL filtering in threat detection are good features that are working well."
"Secure Email Threat Defense's scalability is good."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox can handle a complete portfolio, which is required to protect any kind of attack coming from emails. However, it does not have advanced phishing, but it is available through Cisco. If you compare Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox with the competition, in the competition you have to have one or two solutions together to address the customer's requirement, whereas Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox is addressing everything, such as web domain and email protection. If there is any kind of challenge it will come across through email."
"On ease of use, it rates very high. It's something that I was able to get into without really looking at any documentation. I wanted to see what it felt like before I started looking at any documentation on how to use it, and it was very easy to use. It works very smoothly. The user experience is very intuitive. They did an amazing job on that."
"This solution is easy to use."
"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."
 

Cons

"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"From a logging perspective, it is still a bit difficult to see exactly what users are being blocked with the current views."
"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"When there are any dynamic changes in complex applications, the tool takes a lot of time, making its analytics-related area a major matter of concern where improvements are needed."
"The response time for support must be reduced."
"They don't have a person to provide support for customers using the solution under their free plan."
"The product's GUI for the dashboard needs improvement."
"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."
"There are some concerns in the way the architecture is set up, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The pricing needs to be reconsidered or enhanced."
"Licensing is quite complicated for a number of customers, including ourselves."
"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."
"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."
"We have occasionally had hardware problems because we are using an appliance-based solution, but that might change. We may consider going to virtual systems."
"The learning curve shows that in the beginning, there are numerous false positives. For one month, we had to reclassify the false positives manually until the system learned."
"Cisco's multiple product lines and verticals made this just one of their many verticals, and we could see a shift in focus."
"The physical appliance has been discontinued, although the platform still exists."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The product's complexity at times results in redundant rule sets that are difficult to untangle, highlighting the need for streamlined management systems and a more user-centric approach to system configuration."
"This solution could be improved by integration with Sandbox."
"Customers will benefit greatly from monthly billing because the majority of customers today use the cloud, be it Office 365, or Google Cloud."
"The pricing could always be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not that expensive."
"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 pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"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."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The licensing was all transferred."
"As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"I don't have the insights into it, but compared to different products, it seems to have a medium level of pricing."
"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."
"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 is expensive. I would rate it 2 out of 10, where 1 is the most expensive and 10 is the cheapest."
"You're going to get what you pay for. If you're not willing to pay the price of Cisco, you're not going to get a product that's as good as Cisco. I don't think Cisco is overpriced, because for the last two years I've been comparing it to Microsoft and Cisco has been cheaper and given us more features."
"It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing an eight or nine."
"It is expensive compared to other vendors."
"The solution’s pricing is manageable."
"The feedback from vendors and customer is that it is expensive."
"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."
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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%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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 Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise7
 

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 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 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 experience regarding pricing and costs for Secure Email Threat Defense?
Comparatively with other products, the pricing of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is normal. As a technical guide, ...
What needs improvement with Secure Email Threat Defense?
We have deployed Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense in two customer environments. It is still in development as a new ...
What is your primary use case for Secure Email Threat Defense?
We are working with Cloud Mail Gateway and on-premise mail gateways. We have worked with Cisco Secure Email Threat De...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, Cisco CMD, Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Luiss University, Lone Star College, T-Systems, Magyar Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.