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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

"It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it."
"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."
"Cloudflare is simple to use."
"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."
"Clover is the best product globally."
"It is a stable solution."
"Cloudflare DDoS is better than its competitors for its security, deployment, and scalability."
"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."
"The most significant enhancement we've gained is in terms of security through the upgrade we received."
"The advanced phishing protection and the integration with the awareness tool that Cisco has embedded into the solution to bring awareness to the customers about the dangers of phishing attacks and other things that come from email are the most valuable features."
"It sends us reports, where we can see if there have been attacks, e.g. DDoS. If so, we can switch to a clean IP."
"The solution is very configurable. It has enabled us to configure some specific filters to stop emails that general configurations didn't stop. It's a powerful solution. It can analyze a lot of emails simultaneously, with no problems of capacity or system load."
"Capital expenditure is a significant consideration, and the impact on major expenditures prompts a careful analysis before onboarding the new product."
"My favorite feature of Cisco Secure Email is the threat intelligence capabilities, particularly its integration with Cisco Talos."
"It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. There are a lot of things that you cannot handle on the graphic interface, like message filters. For this, you need to go to a lower level where you have more power, like command line interface. So, this solution has the best of both worlds. There are not a lot of bells and whistles. It is more practical with access to most features that you can configure."
"It has the ability to tell us, after an email has been delivered, where else it went, once it got inside. Maybe it's something we wanted it to stop and it didn't stop it, but it notified us later that it was something that it should have stopped. It can give us a trajectory of all the other places that it went internally and it can tell us what files were transferred as well."
"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."
"I highly recommend it as one of the best choices."
"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."
"This solution is easy to use."
"Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense's best features include user management of graymail, enhancing security awareness by allowing users to manage cold calls, sales-based items, and ensuring email compliance."
"It has an efficient email filtering feature."
"I would say it's very comprehensive, with multiple antivirus OEMs, virus encrypt features, encryption, and more."
"The solution is stable."
 

Cons

"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."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
"The software has automated alerts, but the automated alerts are not available in the mobile app."
"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."
"The solution needs to improve its advanced phishing filters. It is very good at filtering things which have bad reputations. However, when phishing or malicious emails are new or coming from a legitimate source, we don't feel that the solution is working."
"Better dashboards and more interactive overviews would be nice, but the current functionality is sufficient."
"If you are not a technical guy, it is hard to maneuver, but as soon as you work on it, it gets better and better. If there was a better way to know how to do things or how to find things, it would be good."
"The user interface needs some improvement to become more user-friendly. The graphics could be better. It's designed more for a technical user rather than a business user."
"The primary areas for improvement are the pricing and the complexity of deployment."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features."
"They can do it better with web links, with the URLs. They have a technology called Outbreak but it doesn't work as well as we would like."
"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."
"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."
"Cisco's multiple product lines and verticals made this just one of their many verticals, and we could see a shift in focus."
"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."
"From a technical point of view, Cisco is far behind in terms of cybersecurity, and it has to improve very much."
"The physical appliance has been discontinued, although the platform still exists."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"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."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven 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."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"In addition to the standard licensing, there is a cost for SMARTnet as well."
"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."
"It is a relatively expensive option compared to other alternatives."
"Cisco Secure Email is more expensive than other products. I rate it a five out of ten. There are no additional costs. You only need to pay the subscription amounts."
"I don't have the insights into it, but compared to different products, it seems to have a medium level of pricing."
"Compared to Cisco's on-prem service, the cost is the same, but you don't have to pay for the hardware and you don't have to maintain the system, as far as upgrades and hardware failures are concerned. It is cheaper to operate on their cloud service than it is to operate with their on-prem service."
"I rate the product price as six on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a very expensive tool."
"It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing an eight or nine."
"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 solution’s pricing is manageable."
"The feedback from vendors and customer is that it is expensive."
"It is expensive compared to other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
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%
Healthcare Company
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 user interface of the Email Security Gateway ( /products/security-gateway-reviews ) should be improved. It would ...
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.
883,546 professionals have used our research since 2012.