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Cisco Secure Email vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway comparison

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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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (20th), Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Cisco Secure Email
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (9th), Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Email4.5%
Proofpoint Email Protection6.8%
Microsoft Defender for Office 3656.3%
Other82.4%
Email Security
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway2.9%
Zscaler Internet Access10.0%
Cisco Umbrella9.7%
Other77.4%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

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.
reviewer1047669 - PeerSpot reviewer
PS & Technical Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has faced usability challenges while managing integrated components
We are working with web gateway and full endpoint security. URL filter is a notable feature. While it is not specifically related to Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway alone, if you have the complete Forcepoint solution, it can integrate with other Forcepoint products, such as DLP solution and email gateway. The URL filter of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is good for web gateway. Clients and consumers do not prefer it because the interface is not good. When using FSM with DLP, web gateway, and email gateway, upgrades cannot be performed simultaneously since Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway might need an upgrade while email gateway does not, despite having the same manager controlling them. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway works well with banking and small companies. Email gateway is less needed as everything is moving to the cloud.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has different options that can be used to differentiate DDoS attacks."
"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."
"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."
"Cloudflare Access is a stable solution."
"It's a perfect solution from my perspective; it's easy to understand and easy to configure."
"Enables me to work from two locations."
"The capabilities of the software are strong enough for me to do what it's supposed to do. For me, we don't need to do a lot of configuration on our site. We just enable it and monitor it."
"Cloudflare Access is part of the Zero Trust philosophy."
"The most valuable features of the Cisco ESA have to do with the intelligence they provide us, as they respond quickly to any phishing attacks and threats on the system."
"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."
"The tool has a DLP solution which we can implement. Its database is updated regularly."
"Administration of the email domains and custom filters are easily done via the web interface."
"The strong point of the solution is that we hardly get any spam emails because of Cisco Secure Email."
"There is a huge return compared to if we didn't have a gateway appliance, as far as blocking malicious emails."
"Spam controls are excellent because they are a powerful feature that operates almost effortlessly."
"We chose Cisco Iron Port as it delivers strong email security protection and our company needed it to protect the company's email systems from spam, email viruses, .exe files, unwanted email from unwanted sender etc."
"Scalability-wise, it was pretty good, as we had deployments that were easily over 10,000 users and there were deployments that were 34,000 at that point, and they managed to get the product to that point on the scale pretty well."
"The Sandbox is a very useful solution for sand-boxing malware / phishing etc. from corporate email accounts."
"Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway does most of its job well, but I especially like its data security feature."
"Reporting and automatic updates of website categorization."
"The solution is a combination of Gatsby web security and the LP, and the product is simple, stable, and reliable."
"In summary, this is a good product and I highly recommend it."
"It's stable and reliable."
"The tool's most valuable features are content filtering and URL filtering."
 

Cons

"Feedback could be enhanced."
"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."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."
"Having Cisco Email Security as a standalone solution is not good enough. It needs to be combined with another solution."
"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."
"The interface is dated. It has looked pretty much the same for 15 years or so. It would be helpful to be able to do everything from one spot. The centralized quarantine and reporting are completely separate from policy administration."
"I use the search all the time. Sometimes, it is hard to search for things and things are hard to find."
"The management features of the product are not up to date."
"I would like them to add some clustering or high availability features."
"I have some frustrations with the user experience in the interface, specifically with regard to making a list of people for whom I want to allow email access."
"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."
"Forcepoint can improve the Secure Web Gateway for enterprise-level services. If some internet service providers want to offer Web Proxy as a service, these appliances cannot handle that."
"It has a problem with tablets and the iPhone. It's not filtering on these platforms. It filters on Windows but not iOS or Android."
"Database synchronization failures"
"There were several issues with the product. Version 8.4 can only be managed with a CLI, they removed the nice GUI interface from version 8.1; the load-balancing needs massive improvements and the incident lists do not sync between appliances, so they need to be manually edited for each one."
"Enhancing the dashboard would provide better insights into users' usage patterns."
"The solution has complexity with the databases, and we have to manually clear old data logs."
"I'd like to see the solution improve the banded optimization to offer more bandwidth control, similar to what is on offer with Blue Coat."
"Customer Service: 2 out of 10 Technical Support: 6 out of 10"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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's pricing lacks transparency."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The solution is not that 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."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"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 solution is expensive."
"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."
"As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"The license was not per user, the license model was per feature. You could choose anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. It was feature-based and charged yearly."
"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."
"We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
"It is expensive. I would rate it 2 out of 10, where 1 is the most expensive and 10 is the cheapest."
"It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
"The pricing for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is expensive. You pay per user and functionality. I'd rate it a four on a scale of one to ten."
"The solution's price is good."
"The pricing on Forcepoint Web Security is fair. Fair pricing at current market rates, if you are comparing with the competition."
"Compared to the other products in the market, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway can be a cost-effective tool."
"The solution is priced a little high compare to similar solutions."
"The price of this solution is reasonable."
"Expensive, but with a good reseller you can get a very good price."
"Overall, I am not aware of the option to pay for one time use of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise29
 

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 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 primary use case for Cisco Secure Email?
We are using Cisco Secure Email to monitor the outgoing and incoming mail traffic in our financial institute. We have...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
I would rate pricing for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway a two out of ten. It's really expensive.
What needs improvement with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is not endpoint security. If we have a chance to change, we would change it because it ...
What is your primary use case for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
We have no big project, but we are trying to sell it in the market here. We are working with Forcepoint because there...
 

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
Forcepoint SWG, Websense Web Security, Forcepoint TRITON
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Adventist Health, Alphawest, Amadori, Anoka County, Compartamos Banco, Davies Turner, EverBank, iGATE, Karlstad Municipality, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Scavolini, Smurfit Kappa, Toyota
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint, Microsoft, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Email Security. Updated: June 2026.
899,645 professionals have used our research since 2012.