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Cisco Secure Email vs Fortinet FortiMail vs MetaDefender Email Security Solutions 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 5.6%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiMail is 4.0%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MetaDefender Email Security Solutions is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Secure Email5.6%
Fortinet FortiMail4.0%
MetaDefender Email Security Solutions0.4%
Other90.0%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Kostas Karidas - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps prevent security breaches but fails to improve in the area of AI
I have not noticed any impressive advanced threat protection mechanisms in the tool. I don't know if there are any AI features in the product. I don't know if there is any other technology embedded in the solution. Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats. My company has seen plenty of scenarios where Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats, spam emails, and fraudulent domains. The product is good for dealing with spam emails, and it can take care of more than 100 spam emails per day. A huge number of spam emails are monitored with the help of Cisco Secure Email. I would not recommend the product to other businesses because you need to have some kind of expertise in configuring and knowing a bit about the tool's GUI. The tool also lacks in the area of AI mechanics. If I would like to have an overview and review another solution, I would go for another product other than Cisco Secure Email. I can definitely suggest others to look at the product and review it, but I would also recommend that they compare it with the other solutions in the market. I wouldn't prioritize Cisco Secure Email over other tools. Either the support partner of the product or I take care of the tool's maintenance phase by looking into the configurations and doing some fine-tuning. I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.
MOHAN SUKUMAR - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure email management improves through advanced filtering and dynamic virus scanning
Fortinet FortiMail offers capabilities like settings for mail delivery, mail filtering, spam controls, and email bursting prevention. It also allows for email forwarding, dynamic filtering, and scanning based on virus signatures. I can set varying levels of security. The tool is flexible and provides essential features for mail security and management.
Aaron Alornyenu - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps us stay compliant, has excellent malware detection, and is stable
The solution helped our organization stay 100 percent compliant with industry standards. MetaDefender Email Security can be set to be very aggressive for identifying attacks. This can be done based on how we want it. If we set it to this level, most of our emails will be blocked because the system will block anything that looks suspicious. We will also need to set the spam severity. This is the severity of everything, including phishing, spoofing, and other types of attacks. I would give the solution's ability to identify attacks a nine out of ten. MetaDefender helps us improve our spam catch rate. Any spam we receive is usually due to user subscriptions. We can specify rules of exclusion to meet our requirements as well. It also detects and blocks the links with suspicious codes. MetaDefender Email Security's multi-scanning capabilities for malware detection work based on how we set the parameters. The solution perfectly detects malware. MetaDefender can identify and disarm emails in zero-day attacks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The malicious URL scanning, as well as the anti-malware features, have been really useful for us in our environment."
"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 provided a platform to sell a service to customers."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Gateway has allowed our users to be able to concentrate on the emails that they do receive. Previously, our users had to deal with nine million additional emails across the organization, which is nearly 1,000 emails per user to have to deal with a month. That's a massive amount for our staff to deal with and probably several hours of their time. We have a lot of clinical staff, being a hospital. We want to make our staff as productive as possible. By removing a lot of that spam and phishing type emails, this allows them to do their job."
"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."
"The system provides our service desk with the means to troubleshoot email delivery issues with ease."
"Users were able to do a check by themselves on quarantined emails. They could check if a valid email had been stopped, if it matched up with the SPF certification."
"Cisco's Secure Email integrates with Cisco Firewalls, utilizing the AMP as their anti-malware engine, which allows for information sharing between devices."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the spam filter."
"For me, Fortinet FortiMail is the best solution I have ever tried."
"I am satisfied with both the scalability and the stability of this solution."
"I think the spamming feature is very valuable."
"The integration with FortiSandbox is good, and something that we utilize often."
"The solution is very reliable and very stable."
"The GUI isn't hard to use. When we do a demo and explain the features of Fortinet products to our customers, they understand very quickly. They can easily manage their systems without us."
"It is one of the most efficient solutions in our environment. We have more than nine hundred users. All of these users are protected by Fortinet FortiMail."
"The most valuable feature of MetaDefender Email Security is the CDR. Customers purchase this solution specifically for data communication, as the other features can be obtained through other technologies that most customers already possess. Therefore, data communication serves as the foundation for the platform."
"The most valuable feature is called summary reconstruction which is used to deliver encrypted files to users."
"The sanitization is very good."
 

Cons

"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."
"Cisco is already providing a very good environment with the IronPort solution, but there could be some more integration with other products. For instance, an integration with the EDR solution could be there to raise an alert."
"Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features."
"The user interface is a bit complex."
"The hardware is not up to the mark. Two to three times a year we have complete downtime."
"The user interface could be updated."
"Licensing is quite complicated for a number of customers, including ourselves."
"The product's GUI for the dashboard needs improvement."
"FortiMail's dashboard is somewhat complex and could be made simpler."
"Online support sometimes takes up to a week to get back to you."
"In the Latin America market, some spam messages use Portuguese language. Some clearly spam messages would be better identified by the anti-spam if not for the language."
"A room for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is that it only has a hardware version. I also didn't find the solution scalable, so that's another area for improvement."
"What's missing in Fortinet FortiMail is some sandbox information for some of the emails. It's probably configuration-based, where it could be configured on some emails. For example, there was malware in some emails that weren't detected in some of the Fortinet FortiMail sessions, but it should have been configured from my company's end to better catch scam emails, but overall, the solution is okay. At the moment, my company is okay with the current Fortinet FortiMail offerings, but in the past, because of a lack of understanding, my team wasn't able to quickly implement the geographical IP blocking feature. It was time-consuming to implement that feature, but that wasn't a fault of Fortinet FortiMail. The issue was from my team's end, but just by emailing the support team, that issue was resolved, so right now, there isn't any additional feature I'd like added to Fortinet FortiMail."
"I don't know if it is possible, but I would like to see Artificial Intelligence and machine learning introduced."
"The solution is user-friendly to a degree but the dashboard needs improvement."
"The solution could improve by making the UI more user-friendly and increasing spam and threat detection capabilities."
"Although the number of AV engines is good, it could be better."
"They offer a feature called SmartLink neutralization. I have tried it before. It seemed to work most of the time; however, I had a few users for whom it just wouldn't work. Whenever they click on a link, it stays on the MetaDefender page, saying that it's scanning it and never moves forward."
"The DLP should be upgraded and has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a relatively expensive option compared to other alternatives."
"In my previous organization, avoiding four instances of CryptoLocker within an estimated six month period is approximately $600,000 in lost time and effort. Our five year cost was about a million dollars, and the four outages that we had equated to 65 percent of that five year cost."
"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."
"The pricing is good."
"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."
"Cisco Secure Email is expensive, but we get what we pay for."
"Cisco Secure Email is not expensive, and licensing costs are yearly."
"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."
"The price is acceptable for the support license it includes."
"There is a license required for this solution and it is on an annual basis. I am satisfied with the price."
"The licensing model for this solution is better because it is based on the box and not the number of users."
"My company has a three-year license for Fortinet FortiMail, including the support, but I'm not so sure of how much the solution costs because I'm not part of the procurement team. What's more important to me is the functionality and stability of Fortinet FortiMail. In terms of Fortinet FortiMail licensing, the cost is calculated based on company requirements. For example, it's based on the features you need for your environment, on capacity, how many CPUs you have, etc."
"I find Fortinet FortiMail pricing reasonable. There's no additional cost apart from its standard licensing fees."
"The product's licensing part depends on the number of mailboxes and the hard disk needed by customers. The cost of the license depends on the number of mailboxes and the number of emails."
"The fees for Fortinet FortiMail can be complicated. However, overall the pricing is fair."
"In the future I would like it if there's a possibility to lower the price of the bandwidth and UTM. It is quite expensive."
"According to our customers, the price of MetaDefender is high and it continues to increase by almost 15 percent each year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 Fortinet FortiMail?
Fortinet FortiMail is considered overpriced by Indian rupee standards. My organization is not profit-making, and acad...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
It can be somewhat difficult to prepare precise or very deep rules to improve security, though the product is very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MetaDefender Email Security Solutions?
We paid for a three-year agreement. The cost is kind of high. For smaller companies, it may be outside of their budge...
What needs improvement with MetaDefender Email Security Solutions?
They offer a feature called SmartLink neutralization. I have tried it before. It seemed to work most of the time; how...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
FortiMail
OPSWAT MetaDefender Email Security, MetaDefender Email Gateway Security, MetaDefender Email Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Abnormal AI, Proofpoint and others in Email Security. Updated: September 2025.
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