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Cisco Secure Email vs GWAVA [EOL] comparison

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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

Cisco Secure Email
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
GWAVA [EOL]
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

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.
GW
IT Menedżer at own
An excellent anti-spam solution for mail systems
The solution needs to be more user-friendly. I don't want to have to go to my IT guy and have him explain aspects of the solution to me. There should be a way for them to be able to translate aspects of the product to a typical user in a clear concise way. It might help if there was a better user interface.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Compared with other mail security things, Cisco Secure Email was much better and easy to deploy also."
"The Cisco Email Security Appliance has enabled us to reduce spam by at least 30% compared to our previous solution."
"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 blocks bulk marketing messages, graymail, spam, and provides advanced malware protection."
"The system provides our service desk with the means to troubleshoot email delivery issues with ease."
"Spam controls are excellent because they are a powerful feature that operates almost effortlessly."
"The technical support from Cisco is perfect."
"It's a perfect business pump filter. We have much less false positives, and also less spam than other organizations."
"We have the visibility of what was locked and what was dropped from our mail system and what is safe for our users."
 

Cons

"Many smaller businesses opt for more cost-effective solutions, such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts, instead of investing in Cisco Secure Email, given its higher cost."
"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."
"I am not satisfied with the solution's reporting and logging."
"The product's GUI for the dashboard needs improvement."
"The user interface of the Email Security Gateway should be improved."
"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."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability."
"I use the search all the time. Sometimes, it is hard to search for things and things are hard to find. People come to me all the time, saying, "This email didn't get through." Then, I go searching and don't find it on the first search. You have to think about alternative searches. I don't know if there is an easier way that they could help to find things. I don't know how they could simplify it, because now everybody else is using the cloud and everything is coming from Office 365, or whatever. It is just not the same environment from years ago where everybody had their own server and you could search easier."
"The solution needs to be more user-friendly. I don't want to have to go to my IT guy and have him explain aspects of the solution to me. There should be a way for them to be able to translate aspects of the product to a typical user in a clear concise way."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market."
"Cisco Secure Email and the support are priced well. It's not cheap, but there are other solutions that offer less and cost so much. For example, Microsoft is more expensive than Cisco."
"I rate the product price as six on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a very expensive tool."
"I don't have the insights into it, but compared to different products, it seems to have a medium level of pricing."
"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 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise27
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 was a database error or something, but we feel some slowness in configuring DLP ...
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 nearly 900 branches all over India. We have an on-premises mail server in which...
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Also Known As

Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
SVG Strassenverkehrs-Genossenschaft Wªrttemberg eG, ELO Digital Office GmbH, Grafisch Lyceum Utrecht, Deutscher Steuerberaterverband (DStV), Investment Savings Bank of Pennsylvania, Gwinnett Health System, Long Island Rail Road, Wisconsin Historical Society, South Texas Nuclear Facility, Northwestern Michigan College, Carilion Health System, North Memorial Medical Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint, Microsoft, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Email Security. Updated: October 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.