Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Secure Email vs IRONSCALES comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
Cisco Secure Email enhances ROI with robust security, reducing disruptions and downtime from cyber threats, despite perceived high costs.
Sentiment score
5.6
Businesses find IRONSCALES offers significant ROI by saving time, reducing intervention, and enhancing cybersecurity with minimal licensing costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Secure Email support is praised for its responsiveness and expertise, though experiences can vary based on assigned engineers.
Sentiment score
7.4
IRONSCALES customer service is praised for responsiveness, knowledgeable staff, and high satisfaction, despite minor delays.
Cisco's tech support can be hit or miss, depending on the engineer you get.
The support is pretty decent, with a rating of eight out of ten.
Customer support for IRONSCALES is outstanding.
I would rate their technical support as very good, as they respond promptly when my team opens a ticket.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Cisco Secure Email provides scalable solutions for seamless user migration and system growth, with reliable cloud service options.
Sentiment score
6.6
IRONSCALES offers seamless scalability, easy integration, and cloud-based flexibility, supporting growing businesses without performance issues or maintenance burdens.
The on-premises hardware is not very scalable, but switching to the SaaS offering is expected to improve scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Secure Email is praised for reliability, consistent performance, easy maintenance, and high user satisfaction with stable uptime.
Sentiment score
8.4
IRONSCALES is praised for its stability, reliability, minimal downtime, and improved performance, enhancing operational workflows for users.
Based on my experience, the stability of Cisco Secure Email is very strong.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Secure Email's high cost, complexity, poor interface, and limited integration impact usability, requiring AI and service enhancements.
IRONSCALES needs better Google Suite integration, intuitive UI, enhanced features, multilingual support, and improved email detection accuracy.
The solution should better analyze the actual content rather than only focusing on the email header or origin.
It would be beneficial to have the functionality of the Email Threat Defense integrated into the Email Security Gateway so customers don't have to buy two products for full email protection.
If there were clickable drill downs on specific users or specific correspondence to relate them to certain types of mails, that would be beneficial.
Having a more user-friendly UI would make it easier to identify features and options when using the tool.
Though this isn't problematic for our users, the content could be updated more frequently.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Secure Email is priced higher, but users find its extensive features and security benefits justify the cost.
IRONSCALES offers valuable email security with high pricing, involving annual licensing and fees, considered worthwhile for phishing prevention.
Its cost is bundled with other Cisco products.
The licensing is a mess and needs sorting out.
The pricing structure is good as it is user-based or email client-based, which is positive for clients.
While I don't specifically oversee the pricing details, I understand that IRONSCALES is in the range of similar solutions while offering better results.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Secure Email provides comprehensive threat management with advanced filtering, intuitive management, and seamless integration, enhancing email security effectively.
IRONSCALES enhances email security with AI detection, Microsoft 365 integration, user-friendly features, and mobile app incident management.
It also possesses multiple modules for spam detection, malware detection, and threat intelligence, which are valuable in categorizing emails and determining actions.
It is highly effective in catching phishing and spam emails.
It covers everything through email, like antivirus, IDS, and IPS.
IRONSCALES has positively impacted my organization by making email security simple in terms of controlling mails, understanding where the threats are, and protecting the organization itself.
The best features of IRONSCALES are that most alerts are validated through AI, which reduces the fatigue of alerts that need to be worked on by the team handling the alerts investigation part.
IRONSCALES excels at analyzing the intention, not just the content itself, but the sender's attempt to gain user attention.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
IRONSCALES
Ranking in Email Security
17th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (18th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 5.5%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IRONSCALES is 1.6%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Secure Email5.5%
IRONSCALES1.6%
Other92.9%
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.
Hemeshen Govender - PeerSpot reviewer
Applies AI automation to clearly identify and stop a lot of phishing emails
The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through. The solution improved our response to phishing attempts. IRONSCALES has a virtual assistant and some AI intelligence that's applied to it. That was the main differentiator between IRONSCALES and Microsoft. The solution's AI automation clearly identifies phishing emails and gives you an overall indication of why it found the mail to be malicious. It does the whole analysis for you to see why the email was deemed a phishing email. The solution's response time is better than that of our previous tool. The solution's user interface is pretty straightforward and user-friendly.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.
872,846 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
University
5%
 

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 Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
 

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 be beneficial to have the functionality of the Email Threat Defense integrated i...
What do you like most about IRONSCALES?
The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IRONSCALES?
While I don't specifically oversee the pricing details, I understand that IRONSCALES is in the range of similar solutions while offering better results.
What needs improvement with IRONSCALES?
There are areas that could be improved with this product. Regarding the Spanish language awareness training, while they are producing good content, it appears to be initially produced in English an...
 

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
Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. IRONSCALES and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
872,846 professionals have used our research since 2012.