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Cisco Secure Email vs Mimecast Email Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 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 security, reduces costs, and boosts productivity, providing ROI similar to preventive insurance against breaches.
Sentiment score
6.6
Mimecast Email Security effectively prevents phishing, enhancing security and providing significant protection despite challenges in quantifying ROI.
There is definitely a return on investment when using Mimecast, as it blocks phishing emails, reducing the risk of significant financial losses.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Secure Email is praised for its knowledgeable, proactive support with quick resolutions, despite occasional delays for some users.
Sentiment score
5.8
Mimecast Email Security's customer service is mixed, with responsiveness praised by some, but issues with waiting times noted by others.
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.
Support personnel are hesitant to engage in remote sessions, preferring to share documentation via email.
Mimecast technical support is generally quite good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Cisco Secure Email excels in scalability, supporting large enterprises seamlessly, with minor hardware challenges noted by some users.
Sentiment score
7.2
Mimecast Email Security is a scalable SaaS solution, praised for flexibility and effectiveness across various organization sizes and industries.
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, stability, and efficiency, outperforming rivals with minimal issues and high user ratings.
Sentiment score
7.5
Mimecast Email Security is generally stable and reliable, with rare bugs, occasional minor issues, and minimal downtime reported.
Based on my experience, the stability of Cisco Secure Email is very strong.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Secure Email needs UI improvements, simplified pricing and deployment, enhanced features, and streamlined management for better user experience.
Mimecast Email Security requires pricing, detection, user interface improvements, better support, and enhanced AI integration for smoother operations.
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.
A lot of emails were missed despite being known samples.
We discussed the phishing aspect, the DNS system, and the key rotation.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Secure Email offers robust features and value, with prices varying based on services, usage, and licensing complexity.
Mimecast Email Security offers comprehensive features but is considered premium, with variable pricing flexibility and additional support costs.
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.
The pricing is higher for Mimecast, particularly for the Indian market, where it is considered expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Secure Email offers strong spam and malware protection, seamless Active Directory integration, and customizable security features for effective threat management.
Mimecast Email Security offers strong threat protection, seamless Microsoft 365 integration, and user-friendly features for comprehensive email threat mitigation.
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.
A distinct advantage of Mimecast is its ability to block phishing and impostor attacks, which are significant threats currently.
One of the most useful features is the threat remediation module, which can be used to remove malicious emails that may have been delivered or manually remove them.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Secure Email
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
Mimecast Email Security
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Office 365 Protection (3rd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Secure Email is designed for Email Security and holds a mindshare of 6.2%, down 8.5% compared to last year.
Mimecast Email Security, on the other hand, focuses on Secure Email Gateway (SEG), holds 11.9% mindshare, down 15.8% since last year.
Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

PaulGiles - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good visibility into the traffic, valuable reporting, and secure remote access
A lot of our customers use another Cisco product already, so they have confidence in Cisco products. The firewalls they are currently deploying and using have evolved from their older ASA products. They are now moving to the new Firepower Threat Defense, which incorporates many more features and allows them to get the latest ALOFT download and feeds for any security vulnerabilities and they're able to react very quickly to any vulnerabilities that have been highlighted. Initially, when the firewalls were first marketed and came onto the market, the visibility wasn't very good. But as the software evolved over time, that visibility has increased a lot more, and that is giving customers a lot more competence in the traffic and the traffic flows that they're seeing through the actual devices, so they can better understand the types of applications that they have on their network. The good thing about the actual firewall itself is that it can integrate with other Cisco products, such as Cisco ISE so that it allows full end-to-end visibility of connectivity. It gives very good visibility. It's that integration with other products, not just what that individual firewall can do itself. Talos is obviously fundamental to the actual firewall, reporting on vulnerabilities that are happening day to day. And the regular downloads, obviously, give customers confidence that their products are as secure as they can actually be.
ShaheenKapery - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides valuable security features and has a straightforward setup process
The initial setup process is straightforward and takes a weekend at most. A .com domain can take up to forty-eight hours, while a local domain takes about four to eight hours because it has to propagate through the international DNS records. It is a cloud-only solution. If you're managing email security on-premises, you use your bandwidth to download emails, including spam, and then use your servers to clean it up. For example, say a third of your email is spam; this consumes significant bandwidth and resources. However, if you use Mimecast, they filter the emails on their servers before delivering them to you. It can be a major selling point in regions with expensive bandwidth, such as Africa. You can save bandwidth and improve overall efficiency by offloading the spam filtering to Mimecast.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection?
The interface of this solution is very easy to navigate and user-friendly. There is no delivery in email and other communications, making it reliable. The configuration is relatively easy.
What needs improvement with Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection?
If I ask you about the room for improvement, we discussed the phishing aspect, the DNS system, and the key rotation. Apart from that, are there any other areas that you would like to see improved o...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Azizi Developments, Affinity Credit Union, Aftercare, Al Abbar Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. Mimecast Email Security and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.