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Cisco Secure Email vs SonicWall Email Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)
SonicWall Email Security
Ranking in Email Security
35th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 5.8%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Email Security is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Secure Email5.8%
SonicWall Email Security0.5%
Other93.7%
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.
Swapnil Kulkarni - PeerSpot reviewer
Has consistently supported security needs for mid-sized teams with affordable deployment
I do not work with Cloud Secure Edge, CSE, or SMA apart from SonicWall NSA. I am not satisfied with phishing protection, as it falls completely under the email domain security. The customizable policy configuration does not help to tailor email security overall because our systems are not integrated with SonicWall Email Security. We are not using reporting and analytics because it requires completely different software. While all required features are available in SonicWall Email Security for SMBs and startups, we lack analytics features. They provide an option to purchase a complete separate product for analytics, but despite initially having purchased the paper license, due to technical limitations or changes, we cannot use that product. Now they require additional fees to access the analytics feature.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I love the Advanced Malware Protection feature. It works very well... The appliance has more security such as SDF, DKIM, DMARC, and encryption."
"It's a bit easy to handle Cisco Secure Email; it's not that difficult. For the logs, which are in PDF format, it's not hard to read them. We don't need Wireshark much to analyze the logs."
"The most valuable features are Advanced Malware Protection, URL filtering, and of course Reputation Filtering."
"The added value of it is that every migration to a new version is initiated by the Cisco version itself, so that is a bunch of work that you don't have to do on the Cisco ESA system on-premise. As it becomes a safe platform, you don't need to invest anything in your own data center or in your upgrade path."
"Because we scan products, and there is a lot of critical data, security is very important in these cases."
"It is a user-friendly product."
"The tool's most valuable feature in preventing security breaches revolves around the area of malware protection that the product provides."
"Cisco Secure Email's most valuable is email certification."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"SonicWall Email Security uses multi-layer cloud security."
"The product is easy to manage in terms of configurations."
"The most valuable feature is that it protects from spam."
"Setup was easy. It took about 30 minutes."
"This solution provides very good email security that protects us against spamming and malware."
"The anti-spam aspect of the solution is its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are the anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-virus, and anti-spoofing."
 

Cons

"The user interface of the Email Security Gateway should be improved."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly."
"The primary areas for improvement are the pricing and the complexity of deployment."
"The user interface needs some improvement to become more user-friendly. The graphics could be better. It's designed more for a technical user rather than a business user."
"The pricing needs to be reconsidered or enhanced."
"Typically, in a phishing email, they try to use a name everybody's going to recognize, like the CEO's name or the CFO's name... With this appliance, the way it's designed at the moment, for us to really stop that with any level of confidence, we have to build a dictionary of all the names of the people we want it to check, and all the ways they could be spelled. My name would be in there as Phillip Collins, Phillip D. Collins, Phillip Dean Collins, Phil Collins, Phil D. Collins. There could be eight or 10 variations of my name that we'd have to put in the dictionary. There's no artificial intelligence to say "Phil Collins" could be all these other things, and to stop phishing from coming through in that way."
"Scalability has certain shortcomings and needs to be improved because there are service providers who provide better scalability.v"
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"The reporting needs improvement."
"A lot of spoofed emails are still coming to the end-user, so the configuration for this option needs to be improved."
"They need well-trained partners in Nigeria."
"There could be definition updates included in the subscription."
"We would like to see more information on a dashboard about what is happening when it comes to spamming and malware."
"Updates could be released more frequently."
"The pricing could be improved."
"SonicWall Email Security could improve by making the file blocking and the release feature easier to use"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing an eight or nine."
"I rate the product price as six on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a very expensive tool."
"Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
"We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
"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."
"The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market."
"When compared with Cisco, it is very well priced. Cisco is very expensive."
"I rate the application’s pricing a five out of ten."
"The cost is cheaper than Sophos. I would rate it as five out of ten."
"The overall price of SonicWall Email Security should be reduced and there should be an option to purchase one or two licenses more instead of their current policy of bulk increases only. There should be more flexibility in the licensing model. Each license cost approximately $33 annually."
"We have a two-year license subscription and the price is very high."
"Our customers purchase the solution's yearly license."
"The platform offers a yearly license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Construction Company
10%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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 Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

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 SonicWall Email Security?
According to our customers, the product's most valuable feature is the ability to detect spam and reduce phishing emails.
 

Also Known As

Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
Dell SonicWALL Email Security Platform, SonicWall Hosted Email Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Star Kay White, Locala Community Partnerships
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. SonicWall Email Security and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.