We compared Cisco Umbrella and Cloudflare DNS across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Cisco Umbrella is highly regarded for its seamless integration with existing infrastructure, extensive range of security features, and ability to centrally manage security. Cloudflare DNS excels in terms of performance and ease of registering domains. Users also like the solution's caching capabilities and API functionality.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Umbrella could enhance security by adding a transferring proxy feature and improving its Linux agent for Linux-based companies. Cloudflare DNS could improve API integration and dashboard analytics.
Ease of Deployment: Based on the feedback, Cisco Umbrella has a simple and user-friendly initial setup that can be completed quickly in around 30 minutes. Setting up Cloudflare DNS setup is also straightforward, but it may require more time, ranging from a few hours to a maximum of two weeks for inexperienced users.
Service and Support: Customers have praised Cisco Umbrella's support, describing it as excellent and superior to the customer service of other vendors. Most Cloudflare DNS customers perceive the support as dependable, although some feel that it could benefit from better responsiveness and more accurate responses.
Pricing: The cost of Cisco Umbrella differs based on the specific needs and approach of the customer, with flexible pricing and transparent charges. It is seen as reasonable and competitive by some, but a few perceive it as costly. Cloudflare DNS provides most of its core features at no cost, but customers can pay for additional services. Users consider the pricing for Cloudflare DNS to be minimal compared to other products.
ROI: Cisco Umbrella has proven to be a valuable investment by addressing maintenance concerns, reducing expenses associated with hardware updates, and effectively thwarting threats. It offers enhanced visibility and aids in remediation efforts. Quantifying the return on investment for Cloudflare DNS is difficult because it's challenging to estimate the potential financial impact of attacks.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella integrates well with infrastructure and offers comprehensive security features, whereas Cloudflare DNS prioritizes speed, privacy, and global reach. Both products have user-friendly setups. Cisco Umbrella allows for easy deployment across multiple locations, while Cloudflare DNS can be set up quickly within a few hours. Cisco Umbrella could offer better Linux compatibility, while CloudFlare DNS should improve its dashboard analytics and API integration.
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"When it comes to hybrid work it's pretty effective. We've got the agents. We can protect people inside our building and, when they're using their laptops out in the field, they're still protected. It's working well."
"I like the DNS layer security."
"Umbrella enables customers to be secure. We are happy with this and this is the most important benefit for customers."
"It makes it really easy to accomplish content filtering. We don't have to do a lot of customization. You just click the box for the content category and it's up to date."
"I was able to implement it myself. It was really easy to install. You could install it on a server locally if you want to. If you have the biggest site, you would do that, but for my site, it was just directing all the traffic out through the Cisco Umbrella DNS. It was really handy. When the owners of the company went overseas, I knew that they would be secure because even if they were not on the company network, they would still go through the Cisco Umbrella servers. It was a complete solution for protecting the company with outgoing data."
"The single-pane-of-glass management is very important. We have a very small team. We can't spend a lot of time going from product to product to product to either investigate or set up policy. We need to have one place that we can go to and set everything up."
"The primary advantage of Cisco Umbrella is its ability to safeguard our users no matter where they are working from - whether it's in the office or remotely, as per the new work model that has emerged globally. This integrated security solution has simplified our lives by combining all the necessary security measures in one product. Additionally, deploying the product is all it takes to protect all our users."
"By using Cisco Umbrella, you are sure of inspecting all the traffic. Whenever the user machine is connected to your network, it is inspected. That's the best thing. It means you are sure that nothing is being exported or imported without your choice. That is the best feature."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"There are a couple of interface issues. I know that they say that there are feature enhancements that are noted. For example, we've got the Cisco Meraki security appliances, and there, we geofence our company to where we're allowed to send and receive traffic. So, in our case, by default, we only allow traffic to six different countries, which allows us to effectively prevent traffic for the majority of bad players in the world, but they don't give you an easy way to do that in Cisco Umbrella. With Cisco Meraki, I can specify or pick the countries. I can say that I want to only allow traffic from these six countries, and I'm done. With Cisco Umbrella, I have to rely on the fact that they're going to prevent traffic to other countries. They're going to decide if it's good or bad."
"The integration with other solutions is a little complex. If you want to integrate with something like ArcSight or LogRhythm or Splunk, you need to do a lot of configuration. There are no easy ways to implement it."
"We faced an issue regarding virtual appliances (VAs) during deployment. They could improve the quality and management of the virtual appliances offered right now. You can't see much because it is a Linux machine, and they have customized it. You don't have any route access to the machine, only seeing limited things in it. When we opened a ticket, they didn't know much about VAs themselves. So, that is where it is lacking right now. I know this will improve in the long run."
"It's easier for us to have support features with companies who are Cisco representatives, but sometimes, it's hard for us to get the help we need without having to use our contacts within Cisco."
"Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better."
"Network connectivity was a bit of a challenge at the beginning, but we were able to get the right help from Cisco."
"Client delivery and client updates should be improved. Client delivery was not as easy as expected. Another area for improvement is the integration of escalation procedures for security issues."
"They can maybe simplify the configuration. For example, sometimes, the proxy part is quite difficult, and that's why we didn't deploy that."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 49 reviews while Cloudflare DNS is ranked 1st in Managed DNS with 12 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Cloudflare DNS is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "We can see all of our locations in one place and only have to make changes once for all our locations". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cloudflare DNS writes "A stable, affordable, and easy-to-install product that provides resiliency and protects from threats". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, whereas Cloudflare DNS is most compared with Quad9, Google Cloud DNS, Azure DNS, Amazon Route 53 and Hurricane Electric Free DNS.
We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.