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Cisco Umbrella vs EfficientIP DNS Firewall 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
EfficientIP DNS Firewall
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 20.9%, down from 26.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of EfficientIP DNS Firewall is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Umbrella20.9%
EfficientIP DNS Firewall1.6%
Other77.5%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

Emilio Montoya - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures internet navigation safety and boosts productivity
The features of Cisco Umbrella I prefer most are DNS protection and traffic redirect. With Cisco Talos's threat intelligence, we reduce the impact of malware traffic in our network, and we currently see the behavior of equipment and choose the correct sites. Cisco Talos has helped us reduce the impact of malware traffic. We can see the behavior and choose the correct sites. We're currently testing secure access with Umbrella in order to secure access to core applications. It's a product that the user doesn't even know is there, even though it is protecting them. It's not hard on the equipment. And, for us, it centralizes everything, which improves productivity. With the Experience Insights feature of Cisco Secure Access, we've seen impacts on the management of user connectivity by allowing us to deliver safe connectivity. We are testing the Secure Access product with Cisco Umbrella to improve our connectivity with our users in order to secure access to the corporate applications. Cisco Umbrella is in the cloud, which is nice.
reviewer1080873 - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to set up and use, and has a helpful network device inventory function
The vendor needs to do more to promote this product in certain regions, helping it to gain market share in territories where it is not widely adopted. The problem with this vendor is that they are too focused on revenue and sales numbers. If a partner is not able to generate the revenue that they're expecting, they put them on hold until they can generate interest and traction in their region for the products. It comes down to the management's mindset. They have a good product but they don't have much patience for a territory that is slow to adopt.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the ability to filter malware sites that could infect clients or allow them to download infected files."
"My overall rating for Cisco Umbrella is ten out of ten."
"Application performance has greatly improved and there are less operational issues. Productivity has been going up because we have less operational issues. Also, we have happy customers."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, visibility, and reporting capabilities. Our customers can see how much Umbrella is protecting their organization. If you don't know what you've got, you can't protect it. With Umbrella, you get the visibility and see the protection that it's providing. We can get PDF reports on a weekly basis of any malware activities and any denial of service or command-and-control-type activities."
"You can manage and create policies based on a group of users. It can permit some URLs and block others."
"The most valuable feature is the website protection capabilities because it prevents end-users from entering bad sites that potentially have malware or could be used for phishing."
"We can have a full overview and a quick overview of all the DNS requests. For us, it's quite important."
"Cisco Umbrella is a totally different solution. They are the first to come up with this idea of security. It's a totally new concept of security for everybody, for every time, real time, perfectionism."
"This product has an inventory function to help maintain a list of the equipment, which is quite good."
 

Cons

"The pricing could always be a little bit better."
"The locks and management could be better. The product is fairly new, and it may take some time to get all the features up and running."
"Cisco Umbrella should add some more documentation on proxies."
"It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"The solution's technical support is not very good."
"If the security issues are taken care of it would be better."
"For us, as an MSP, the initial licensing changes were a roadblock, and they still could be a lot clearer. Specifically, it's an honor-based licensing system. We'd like it to be more specific to our traffic or our users so that we can make sure that the customer is paying for all their licensing."
"Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better."
"The vendor needs to do more to promote this product in certain regions, helping it to gain market share in territories where it is not widely adopted."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing was marvelous."
"Cisco is expensive. For example, we are looking at Nexus Dashboard, and it's costing about 250,000 euros. I ask, "What do I get from it?" I'm still not convinced that we have to spend on it, so pricing is a problem."
"There are three models for licensing with different feature sets."
"Cisco solutions are generally perceived to be rather expensive. We have constant internal discussions as to whether we should offer lower-priced security solutions from some of the competitors."
"Licensing with Cisco can be a little complex, but I think it's comparable with that of other similar products. It's always hard to put a price on security, but the price is fair for the value it provides."
"The price could be lower."
"There are no hidden costs with Umbrella. Everything is included in the package."
"You can request an evaluation license​."
"The price of this product is very reasonable, especially considering that a company's reputation is priceless."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business48
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
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Also Known As

OpenDNS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim
De Montfort University, STMicroelectronics, Leeds Beckett University
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Infoblox, Palo Alto Networks and others in Domain Name System (DNS) Security. Updated: August 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.