No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cisco Umbrella vs EfficientIP DNS Guardian comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
123
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
EfficientIP DNS Guardian
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 18.1%, down from 25.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of EfficientIP DNS Guardian is 4.1%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella18.1%
EfficientIP DNS Guardian4.1%
Other77.8%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

BB
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Ensures comprehensive protection with seamless threat logging and efficient policy management
My favorite feature of Cisco Umbrella is probably just the DNS and the fact that when a security threat happens, all of that gets logged in their Umbrella portal, and it's very easy to find who's been accessing the site and how many people have accessed it, so that we can go to them and make sure they're not compromised. The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by providing less time to search for things through logs, to look for what we need. It's just one place to go, and we just search for it, and we find it really fast. The fact that there's a virtual database that has all that information is great on our portal.
Stanislav Strijakov - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Architect at University of Sydney
Helps deal with DNS DoS attacks and corrupt DNS requests
I know my company does come across problems related to the product, sometimes related to a configuration issue or a bug. My company receives good support from EfficientIP DNS Guardian's team, who are responsible and passionate about the product. As far as I know, all of my company's challenges and issues have been successfully resolved. I can't think of any weaknesses or issues which I would like to highlight in a significant manner. EfficientIP DNS Guardian has a certain default behavior that didn't meet our company's requirements. After the consultation with EfficientIP DNS Guardian's IT support, a configuration changed the product's default behavior, which was undesirable for us, to a desirable behavior. Certain issues happen in every product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco is a very efficient and on-point solution that controls the whole network and settings on one page. We can monitor the entire network."
"The core business of Cisco Umbrella is non-malware. That's all it does: block the malware on the gateway."
"We like Cisco Umbrella because of DNS security. It's one step ahead of whatever we are using for regular web filtering. In that way, it's more secure than other web filtering products."
"Using this solution has meant that we've needed to make fewer firewall changes."
"Cisco's Umbrella client product is superb, it worked so well for us and was easy to deploy."
"I had worked for Juniper support before and I worked for other tech support teams and I feel that Cisco's type of support is the best."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the Web Filtering and the APT."
"One of the most important features is the security posture check which Umbrella offers when a user accesses any website. That is one of the most unique features that it offers."
"This product is very stable."
"You can run a DNS server directly from EfficientIP to help mitigate all DNS attacks from various sources. This is a very good feature."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is DNS security."
 

Cons

"We would like to see the enhancements made to the EDR, as we see features that are running endpoint management."
"In terms of what can be improved, it should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"I would be happy if they could add the whois information of an IP."
"It could be improved by having a local data center and caching, which can provide protection support."
"We would like them to add more features to Cisco Umbrella."
"It would be better if there was a little bit of flexibility for organizations that don't have SD One in their environment. Because of the complexity of the environment, it's not easy to actually turn on the feature of the secure internet gateway for our users. We have not been able to explore that option yet."
"While the way the solution works with the functions is fantastic, updates or the ability to secure the vault while offline for cloud-based services should be addressed."
"The detection of wireless attacks or targeted attacks reports many false rates. This is an area that needs some improvement."
"The problem with this vendor is that they are too focused on revenue and sales numbers."
"EfficientIP DNS Guardian's deployment documentation is very hard to find. The tech support's response is slow."
"EfficientIP DNS Guardian has a certain default behavior that didn't meet our company's requirements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing was marvelous."
"You get what you pay for."
"The licensing part for Umbrella is really flexible."
"The price depends on the use case, and it's a bit linear. But it depends on the customer's strategy and how Cisco plans to optimize the costs."
"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."
"The price should be slightly lower than the current price because if you look at the whole solution, it is simply a threat intelligence solution to block blacklisted things. The price should be lower looking at the features provided by the solution. The price isn't too high either, but it could be lower."
"Cisco Umbrella is not a cheap product. However, it's not a matter of the cost; it's more a matter of the value of security. It is easy to measure this value when you have a security incident. I think the price is a good trade-off for a product that can help you avoid security threats."
"It was a little bit expensive on a per seat basis, but the company I was running was only a midsize Australian company, and it was a reasonable budget per computer for that system. It started off being a free product, and then Cisco bought it, and it went to a reasonable price. I was using Cisco AMP as well. So, my per computer cost was reasonably high, but for a small company, it was within an acceptable level."
"I rate the product price as three to four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low cost, and ten is high price."
"The price of this product is very reasonable, especially considering that a company's reputation is priceless."
"The solution is subscription-based."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Domain Name System (DNS) Security solutions are best for your needs.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Non Profit
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?
The pricing for Cisco Umbrella is fair compared to other platforms out there for DNS security. We acquired it as a bundle with other Cisco purchases.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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 Umbrella vs. EfficientIP DNS Guardian and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.