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Cisco Umbrella vs GoodAccess comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (3rd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
GoodAccess
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (8th), ZTNA (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 18.2%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoodAccess is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Rohan Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent
The most valuable thing is how easy it is to deploy. We did it with 9,000 users at my last job, and it took a week to get to all the endpoints. Doing that without having to physically touch all those endpoints was very simple. The single pane of glass management makes it very easy to manage your rollout. We get a lot of "single panes of glass" and, eventually, you need a pane of panes of glass. But it's always good to have a clear and graphical view, and Umbrella's is nice and easy to read. Definitely, of the panes of glass that we do have, it's one of the easiest to use. The single pane of glass is good to group users together and separate people out. Some people need different types of security. Some people are more vulnerable. Some have more highly valuable assets, like C-suite people. It's really good to be able to have end-users defined inside of that. You don't have to jump around. You don't have to figure out who's who. It's all done through one pane of glass. What most people don't realize is that it's running in the background, which is a really nice aspect when it comes to security. Often, when you deploy a security tool, it takes up CPU performance. Everything slows to a grind. But Umbrella is so simple and easy and it doesn't affect the end-user experience. It's the best of all worlds. It's nice when people realize that they're being protected when they go to the wrong site. I think people are happy that they're protected, but it's nice that they rarely notice it. It's generally easy to maintain network connectivity, but with Umbrella, the nice part is that whichever connectivity you're on, you're always secure. With Umbrella, as long as you're online, you're going to be protected.
Frank Goldman - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to easily see users' device compliance as it continuously monitors the devices
Security is much better than the service that we were using before. The dashboard is much more user-friendly. It is easy to add users. I can easily see users' device compliance as it continuously monitors the devices. The speed of the connections is excellent. We have two gateways set up, one for the East Coast US and one for the West Coast. Both have excellent speed and the GoodAccess team allowed us to test several gateways to determine which worked best for us prior to locking in the gateways. With the prior service, the speed was so slow that users could not work while connected.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device."
"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"The most valuable features for us include tenant lock, content filtering, and DLP solutions, looking for PII and information being exfiltrated."
"The core business of Cisco Umbrella is non-malware. That's all it does: block the malware on the gateway."
"The implementation is pretty easy."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to detect if a URL has malware or is vulnerable."
"I have found the malware protection feature valuable. It is helpful and deliverable and is able to protect my entire organization from getting compromised. It also prevents us from visiting any malicious sites which are not visible to the users."
"Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy."
"I like the original functionality, which allows for providing secure DNS services."
"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."
"The dashboard is pretty sleek and complete."
"We love the simple interface and speed and reliability of the system."
"GoodAccess was the only hosted VPN solution we found for a reasonable cost that allowed us to establish a site-to-site VPN network for hundreds of locations across the country."
"The task of managing security and auditing for unauthorized entries has been substantially diminished."
"No extra hardware is needed, and it is very easy to set up"
"This simple, stable, affordable VPN solution scaled with us over the first year of use, allowing for an expansion of remote/hybrid workers to remotely access key systems otherwise restricted to our internal office network."
"The speed of the connections is excellent. We have two gateways set up, one for the East Coast US and one for West Coast. Both have excellent speed and the GoodAccess team allowed us to test several gateways to determine which worked best for us prior to locking in the gateways."
"GoodAccess simplified our infrastructure and how we interact with clients."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"Security, overall, can always be improved."
"The solution is very expensive in Brazil."
"We would like them to add more features to Cisco Umbrella."
"I am unsure if Cisco Umbrella offers a Windows option for running the server."
"Having ready-to-go templates with best practices is definitely something that would be an improvement. Deployment, from day one, is something that definitely needs to be improved for Cisco customers."
"In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes."
"If the security issues are taken care of it would be better."
"Missing a real data leakage prevention solution."
"The logs do not go back very far."
"Their recent revision in pricing was a jolt. Though any business understands the need for periodic pricing evaluations, a clearer communication strategy and more gradual changes might have been more palatable for long-term clients like us."
"It would be useful to see the weekly usage information within the program itself and a dashboard for all usage data."
"For small organizations, it works great. However, the larger the organization, the more scalable the pricing model, the better, since gateways can be very expensive if an organization needs multiple gateways."
"They need to provide a more comprehensive app that shows more data that appears on the GoodAccess site."
"The product could improve by extending its chat support beyond 8-5 CET, Monday to Friday, to a 24/7 service for better accessibility and immediate assistance."
"There is one minor drawback to mention: occasionally, the Internet connection tends to slow down noticeably while using the VPN."
"The latest upgrade to the Windows version of the app (unconfirmed on the Mac client) adds some unnecessary stylized animation to the GUI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The licensing and pricing structure of Cisco Umbrella is in line with standard systems on the market, and we have no specific requirements in this area. Overall, we have found it to be an acceptable pricing model for our organization."
"Cisco should make the solution cheaper."
"Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive."
"The price is fair, and the licensing cost is based on the number of users. We have seen a good ROI."
"Pricing depends on the automation requirements of the organization."
"There are no hidden costs with Umbrella. Everything is included in the package."
"As an educational partner, we get better licensing structures. We are very happy with that. It has been very nice that Cisco has partnered with the educational sector to bring that."
"Cisco has a model called ELA. With ELA, if you buy the solution you will have the complete security portfolio and you can pay it yearly or after three years, it depends on the contract."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctl...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used it for student and faculty filtering on campus.
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. Zs...
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-nat...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
What do you like most about GoodAccess?
GoodAccess offers a very available professional support service - it can be via chat service, email, or phone.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GoodAccess?
Test multiple providers' solutions for speed and connection before signing up for service. Also, test the help desk r...
What needs improvement with GoodAccess?
We are having a problem with accessing Microsoft Copilot while connected. GoodAccess is working on the issue, but fix...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. GoodAccess and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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