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Cisco Umbrella vs Quad9 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 Internet Security
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Quad9
Ranking in Internet Security
9th
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Managed DNS (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Internet Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 36.1%, down from 37.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quad9 is 5.7%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Internet Security
 

Featured Reviews

Sabbir Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Blocks threats before they reach the user's device
Cisco Umbrella can be improved in terms of limited coverage and wind vulnerability. The product can only shield a small area, making it less effective for larger spaces or multiple users. Additionally, strong winds can disrupt its functionality, and the opening and closing mechanism can be awkward in tight spaces.
Benoit Tellier - PeerSpot reviewer
No maintenance required, free service, but more free features would help
We were using Quad9 to prevent our users from accidentally landing on suspicious websites There's no reporting, but we're hoping that our users have been able to avoid malicious websites. The most valuable feature of Quad9 is that it is a free solution. Quad9 could improve by having any…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has the ability to quickly block new threats."
"For us and for customers, it's the ease of integration with Meraki. It's just a couple of clicks. That allows us to deploy very fast, and it doesn't change the way a customer uses his service. It's just more secure."
"I like that it integrates with the infrastructure. I also like the kind of data and intelligence that's built-in. It helps create innovative reports for security."
"Cisco's technical support is pretty good. When a solution is available, they will find it. On a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I'd rate Cisco's technical support at nine."
"It offers good visibility for the Administrator. The administrator has full visibility of what is blocked or has the knowledge of where users go when they are surfing the internet."
"I would describe the experience deploying Cisco Umbrella overall as super easy. It was awesome. It was lovely to deploy it."
"When we have laptops that leave the building, they could connect to public WiFi before they establish a VPN connection back into the company. For that duration or that period of time when they're not docked in the network or on a VPN, they effectively don't have that full layer of security that I provide inside the building. This tool stands in during that period of time, and we extend the security settings through their basic firewall or their cloud-based firewall at that time. So, we do content filtering and control access, but they also are looking at new domains, IP addresses, and bad requests. They're blocking them on my behalf when a laptop is not sitting behind our security appliances."
"I like the DNS layer security."
"Setting up Quad9 is straightforward if you know what you're doing, and it's easy to use overall."
"The most valuable feature of Quad9 is that it is a free solution."
 

Cons

"If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great."
"If you wish to inspect all the traffic and it's integrated with Cisco AnyConnect, all the traffic basically goes through Cisco AnyConnect, which is not a good idea. That means you need to have more internet capacity as a data sampler, so in the case of a split tunnel, we cannot inspect the traffic that is being migrated through the local internet. I'm not sure whether there is a possibility wherein Cisco Umbrella can also inspect the traffic that is outside the AnyConnect tunnel."
"We need to work on integration as it is very complex."
"The solution is very expensive in Brazil."
"iOS devices and mobiles are huge in my environment right now, and I cannot run them on Cisco Umbrella 24/7."
"Its price could be better."
"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."
"Network connectivity was a bit of a challenge at the beginning, but we were able to get the right help from Cisco."
"Quad9 could improve by having more free features, such as custom DNS filtering."
"It used to work fine for all the devices, but it started to slow and become non-responsive. I would have to reload the page two or three times before all the pages loaded. With OpenDNS, I only need to load the page once."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think it's worth the money."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"When talking about Cisco solutions in general there pricing model is horrible. For example, you can sell a Meraki-based solution, but if the customer starts shopping around, someone is going to have access to the pricing at a level that you cannot compete because they do not have uniform pricing. Not everybody gets fair pricing. Unless you are one of the real major corporations selling the solution your ability to compete is impossible. Cisco will acknowledge the situation and assure you next time it will be in your favor but it never becomes favorable for you. Cisco is not very good in this regard. However, Umbrella is good."
"The price is quite good."
"Its value exceeds its pricing."
"There are no hidden costs with Umbrella. Everything is included in the package."
"We were using the free version, and we implemented the paid version about two months ago. I'm paying a fair price, but everything is negotiable with Cisco. One of the benefits that I got by having Cisco Umbrella is the licensing of the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client."
"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."
"The price of Quad9 is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Educational Organization
17%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
19%
Computer Software Company
19%
Hospitality Company
8%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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.
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
What do you like most about Quad9?
Setting up Quad9 is straightforward if you know what you're doing, and it's easy to use overall.
What needs improvement with Quad9?
We've had performance problems with Quad9. It isn't responding fast enough.
 

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
CISCO, Netlab, proofpoint
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Quad9 and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.