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McAfee Web Protection [EOL] vs iboss comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (6th), ZTNA as a Service (7th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
McAfee Web Protection [EOL]
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
BharatUjenia - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Group Manager - Enterprise IT at WNS Global Services
Provides very good accessibility and handles any overload very well
McAfee Web Protection has been around for many years and the solution holds its ground as a product providing good accessibility and handling any overload very well. McAfee has developed new features similar to those found in other solutions; enabling seamless deployment, reducing the footprint on data centers, and making the solution more scalable, more resilient, and more reliable.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As I mentioned, the return on investment is significant, as it saved our office locations' bandwidth because when you are working remotely at home, your internet traffic routes directly to iboss and will not go to your office building, saving bandwidth bottlenecks and ensuring that issues with our building internet circuits will not impact your internet connectivity because you are directly going to the iboss data center."
"This product is solid, fairly easy to use, and reliable."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"The iboss solution gives me the ability to scan the traffic through all the ports, through all the 131,000 PCP and UDP ports, and with this ability, we have the granularity also for consults over social media and applications on mobile, and this is an advantage that the customers are looking for right now."
"McAfee Web Protection was a good tool because in the olden days when you had to use a proxy tool when browsing the internet. Today the logic has changed slightly, in the sense your protection's taken onto the cloud. You'll exit a predefined gateway on the cloud before your internet browsing happens and therefore you're secured."
"It's a solution that permits making a granular configuration and it is easier to deploy the same configuration on a lot of devices using the central console. It is the master of the product."
"The product is quite an effective firewall."
"The most valuable is the blocking of blacklisted sites, a URL that is, either by intelligence or by McAfee, detected as a malicious site."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it protects against threats that are coming from the web."
"Using this type of solution is best practice in the industry."
"I would recommend the solution to others; it works well for me and it is affordable."
"The stability has a good standard right now."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"Its pricing could be better."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"In McAfee Web Protection there are gaps in the security design, in the overall architecture, the gaps need to be fixed."
"The manufacturerers should have more transparancy about exactly what is getting filtered when you use the product and why."
"The True Key version for mobile phones should be improved. The password manager is not as seamless as on the desktop. Once implemented, on the desktop, when you go to the site, it automatically fills and connects you, whereas, on the mobile phone, it doesn't do that quite seamlessly. You need to open the True Key application and then select the password you want to use. It then opens in the browser. There are fewer steps in the desktop version as compared to the mobile version."
"The technical support is good, but it's always "I'll call you back", especially when there are no threats."
"McAfee Web Protection can improve the information provided for hybrid installations in the console. Additionally, having cloud protection would be good."
"The True Key version for mobile phones should be improved."
"Lacking filter for spam."
"The configuration could be simplified because it is more complex to make the configuration on McAfee. What can be improved is the support of the agent on smartphones, IOS or Android. That still now is not available yet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"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."
"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 pricing is cheaper than some of the other options that are available."
"$150 Canadian per year."
"It is not very expensive. It costs 100 Canadian Dollars per year per license. I buy one-year or two-year protection. The license covers my PC, laptops, and telephone. The cost is per user but for multiple devices. It has just the standard licensing fees. There are some options for extended protection. For example, if I wanted to have a VPN, there will be an extra cost. So, there are upgradable features, but I'm very happy with what it is giving me with the basic plan. It gives me the basic privacy protection that I need."
"The license number would be approximately $35,000."
"In McAfee Web Protection you have the ability to install any appliance you want with the same license. If you need an appliance on-premise, you can install it with the same license because the license is for users, not for appliances. If you need one more, you can install it and you don't have problems with the license or need to change your environment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Performing Arts
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-ba...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use it on Mac systems, it does not work as expected. On the Windows system, around 45...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were using were costly, as Blue Coat was acquired by Symantec, and then Symantec was acqu...
Do you recommend McAfee Web Protection?
I highly recommend McAfee Web Protection. In my opinion, it is a comprehensive web protection platform with a great firewall. I find that it is a lot less bulky than competing solutions on the mark...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
McAfee Web Gateway, McAfee SaaS Web Protection
 

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.
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