We compared Cisco Secure Email and Fortinet FortiMail across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Cisco Secure Email offers advanced protection against phishing attacks, reputation-based filtering, and robust tracking functionalities. Fortinet FortiMail is highly praised for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and smooth compatibility with other Fortinet products.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Email should improve global malicious email defense, data loss prevention, and integration with third-party solutions. Fortinet FortiMail requires enhancements in integration, user management, and documentation.
Service and Support: Cisco support is generally considered knowledgeable and helpful, but a few users reported slow response times and difficulty navigating the support process. Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable.
Ease of Deployment: Cisco Secure Email is generally straightforward and seamless to set up. It provides a modular and adaptable environment, but new users may need training. The setup process for Fortinet FortiMail is described as relatively easy and can be completed within a few hours or up to 14 working days. It is flexible and can be tailored to specific needs, although it may require help from technical professionals.
Pricing: Opinions on the pricing of Cisco Secure Email are mixed. Some find it expensive but worth the investment, while others find it reasonably priced and competitive with other vendors. Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable.
ROI: Cisco Secure Email's return on investment is influenced by factors such as use case, organization size, and industry. Fortinet FortiMail provides enhanced email communication, decreased spam, stabilized collections, and altered expenses.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure Email is highly regarded for its intelligence threat detection, reputation filtering, and robust tracking abilities. The solution’s areas for improvement include data loss prevention and third-party integration. Fortinet FortiMail and Cisco Secure Email have distinct features and functionalities. Fortinet FortiMail is known for its simple setup, user-friendly interface, and effective email filtering. It can be customized and seamlessly integrated with other Fortinet products.
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"The risk level notifications are most valuable. We get to know what kind of intrusion or attack is there, and we can fix a problem on time."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"The product's scalability is good."
"Cisco Secure Email has strong inbound services."
"I can customize the configuration and policies."
"The most significant enhancement we've gained is in terms of security through the upgrade we received."
"The user interface was quite friendly, it was quite easy to use, unlike some other Cisco products. Anybody could use it. You don't have to be familiar with IT to be able to handle navigating it."
"It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. There are a lot of things that you cannot handle on the graphic interface, like message filters. For this, you need to go to a lower level where you have more power, like command line interface. So, this solution has the best of both worlds. There are not a lot of bells and whistles. It is more practical with access to most features that you can configure."
"It is doing its work. It is doing what it was actually designed to do. It has ensured we don't have business email compromises, and it has also ensured that our brand Galaxy is unique all year round."
"It does a great job of preventing spam, malware, and ransomware. I can only go by what people have told me and what I've seen, but I have not seen spam in a year and a half to two years in my own company mailbox. And there are not a lot of catches where it's catching something that should have gotten through, either."
"The added value of it is that every migration to a new version is initiated by the Cisco version itself, so that is a bunch of work that you don't have to do on the Cisco ESA system on-premise. As it becomes a safe platform, you don't need to invest anything in your own data center or in your upgrade path."
"FortiMail possesses notable strengths, and one key feature is its store-and-forward concept."
"Its performance is very good and it is stable."
"FortiMail is a stable product."
"A full-featured email gateway solution that contains security threats reliably."
"After implementing FortiMail, the spam, and malicious emails we receive have significantly reduced, making it much simpler to manage."
"One major benefit of the Fortinet FortiMail product is its ease of management."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's ability to prevent phishing attacks."
"Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are its performance and security."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data."
"We noticed that from time to time, Microsoft's stability does have problems. Sometimes the service goes up and down. Sometimes they change without prior notice."
"The product must provide better malware detection."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"Many smaller businesses opt for more cost-effective solutions, such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts, instead of investing in Cisco Secure Email, given its higher cost."
"The hardware is not up to the mark. Two to three times a year we have complete downtime."
"In future releases, I would like to see two main improvements come to mind. First, the current solution requires maintaining two separate operating systems for FTD, which can be cumbersome. I'd love to see a single operating system for the FTD box."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability."
"I am not satisfied with the solution's reporting and logging."
"The initial setup was complex because I have two sites with physical clusters."
"The configuration UI should be made more intuitive. Currently, it takes a while to understand how to do the basic configurations."
"The product could incorporate even more artificial intelligence to enhance the functionality, but it is a competetive and intelligent product as it."
"They should add a lot of threat-intelligence feeds from different sources - not only from one source (FortiGuard)."
"Sometimes, authentic emails get blocked by the solution's firewall."
"The solution is user-friendly to a degree but the dashboard needs improvement."
"Sometimes, the tool flags legitimate incoming traffic as spam."
"I believe there is room for enhancement in content and web security features."
"I don't know if it is possible, but I would like to see Artificial Intelligence and machine learning introduced."
"The tool needs to improve its pricing policy. Also, it needs to be more user-friendly. I would want it to improve email security as well."
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Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 56 reviews while Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 5th in Email Security with 57 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Email writes "Has effortless spam control, improves security posture, and frees up our IT department's time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiMail writes "Good GUI and configuring security policies is easy but the pricing needs improvement". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Proofpoint Email Protection, Trend Micro Email Security and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, whereas Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Proofpoint Email Protection, Fortinet FortiMail Cloud and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail report.
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We monitor all Email Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.