Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

Barracuda Email Security Ga...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
DMARC Authentication Software (2nd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (4th)
Cisco Secure Email
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Barracuda Email Security Gateway is designed for Secure Email Gateway (SEG) and holds a mindshare of 10.3%, down 16.2% compared to last year.
Cisco Secure Email, on the other hand, focuses on Email Security, holds 6.7% mindshare, down 8.7% since last year.
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Shah Newaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Instantly blocked and reduced our spam emails
The solution has to improve in a very specific way. When we allow our customers to send or scan email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, we are permitting their email server IP address, but not any domain. One of our customers has an email server where they are hosting five domains within their server. They are sending and receiving email through that server by using Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Therefore, we allow their IP address to send email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway, then we declare MX for receiving email on behalf of our customers. After receiving the email, we deliver it to the specific IP address of the customer. Since we are only allowing the IP address, if an incident happens within a customer's email server or an email server gets compromised, then it starts sending spam. That creates a huge problem for the solution as it allows all emails because the customer's IP address is allowed to relay email through our Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Barracuda should add an option where it can add multiple domains, such as abc.com, bbc.com, and cbc.com. Therefore, this domains' emails will be allowed and other domains' emails will not be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. Whereas, if you allow the IP address, then any of the domain's emails will be relayed through Barracuda Email Security Gateway. That is the drawback that I have observed. So, Barracuda should work on this.
Kostas Karidas - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps prevent security breaches but fails to improve in the area of AI
I have not noticed any impressive advanced threat protection mechanisms in the tool. I don't know if there are any AI features in the product. I don't know if there is any other technology embedded in the solution. Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats. My company has seen plenty of scenarios where Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats, spam emails, and fraudulent domains. The product is good for dealing with spam emails, and it can take care of more than 100 spam emails per day. A huge number of spam emails are monitored with the help of Cisco Secure Email. I would not recommend the product to other businesses because you need to have some kind of expertise in configuring and knowing a bit about the tool's GUI. The tool also lacks in the area of AI mechanics. If I would like to have an overview and review another solution, I would go for another product other than Cisco Secure Email. I can definitely suggest others to look at the product and review it, but I would also recommend that they compare it with the other solutions in the market. I wouldn't prioritize Cisco Secure Email over other tools. Either the support partner of the product or I take care of the tool's maintenance phase by looking into the configurations and doing some fine-tuning. I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to use. The configuration and web interface are user-friendly."
"This appliance has helped in that we now eliminate the thousands of scams, spam, and malware emails that are destined for our users."
"It catches a lot of things and has the ability to add domains as well as add senders and update their things."
"The solution helps us to block some blacklisted emails."
"The most valuable feature is the Antispam services, which are the basic services of spam device"
"We find the product to be scalable."
"It is lightweight, and we can filter all of our inbound and outbound emails. We have controls for rate control, quarantine, and tagging. We can see whether an email is a spam email or a phishing email."
"The most valuable feature of the Barracuda Email Security Gateway is the ATP."
"ATP has been the most valuable in improving our email security posture."
"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."
"There were detailed logs available. That was a seriously good feature... It turns out these were actually spoof emails that came into our environment. I got to know about them from the log system."
"Capital expenditure is a significant consideration, and the impact on major expenditures prompts a careful analysis before onboarding the new product."
"What I find the most valuable about Cisco Secure Email is that the logs are not that difficult to see even if you're not used to them. The logs are reasonably readable and diagnosing the problem is not too hard with them."
"The tool has a DLP solution which we can implement. Its database is updated regularly."
"The most valuable feature is the different content filters we are using, such as DKIM."
"The solution works well."
 

Cons

"Barracuda Email Security Gateway should include ATP in the next release."
"The reports are standard, and it would be nice to be able to customize them."
"The scalability needs improvement, it's the only feature that is required."
"I would like to have better integration with third-party archival vendors to facilitate moving data in and out."
"Two improvements that are needed include an enhancement in the proxy feature, as well as the ability to more fully automate patches and updates."
"The solution should add automatic alerts to the mobile."
"My customers were sending OPT bulk emails and Barracuda Email Security Gateway was not able to handle it. We have to go with another different solution, such FortiMail for the task. We are implementing these combinations of the Barracuda and FortiGate, for email security. The FortiGate FortiMail security gateway we use to send only the bulk email, not for receiving emails."
"Barracuda Email Security Gateway can improve reporting and anti-spam. The anti-spam engine is not working well. We are seeing a lot of problems where spam is going through the gateway. Additionally, access privilege should be given to the IT support, because they don't have a lot of privileges. We are forced to give our IT support administrative access in order to clear and deliver emails and this should not be happening."
"They could improve the filters. In my time at the company, there were several times we had to contact support to update the filters."
"It would be nice to have an easier way to check on the health of the system, how stressed these appliances are. Sure, you can do it, but it would be helpful to have an easier way to do it, maybe even at a glance."
"I would like more functionality and how to use it for Level 2 type staff. The biggest issue is it needs to be easier to use and navigate."
"Cisco Secure Email can be improved from the administrator's point of view. Usually, you have to work with different areas, and they can try to make it easy for the administrator to use different functions."
"Licensing is quite complicated for a number of customers, including ourselves."
"We have occasionally had hardware problems because we are using an appliance-based solution, but that might change. We may consider going to virtual systems."
"Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features."
"There could be additional DLP functionality for it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Barracuda Email Security Gateway is an affordable solution that caters to small, midsize, and high-end businesses with great revenue."
"There is an annual license required for this solution."
"The price of this solution is very high, but it's working fine."
"For overall value and cost, Barracuda came in as most appropriate, price as well as services provided. In terms of price, it's average . It's not the most expensive, it's not the least expensive but it works well."
"The pricing for the product is fine."
"We are using the trial version right now, and before purchasing the license, we need to solve some of the issues that we are facing. We need a proper solution for our email, and then we will look into pricing. We have a vendor for licensing."
"The solution requires a license and we pay annually."
"It is a cost-effective and relatively cheap solution as compared to others. Our customers have a yearly subscription. We do have a few customers with monthly subscriptions, but they have cloud-based Email protection, which is a different type of solution. Both solutions are very good."
"The price is significantly high."
"The license was not per user, the license model was per feature. You could choose anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. It was feature-based and charged yearly."
"The solution is expensive."
"Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
"There are additional fees for adding features."
"In addition to the standard licensing, there is a cost for SMARTnet as well."
"Compared to Cisco's on-prem service, the cost is the same, but you don't have to pay for the hardware and you don't have to maintain the system, as far as upgrades and hardware failures are concerned. It is cheaper to operate on their cloud service than it is to operate with their on-prem service."
"Cisco Secure Email and the support are priced well. It's not cheap, but there are other solutions that offer less and cost so much. For example, Microsoft is more expensive than Cisco."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Email Gateway (SEG) solutions are best for your needs.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

KK
Dec 12, 2022
Dec 12, 2022
Hi Kamal, Firstly, you would have to recognize that there is/are no fast and hard rules to choosing a final preferred product, what works well for company A may not work extensively well for company B. Reason being that: the efficiency of the Security capabilities provided by one tool can be amplified by another tool, particularly for secure email gateway. Hence, if you have an XDR that you in...
2 out of 7 answers
SimonClark - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 20, 2022
Top brands don't mean best or most cost-effective. My advice is to look a bit further before you make a decision. Evidence suggests that most top brands are pretty good at detecting and blocking malicious attachments, best case letting through 1%, but can be worse than 50% when it comes to detecting malicious links in the text of the email.  There are numerous less well-known vendors with lower-cost AI-based solutions that have a far better success rate, also providing employees the ability to report on suspect emails which auto-removes them from other staff members' inboxes until they have been properly assessed. Some will provide a visual risk score to the recipient to give them advance warning to be more cautious. Combining this kind of capability with staff awareness products keeps your vendor list lower and further improves efficiency. For around £2 GBP per user per month (less than $3) we provide different vendors depending upon the customer's environment but provided as a managed service. This allows our customers to outsource some of the monitoring and day-to-day management, spread the cost on a monthly basis, and flex how many licences they need on a monthly basis too i.e. if you drop 20 users don't pay for them but if you increase by 20 you don't need complex co-termination and pro rata discussions.
DM
Jun 21, 2022
I only can recommend Cisco because it´s the only one with which I'd worked enough. I think it is powerful enough and has a lot of possibilities. In addition, to a great support team. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
53%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Educational Organization
34%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway is very simple to use.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Security Gateway?
Barracuda Email Security Gateway should include ATP in the next release.
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Email?
Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Email?
The licensing is a mess and needs sorting out. I am not really concerned about the pricing because I only make recommendations, not buying decisions.
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Email?
The user interface needs massive improvement. While the device works fine and it's not complicated to write policies, renaming menu items and showing policy flow in conjunction with the application...
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall, Barracuda Sentinel
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Evolution Recruitment Solutions, Evans Delivery Company, Osoyoos Credit Union, Synovis Life Technologies, Camden County Technical Schools, DEK, Evans Delivery Company, Colgate Rochester Crozer, Hemmera, South Carolina Heart Center, Ferma Corporation, Major League Baseball (MLB), Healy Brothers Automotive Group
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Security Gateway vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.