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Cisco Duo vs Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
iboss improved bandwidth and security for remote work, but per-device fees and Mac agent delays prompted vendor alternatives.
Sentiment score
6.5
Cisco Duo offers time-saving, improved security, reduced costs, and productivity gains, leading to a favorable return on investment.
Sentiment score
7.2
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange offers high ROI, enhancing security and productivity, reducing costs, and improving remote user experience significantly.
With iboss, whenever you turn on your laptop, the iboss agent automatically connects to the iboss cloud, enforcing all security policies. So with respect to the security side, it strengthens measures.
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I have seen some cost effectiveness from iboss; it has reduced certain support requirements, making it a more hands-off solution.
Managing Director
We were able to implement zero trust extremely quickly because of the platform and its ongoing developments, including Cisco Duo Network Gateway, which enabled that transition to zero trust extremely quickly.
Global Associate Director, Services at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Not having MFA means you cannot put a price tag on that because you will be hit with ransomware immediately.
Director at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I think Cisco Duo offers a good return on investment for startups, newer organizations, or those utilizing cloud-based applications.
Identity and Access Management Principal at Mobily
When I see that I am trying to cut costs, for example, even when replacing Prisma, we have managed to save about over half a million dollars a year.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
In terms of time savings, since users no longer manually connect to the VPN, access became seamless, improving user productivity, especially for remote users.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
We don't have to purchase many components such as load balancers and proxy servers that were necessary in traditional setups.
Lead Engineer at FIS Global
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
Iboss customer service receives mixed reviews, with praise for responsiveness and criticism for communication and resolution delays.
Sentiment score
6.8
Cisco Duo's support is praised for expertise, responsiveness, and effectiveness, despite minor delays, with consistently high user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
4.9
Zscaler's customer service is professional and knowledgeable, but complex issues can cause delays, affecting global user ratings.
They are very fast, responsive, and knowledgeable.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
The quality of the support is fantastic.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
We had promising discussions about resolving these issues, but no real action followed.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
They got back to us quickly, were nice, and gave us what we needed.
Infrastructure Engineer at a government with 501-1,000 employees
I would rate their support 10 out of 10.
Senior Network Engineer Specialist at Zenith Comp Co.,Ltd.
I would rate support for Cisco Duo a 10, as I have never had a negative experience.
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
The support engineers are technically knowledgeable, particularly for Zscaler Private Access related issues, providing clear guidance and documentation for troubleshooting.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Sometimes, support takes time since the solution has some bugs that need fixing.
architect at Tata Consultancy
They have provided the numbers and contact supports, and it is almost immediate.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Iboss exhibits reliable scalability with easy resource expansion, accommodating high demand smoothly while maintaining performance and flexibility.
Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Duo offers scalable, cloud-based security with easy user management, supporting both small and large deployments globally.
Sentiment score
7.7
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform's cloud-native architecture enables scalable, efficient, and seamless expansion for diverse enterprises with minimal hardware changes.
They are also able to meet on-demand requirements based on your contract with them, and can easily provide adequate resources and scalability.
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
If I start seeing sluggishness or anything like that, I just reach out to my rep, and they connect with their dev team, typically resolving it the same day.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
In my last contracting position, it was a large one for a major worldwide airline that had hundreds of thousands of devices that could use Cisco Duo, and it scaled very well.
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
You would not need many more engineers to manage Cisco Duo even if we scale up to 500 employees because it is so simple to manage.
Manager, Customer Success at SRC.SI sistemske integracije d.o.o.
Cisco Duo is scalable for organizational growth.
Technical Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The only limitation I was mentioning is that it was unable to identify the sources of vulnerability, which they are going to embed by the mid of this year.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is highly scalable, primarily because it is built on a cloud-native, globally distributed architecture.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
iboss is highly stable with 99% uptime, minor deployment challenges, and receives strong performance ratings of 7-9 out of 10.
Sentiment score
8.1
Cisco Duo is highly stable, with rare minor issues mostly due to user configurations or external factors, ensuring dependable authentication.
Sentiment score
7.8
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform offers high reliability and availability with minimal downtime, ensuring effective performance for enterprises.
It's been pretty solid; I've never had an outage with them, and if I ever had, it's only been once out of the seven years.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
We've experienced zero downtime.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device despite our ClearPass sending information to the iboss box.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
We have not had any Cisco Duo outages across all the companies I have worked for that utilize Cisco Duo.
Senior Engineer at Frontline Fighter Ltd
The stability has been excellent.
Manager, Customer Success at SRC.SI sistemske integracije d.o.o.
I did not notice any downtime or crashes with Cisco Duo.
CTO at Red IT Solutions
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is very stable, especially in enterprise environments.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is very stable.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
 

Room For Improvement

iboss struggles with Mac support, integration issues, performance limitations, and needs improvements in security features and user configurations.
Cisco Duo faces challenges in system integration, cost, support, and functionality, needing better integration and management improvements.
Zscaler's Zero Trust Platform faces cost, latency, and control issues, with users seeking better integration, support, and scalability.
It is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
We also had a problem with a transition when we upgraded from one appliance of theirs to another, but their engineer lost a good deal of our data.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc.
If you don't have internet access, you can't access your computer, only local access is available.
Security and Network Team Lead
It lacks some dynamic identity management features compared to other products such as SailPoint.
Senior Iam Associate at Cognizant
Cisco should allow easier integration with third-party equipment because Cisco's own equipment is expensive.
Procurement Officer at Emerging Systems
It would be beneficial to have more granular centralized visibility, allowing for quick end-to-end tracing of a user request from authentication to application access without switching between multiple views.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform probably needs to be more efficient because scanning takes a lot of time.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
They might be able to identify if something is missing with Zscaler.
architect at Tata Consultancy
 

Setup Cost

Iboss offers competitive and transparent pricing, often cheaper than Broadcom and Check Point, despite annual cost increases.
Cisco Duo offers fair, straightforward per-user pricing with flexible, robust features, providing value despite appearing expensive.
Zscaler Zero Trust pricing varies, with flexible customization options and potential savings offsetting initial high costs for larger organizations.
It offers the same features you would get from a vendor that charges 250,000 British pounds for a fraction of the price.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
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.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern.
Managing Director
The pricing is acceptable to them.
Vice President at Next Info Tech Solutions Inc
Their website lists $3 per month per user for the Essential license.
Senior Network Engineer Specialist at Zenith Comp Co.,Ltd.
One of my customers recently received a billing statement charging 3,600 US dollars for 100 users for one year.
Sr. Network Security Engineer at Topnet Internet Services Provider. Riyadh, Saudi A
There is minimal setup cost since it is a cloud-delivered platform, eliminating the need to invest in additional hardware such as VPN gateways or maintain infrastructure.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is much, much cheaper when comparing price.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
 

Valuable Features

iboss provides advanced security features, seamless cloud management, and scalability with user-friendly integration and robust threat protection capabilities.
Cisco Duo offers simple, secure authentication with easy integration, streamlined access, and multi-device support, improving security without user burden.
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform enhances security and user experience with seamless connectivity, scalability, and robust control features.
The solution's mental health function can detect if someone needs help.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
It's given us a lot more visibility into our computer assets that may be infected with viruses and also shows us people who have unusually large uploads or might be engaging in high-risk activities, such as searches or going to sites not categorized by their web crawler.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
iboss was the best solution for us because, no matter what domain you were in, everything is under a single pane of glass, which is exactly what we wanted.
Managing Director
From a management perspective, I appreciate that we can enroll or control devices on the back end for people who get a new phone and forget to handle Cisco Duo properly and need to add a new device.
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
Our company benefits from all those features of Cisco Duo with confidence, and we feel very secure with it in terms of authentication of our logins.
Vice President at Next Info Tech Solutions Inc
The benefit of having a complete passwordless environment in our organization is that it's gotten people away from using the sticky note under their keyboard - which is a huge problem.
Director, Technology at Deer Creek High School
The solution is cloud-based with the latest inspection engines, which I find to be amazing.
architect at Tata Consultancy
We have excellent account management, smooth marketplace engagement, and processing in how my team or organization uses Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform.
Manager, Software Development at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Since we started using Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform, it has auto-configuration, and wherever we have deployed the auto-configuration, we have not encountered any problem.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Cisco Duo
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (4th), Authentication Systems (2nd), Access Management (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange...
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (6th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), Application Control (5th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the ZTNA as a Service category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.6%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Duo is 2.4%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is 13.9%, down from 17.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA as a Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform13.9%
Cisco Duo2.4%
iboss2.6%
Other81.1%
ZTNA as a Service
 

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.
Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.
Vibin Thomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Zero trust access has transformed remote connectivity and now simplifies secure app usage
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform, especially Zscaler Private Access, is very strong, though there are a few areas where improvements can be made. One challenge observed is around initial troubleshooting and visibility. While Zscaler Private Access provides logs, it can sometimes take time to pinpoint the exact cause of access issues, especially in complex environments with multiple policies and identity integration. Another area is the dependency on identity and connector health. Since Zscaler Private Access is heavily reliant on app connectors and identity providers, any issues with these components can impact user access, making proper monitoring critical. During the initial setup, policy configuration and application onboarding require careful planning, especially for larger environments with many applications. These challenges are manageable with proper design and monitoring. Overall, the platform delivers strong security and user experience. I would recommend a few improvements, especially around user interface, reporting, and troubleshooting experience. From a user interface perspective, while the platform is powerful, the policy configuration and navigation can feel complex, especially for new users. A more simplified and intuitive layout for policy mapping and application access would help reduce the learning curve. In terms of reporting, Zscaler Private Access provides logs, but having more built-in customizable dashboards and analytics would be very helpful. Better visibility into user access patterns, application performance, and real-time troubleshooting insights would improve operational efficiency. From a support and troubleshooting standpoint, it would be beneficial to have more granular centralized visibility, allowing for quick end-to-end tracing of a user request from authentication to application access without switching between multiple views. These improvements would make the platform even more efficient, especially for large-scale enterprise environments.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise44
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
iboss can increase security in cyberspace. I have heard they are doing DDoS filtering, but I am not certain if they a...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
I use iboss for corporate VPN and all the corporate VRF, with basically all user traffic proxying to the internet.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern. There are cheaper alte...
How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Du...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
I cannot speak to the financial planning of the organization, but I can confirm that Cisco Duo falls within the secur...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
Areas that have room for improvement in Cisco Duo include pricing, as Cisco is quite expensive, and the fact that Cis...
What is the better solution - Prisma Access or Zscaler Private Access?
We looked into Prisma Access before choosing Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). Palo Alto’s Prisma Access is a secure ac...
What needs improvement with Zscaler SASE?
The solution needs to improve a lot of aspects.
What is your primary use case for Zscaler SASE?
We are using Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange for its Zscaler Internet Access service. It provides web security, DLP, data...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Duo Security
Zscaler SASE, Zscaler DLP, Zscaler CASB, Zscaler CSPM, Zscaler Browser Isolation, Zscaler Posture Control
 

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.
Information Not Available
Siemens, AutoNation, GE, NOV
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
890,088 professionals have used our research since 2012.