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Cisco Secure Email vs Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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 Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)
Fortra's Clearswift Secure ...
Ranking in Email Security
36th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 5.1%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Secure Email5.1%
Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway1.0%
Other93.9%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

BD
Chief Information Security Officer at Abcl
Threat intelligence with fast attack detection enables comprehensive email protection
In some cases, detection is missed, leading to false positives where genuine emails are flagged as spam. This could result in users not opening genuine emails. We have highlighted this to Cisco because sometimes phishing or marketing campaigns, which are genuine, are incorrectly flagged as spam. The solution should better analyze the actual content rather than only focusing on the email header or origin.
PC
Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Stable, but malware needs improvement and customer support is poor
They need to improve the malware in the product. I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support. The support is poor, the supplier takes a lot of time and it's expensive. We have some issues here when I contact the supplier, it takes a lot of time for them to get back to us but there's no solution. I am now looking at Symantec as a possible alternative.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Secure Email has strong inbound services."
"Administration of the email domains and custom filters are easily done via the web interface."
"Initially, the most valuable feature for us was the SenderBase Reputation, because that reduced the number of emails that were even considered by the system by a huge number..."
"The advanced phishing protection and the integration with the awareness tool that Cisco has embedded into the solution to bring awareness to the customers about the dangers of phishing attacks and other things that come from email are the most valuable features."
"The solution is very configurable. It has enabled us to configure some specific filters to stop emails that general configurations didn't stop. It's a powerful solution. It can analyze a lot of emails simultaneously, with no problems of capacity or system load."
"It has the IMS engine, Intelligent Multi-Scan engine, and it does a good job, right out-of-the-box, of blocking the vast majority of things that should be blocked."
"It provided a platform to sell a service to customers."
"At one point, there was a zero-day attack. The Cisco appliance detected it and stopped it, helping us out. We avoided the attack and potential damage."
"Ability to create your own content-filtering policies with relative ease."
"A stable solution."
 

Cons

"The primary areas for improvement are the pricing and the complexity of deployment."
"Better dashboards and more interactive overviews would be nice, but the current functionality is sufficient."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability."
"The product's GUI for the dashboard needs improvement."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."
"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."
"Scalability has certain shortcomings and needs to be improved because there are service providers who provide better scalability.v"
"We would like to see more options for the customization of content filters."
"FTP server and TRUST Manager functionality."
"Malware needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. I would rate it 2 out of 10, where 1 is the most expensive and 10 is the cheapest."
"The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market."
"Cisco Secure Email is expensive, but we get what we pay for."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise25
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 pricing structure is good as it is user-based or email client-based, which is positive for clients.
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Email?
The user interface of the Email Security Gateway ( /products/security-gateway-reviews ) should be improved. It would be beneficial to have the functionality of the Email Threat Defense integrated i...
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Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,103 professionals have used our research since 2012.