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Cisco Secure Email vs GWAVA [EOL] comparison

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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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (20th), Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Cisco Secure Email
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
GWAVA [EOL]
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
KS
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
Email security has protected financial data and provides clear tracking for every branch message
The areas of Cisco Secure Email that could be improved or enhanced are the slowness in the console. I don't think it was a database error or something, but we feel some slowness in configuring DLP and other content filters compared to other consoles. It may have been due to on-premises, but it was much noisy at some times while configuring DLP. When we tried to configure a DLP policy, the console became much slower. In that case, we cannot see what had happened in the mail which was blocked at that time. It may take nearly an hour to get back to normal while configuring policies. That is the major issue in the product.
GW
IT Menedżer at own
An excellent anti-spam solution for mail systems
The solution needs to be more user-friendly. I don't want to have to go to my IT guy and have him explain aspects of the solution to me. There should be a way for them to be able to translate aspects of the product to a typical user in a clear concise way. It might help if there was a better user interface.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare One has assisted in securing my remote workforce through a SASE solution with Cloudflare One and the Workers part, although I am not currently using the Workers component."
"Cloudflare Access is part of the Zero Trust philosophy."
"Cloudflare DDoS is better than its competitors for its security, deployment, and scalability."
"Clover is the best product globally."
"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."
"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."
"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."
"The capabilities of the software are strong enough for me to do what it's supposed to do. For me, we don't need to do a lot of configuration on our site. We just enable it and monitor it."
"IronPort really helped with the mail filtering and load balancing between the Exchange servers they had."
"Compared with other mail security things, Cisco Secure Email was much better and easy to deploy also."
"The tool's most valuable feature in preventing security breaches revolves around the area of malware protection that the product provides."
"It provides good IT assistance."
"We chose Cisco Iron Port as it delivers strong email security protection and our company needed it to protect the company's email systems from spam, email viruses, .exe files, unwanted email from unwanted sender etc."
"The most valuable feature is the different content filters we are using, such as DKIM."
"Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution."
"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's a perfect business pump filter. We have much less false positives, and also less spam than other organizations."
"We have the visibility of what was locked and what was dropped from our mail system and what is safe for our users."
 

Cons

"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."
"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"I would like them to include a VPN feature to provide a secure connection to the data center."
"Feedback could be enhanced."
"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."
"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."
"I would like to see features like AI since it is currently an area that the product lacks."
"The configuration UI should be made more intuitive. Currently, it takes a while to understand how to do the basic configurations."
"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."
"The discontinuation of physical hardware solutions is a significant area for improvement in Cisco Email Security Appliance. This decision has posed challenges as virtual appliances are now the only option, which may not be suitable for all industries. The uncertainty regarding the future of the hardware aspect of the solution is a notable concern."
"I use the search all the time. Sometimes, it is hard to search for things and things are hard to find."
"The area of license renewal should be improved. We normally renew our license every year. There is a feature called smart licensing, and I switched from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode because of what I thought smart licensing does. I thought it would make licensing renewal seamless and very swift, but ever since I've switched to smart licensing, each time I want to renew my license, it is a whole lot of headache. The process is not smooth, and I had to keep calling Cisco TAC to see how the issue can be resolved. At one point, I wanted to revert back to the legacy mode, but I can't revert. Once you switch from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode, you can't revert. They should improve on the visibility of the smart licensing mode so that it can indeed be smart and easier to use for the license renewal every year. That is one challenge."
"The interface is dated. It has looked pretty much the same for 15 years or so."
"The graphical user interface is not user-friendly like other vendors. I find it very difficult at times to find some options on the UI."
"The solution needs to be more user-friendly. I don't want to have to go to my IT guy and have him explain aspects of the solution to me. There should be a way for them to be able to translate aspects of the product to a typical user in a clear concise way."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not that expensive."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"There are additional fees for adding features."
"It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
"The pricing is good."
"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 price is significantly high."
"You're going to get what you pay for. If you're not willing to pay the price of Cisco, you're not going to get a product that's as good as Cisco. I don't think Cisco is overpriced, because for the last two years I've been comparing it to Microsoft and Cisco has been cheaper and given us more features."
"Cisco Secure Email is not expensive, and licensing costs are yearly."
"Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise26
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...
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 areas of Cisco Secure Email that could be improved or enhanced are the slowness in the console. I don't think it ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Email?
We are using Cisco Secure Email to monitor the outgoing and incoming mail traffic in our financial institute. We have...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
SVG Strassenverkehrs-Genossenschaft Wªrttemberg eG, ELO Digital Office GmbH, Grafisch Lyceum Utrecht, Deutscher Steuerberaterverband (DStV), Investment Savings Bank of Pennsylvania, Gwinnett Health System, Long Island Rail Road, Wisconsin Historical Society, South Texas Nuclear Facility, Northwestern Michigan College, Carilion Health System, North Memorial Medical Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint, Microsoft, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Email Security. Updated: June 2026.
900,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.