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Cisco Secure Email vs Heimdal Email Security comparison

 

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

Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)
Heimdal Email Security
Ranking in Email Security
57th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (56th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 4.4%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Heimdal Email Security is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Email4.4%
Heimdal Email Security0.5%
Other95.1%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Melvin Ong - PeerSpot reviewer
Country Manager at PT Symcaw Solutions Indonesia
Straightforward to set up, reliable, and offers good functionality
We primarily use the solution for email security and general email management.  It's improved our productivity.  The solution works well overall. The functionality is very good.  The setup process is easy.  It is stable and reliable. It's scalable.  I don't have any specific areas that need…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IronPort allows visibility into the problem and an easy way to pinpoint policy offenders."
"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."
"The filtering is definitely better at catching both spam and malicious messages, and there's a lot of extremely granular ability for setting up rules. You can do it the way you want to. The Microsoft solution tends to be pretty limited in how it allows some of that to be done."
"The solution is valuable if you are looking for a security email gateway that provides you with the most services possible."
"It blocks bulk marketing messages, graymail, spam, and provides advanced malware protection."
"The Cisco Email Security Appliance has enabled us to reduce spam by at least 30% compared to our previous solution."
"The system enables end users to manage their own whitelists/blacklists."
"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."
"It is stable and reliable."
 

Cons

"We have Microsoft and we have the E5 licenses, they have more EDR responses on certain emails. That's something that Cisco ESA on the cloud doesn't have. They don't do anything about MITRE attacks. They only detect if there is a malicious email or a threat and they remove it."
"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."
"In some cases, detection is missed, leading to false positives where genuine emails are flagged as spam."
"The configuration UI should be made more intuitive. Currently, it takes a while to understand how to do the basic configurations."
"If you are not a technical guy, it is hard to maneuver, but as soon as you work on it, it gets better and better. If there was a better way to know how to do things or how to find things, it would be good."
"The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."
"The interface is dated. It has looked pretty much the same for 15 years or so. It would be helpful to be able to do everything from one spot. The centralized quarantine and reporting are completely separate from policy administration."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."
"The solution could be less expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"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."
"It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing an eight or nine."
"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."
"It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars."
"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."
"It's adapted to the market. It's similar to other vendors. We at least don't have many problems regarding that because Cisco is adaptable on that side. When we present the solutions to the customers, we tend to achieve the goals that the customer has in terms of the budget for such implementations."
"In my previous organization, avoiding four instances of CryptoLocker within an estimated six month period is approximately $600,000 in lost time and effort. Our five year cost was about a million dollars, and the four outages that we had equated to 65 percent of that five year cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise27
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 was a database error or something, but we feel some slowness in configuring DLP ...
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 nearly 900 branches all over India. We have an on-premises mail server in which...
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Also Known As

Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
MailSentry
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Brother, Symbion, CPH West
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint, Microsoft, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Email Security. Updated: August 2026.
910,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.