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Cisco Secure Email vs SonicWall Email Security comparison

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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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
21st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (15th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (20th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (11th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (13th), Access Management (13th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
SonicWall Email Security
Ranking in Email Security
25th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 4.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Email Security is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Email4.6%
Cloudflare One1.5%
SonicWall Email Security0.8%
Other93.1%
Email Security
 

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.
Swapnil Kulkarni - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at Ador Powertron Ltd.
Has consistently supported security needs for mid-sized teams with affordable deployment
I do not work with Cloud Secure Edge, CSE, or SMA apart from SonicWall NSA. I am not satisfied with phishing protection, as it falls completely under the email domain security. The customizable policy configuration does not help to tailor email security overall because our systems are not integrated with SonicWall Email Security. We are not using reporting and analytics because it requires completely different software. While all required features are available in SonicWall Email Security for SMBs and startups, we lack analytics features. They provide an option to purchase a complete separate product for analytics, but despite initially having purchased the paper license, due to technical limitations or changes, we cannot use that product. Now they require additional fees to access the analytics feature.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has different options that can be used to differentiate DDoS attacks."
"Cloudflare Access is a stable solution."
"Cloudflare DDoS is better than its competitors for its security, deployment, and scalability."
"It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it."
"Enables me to work from two locations."
"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."
"Clover is the best product globally."
"This solution is easy to understand and easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature is the different content filters we are using, such as DKIM."
"Email service is one of the services that we offer at Galaxy, and Cisco ESA has improved our business so much that our customers want to maintain their business with us for email security, with over 500 domains on our email platform and improved profitability in everything."
"There is a huge return compared to if we didn't have a gateway appliance, as far as blocking malicious emails."
"The security features are valuable."
"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."
"Cisco's Secure Email integrates with Cisco Firewalls, utilizing the AMP as their anti-malware engine, which allows for information sharing between devices."
"Compared with other mail security things, Cisco Secure Email was much better and easy to deploy also."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of SonicWall Email Security is the blocking of emails using keywords. If there are any particular keywords in the subject, that we want to block from receiving from a particular person we can do it. Additionally, the blocking of emails is easy. we can release that one and we can block some of the keywords also like that."
"The most valuable features are the anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-virus, and anti-spoofing."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"Behind the reason we chose SonicWall for my company is it has excellent packet analysis of normal and SSL encrypted traffic, application intelligence visualization and control, multiple Gigabit Ethernet LAN and WAN ports, flexible configuration and redundancy options."
"This solution has been really good for us and I recommend using it."
"The anti-spam aspect of the solution is its most valuable feature."
"The anti-spam aspect of the solution is its most valuable feature."
"SonicWall Email Security uses multi-layer cloud security."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."
"When there are any dynamic changes in complex applications, the tool takes a lot of time, making its analytics-related area a major matter of concern where improvements are needed."
"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."
"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."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"The hardware is not up to the mark. Two to three times a year we have complete downtime."
"It takes time to harmonize information from the email log events with higher level reporting tools."
"The user interface is a bit complex."
"I use the search all the time. Sometimes, it is hard to search for things and things are hard to find. People come to me all the time, saying, "This email didn't get through." Then, I go searching and don't find it on the first search. You have to think about alternative searches. I don't know if there is an easier way that they could help to find things. I don't know how they could simplify it, because now everybody else is using the cloud and everything is coming from Office 365, or whatever. It is just not the same environment from years ago where everybody had their own server and you could search easier."
"The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."
"The area of license renewal should be improved. We normally renew our license every year."
"We use the CLI for management, but it's not very good. It's based on Java and it's very difficult to use."
"The initial setup was complex because I have two sites with physical clusters."
"The pricing could be improved."
"A lot of spoofed emails are still coming to the end-user, so the configuration for this option needs to be improved."
"We would like to see more information on a dashboard about what is happening when it comes to spamming and malware."
"I am not satisfied with phishing protection, as it falls completely under the email domain security."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Previously, we had an issue with a faulty appliance and had to wait over two weeks for a replacement."
"SonicWall Email Security could improve by making the file blocking and the release feature easier to use"
"Updates could be released more frequently."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"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."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"I rate the product price as six on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a very expensive tool."
"The licensing was all transferred."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The price is significantly high."
"As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"There were no other costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
"It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
"Our customers purchase the solution's yearly license."
"We have a two-year license subscription and the price is very high."
"The overall price of SonicWall Email Security should be reduced and there should be an option to purchase one or two licenses more instead of their current policy of bulk increases only. There should be more flexibility in the licensing model. Each license cost approximately $33 annually."
"I rate the application’s pricing a five out of ten."
"The platform offers a yearly license."
"When compared with Cisco, it is very well priced. Cisco is very expensive."
"The cost is cheaper than Sophos. I would rate it as five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access provides secure access to internal applications for employees, external members of the organization...
What advice do you have for others considering Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access is one of the best integrations available. While about two hundred vendors offer similar services, ...
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 areas of Cisco Secure Email that could be improved or enhanced are the slowness in the console. I don't think it ...
What needs improvement with SonicWall Email Security?
Policy deployment could be time consuming and represents an area for improvement in SonicWall Email Security.
What is your primary use case for SonicWall Email Security?
SonicWall Email Security was used for security purposes, which aligns with the product's core function.
 

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
Dell SonicWALL Email Security Platform, SonicWall Hosted Email Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Star Kay White, Locala Community Partnerships
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. SonicWall Email Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.