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Cisco Secure Email vs Webroot Advanced Email Encryption powered by Zix 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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)
Webroot Advanced Email Encr...
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Secure Email is designed for Email Security and holds a mindshare of 5.1%, down 7.1% compared to last year.
Webroot Advanced Email Encryption powered by Zix, on the other hand, focuses on Secure Email Gateway (SEG), holds 1.2% mindshare, up 0.9% since last year.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Secure Email5.1%
Microsoft Defender for Office 3659.1%
Proofpoint Email Protection8.1%
Other77.7%
Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Webroot Advanced Email Encryption powered by Zix1.2%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36521.4%
Proofpoint Email Protection20.9%
Other56.5%
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

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.
John Zupancic - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President / Branch Manager / Senior Technician at Aperion Information Technologies, Inc.
Inexpensive, with good email security, but the technical support could be improved
We don't have as many problems with email security. They have some areas that could be improved. For example, we also use this solution for email encryption, which was clunky and could be improved, but the email security itself has been excellent. The web interface works well but the Outlook plug-in has been problematic. We've had to uninstall/reinstall it. On some Outlook clients (including mine), it causes Outlook to stop responding. I disabled the Outlook plug-in and only use the web interface.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It does a great job of preventing spam, malware, and ransomware. I can only go by what people have told me and what I've seen, but I have not seen spam in a year and a half to two years in my own company mailbox. And there are not a lot of catches where it's catching something that should have gotten through, either."
"It's a bit easy to handle Cisco Secure Email; it's not that difficult. For the logs, which are in PDF format, it's not hard to read them. We don't need Wireshark much to analyze the logs."
"Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution."
"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."
"Because we scan products, and there is a lot of critical data, security is very important in these cases."
"It is a user-friendly product."
"The solution works well."
"The user interface was quite friendly, it was quite easy to use, unlike some other Cisco products. Anybody could use it. You don't have to be familiar with IT to be able to handle navigating it."
"They do a better job of determining what's real and what's not than most of the other solutions we have tried, and it's been very painless to use."
 

Cons

"It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly."
"Many smaller businesses opt for more cost-effective solutions, such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts, instead of investing in Cisco Secure Email, given its higher cost."
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky."
"We would like to see more options for the customization of content filters."
"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."
"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."
"While Cisco offers excellent solutions and innovations, the pricing may not be suitable for everyone. The cost of the software is relatively high. In the current market, there are numerous competitive alternatives that focus on security, enterprise networks, and various other aspects. Cisco, being a comprehensive provider, extends its expertise across data, servers, storage, and security, making them a preferred choice for many enterprises. However, when it comes specifically to security solutions, there are other vendors that specialize solely in this domain, offering competitive options."
"I would like to see sandboxing for email, where suspicious emails received by the system are analyzed through online services."
"They have some areas that could be improved. For example, we also use this solution for email encryption, which was clunky and could be improved, but the email security itself has been excellent."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
"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."
"Cisco Secure Email is expensive, but we get what we pay for."
"Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
"I rate the pricing a ten out of ten on a scale where one means it is less cost-effective, and ten means it is the most cost-effective solution."
"The pricing is good."
"In terms of pricing, I believe they provide excellent value."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
No data available
 

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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Also Known As

Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
Zix Email Encryption, ZixEncrypt
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Erie County of Pennsylvania’s Human Services Department, Justice Federal Credit Union, STAR Financial Group, Chisago County, Minn., The National Banks of Central Texas, Kentucky Retirement Systems (KRS), Frankfort, Ky, Athletico Physical Therapy, District of Columbia Retirement Board (DCRB), CIBM Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Proofpoint, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Email Security. Updated: January 2026.
881,565 professionals have used our research since 2012.