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Cisco Umbrella vs Cloudflare comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 30, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Umbrella
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (1st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Umbrella is designed for Domain Name System (DNS) Security and holds a mindshare of 27.5%, down 29.2% compared to last year.
Cloudflare, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection, holds 20.7% mindshare, up 20.2% since last year.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

JC
Jun 15, 2023
Helps me to protect my endpoints so that they won't go to a malicious site
Our primary use case is for filtering and security reasons. We send our DNS queries to Umbrella. It will see if we go to a site that has malware or a virus and it will stop it. It detects if the URL has malware The multilayers of defense have improved my organization. We have a lot of defensive…
Binuprasad Madhu - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 5, 2023
The API enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution
We use Cloudflare for our DNS service.  We previously faced so many issues with our in-house DNS servers. Cloudflare provides a backup, so if you have any issues with your environment or something goes wrong with a software hostname and IP address, you can run the backup and experience zero…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has helped reduce my unit's security events."
"It makes it really easy to accomplish content filtering. We don't have to do a lot of customization. You just click the box for the content category and it's up to date."
"Umbrella enables customers to be secure. We are happy with this and this is the most important benefit for customers."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its reliability."
"​They have a wealth of articles in their knowledge base. This has given me the freedom to troubleshoot on my own time. ​​"
"The most valuable features for us include tenant lock, content filtering, and DLP solutions, looking for PII and information being exfiltrated."
"We can have a full overview and a quick overview of all the DNS requests. For us, it's quite important."
"The initial setup is very easy and takes only a few minutes."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."
"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
 

Cons

"We would like them to add more features to Cisco Umbrella."
"I would like to see integration with SecurNX in the future."
"It had the ability to do a lot of app control. So, every single app that went through that portal was registered, but there is a general issue with the whole app control. As soon as you add a mobile phone to your network, all of the apps get registered through the system, and you can approve, reject, or just let them go through. When I looked at it, it was impossible to manage app control. There was just so much data. I didn't apply that service because I just didn't have the time to manage it. It would be good if there was a way to categorize applications."
"I'd like to see improvement in its overall integration with all the other platforms. There's some integration between Umbrella and Meraki, but an overall Cisco problem is that there are so many different tools, and finding easy, seamless ways of connecting everything together is always a challenge."
"Security, overall, can always be improved."
"I would like for their support to be faster."
"Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better."
"I feel that the application needs other characteristics that are available with other applications in the market."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"Support response time could be improved."
"DNS Management."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
"In my opinion, Cisco Umbrella now has a good price in the basic packages. When it comes to Cisco Umbrella SIG Essentials package and Cisco Umbrella Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) Advantage package, it depends on whether the project has a good price or not"
"Cisco Umbrella is not a cheap product. However, it's not a matter of the cost; it's more a matter of the value of security. It is easy to measure this value when you have a security incident. I think the price is a good trade-off for a product that can help you avoid security threats."
"Cisco is expensive. For example, we are looking at Nexus Dashboard, and it's costing about 250,000 euros. I ask, "What do I get from it?" I'm still not convinced that we have to spend on it, so pricing is a problem."
"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"We were using the free version, and we implemented the paid version about two months ago. I'm paying a fair price, but everything is negotiable with Cisco. One of the benefits that I got by having Cisco Umbrella is the licensing of the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client."
"You get what you pay for."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Domain Name System (DNS) Security solutions are best for your needs.
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
Cloudflare DNS
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Infoblox, Palo Alto Networks and others in Domain Name System (DNS) Security. Updated: August 2024.
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