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Cisco Umbrella vs McAfee Web Protection [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

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 Umbrella
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
McAfee Web Protection [EOL]
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

BB
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Ensures comprehensive protection with seamless threat logging and efficient policy management
My favorite feature of Cisco Umbrella is probably just the DNS and the fact that when a security threat happens, all of that gets logged in their Umbrella portal, and it's very easy to find who's been accessing the site and how many people have accessed it, so that we can go to them and make sure they're not compromised. The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by providing less time to search for things through logs, to look for what we need. It's just one place to go, and we just search for it, and we find it really fast. The fact that there's a virtual database that has all that information is great on our portal.
VivekGupta7 - PeerSpot reviewer
DGM at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Secure, reasonably priced, and performs well
We used cloud services for testing purposes. We used Amazon cloud services. Depending on the solution, there are a variety of options. There are several options such as Endpoint, WAF, NAC, and SIEM are currently available. A variety of solutions are implemented. It was a third-party implementation by Inspira. McAfee also provides an endpoint solution. McAfee's DLP is also present. Previously, we had used Trend Micro and Symantec. There is a method we had to upgrade our systems, a solution was required, and it had to match the three, four solutions from one company that were going to be cheaper, and there is a bidding process, whoever comes first, based on quality and cost, wins the competition. The requirements were speed, quality, and cost. Because Symantec was about to be renewed, our renewal would be more expensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The agent that gets installed on the endpoints or on people's laptops and devices is a Cisco AnyConnect Umbrella module. It's one of the most impressive things because you are able to protect your users anywhere they are."
"You can manage and create policies based on a group of users. It can permit some URLs and block others."
"The solution is extremely stable. It has excellent performance."
"Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy."
"It's very stable, reliable and does its job."
"We like Cisco Umbrella because of DNS security. It's one step ahead of whatever we are using for regular web filtering. In that way, it's more secure than other web filtering products."
"Umbrella has helped my IT staff in two ways. First, our security team was able to get more insights into the users, their devices, and the sites they browse. Second, our system administration team was able to manage DNS resolutions in a way that is more accessible and less intrusive to our domain system."
"It offers good visibility for the Administrator. The administrator has full visibility of what is blocked or has the knowledge of where users go when they are surfing the internet."
"The most valuable is the blocking of blacklisted sites, a URL that is, either by intelligence or by McAfee, detected as a malicious site."
"The product is quite an effective firewall."
"The stability has a good standard right now."
"The most valuable features of McAfee Web Protection are the reporter, and you have the option to have an agent installed in the notebooks or on the mobiles. You are able to have the same policies inside and outside of your organization which is a benefit."
"The solution is not too expensive. It's affordable."
"It has dependable anti-malware and intrusion prevention features all-in-one package."
"Provides good accessibility and handles any overload very well."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it protects against threats that are coming from the web."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see the integration of VDI NSX with Cisco Umbrella."
"The API is very Cisco orientated, which is absolutely fine if you're using Cisco Firepower and SecureX kind of products, but if you want to integrate with third parties, it is a bit tricky. There are some key API connectors for the more prevalent SIEM tools. I would really like to see in Cisco Umbrella the ability to create customized reports and then assign the rights to view these reports to people within a group. I should be able to create a customized report, which is viewable by anybody who has the rights. I should be able to create groups within Cisco Umbrella, and then assign reports to groups and have those reports split out automatically only to those groups. I can kind of do it by restricting my email list, but it is a half-complete way of doing it."
"My biggest concern, and I'm sure everyone's biggest gripe with TAC, is just turnaround time. If you open a case in the evening, you might get an agent in another region, and then your ticket cycle only goes from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM when you're out of work."
"Some countries don't have a DNS server leading to a domain resolution IP, not at a local level."
"Overall, I'm quite happy with Cisco products, but there could be one place where you can check what's going on. There could be one place where you get all the information about these products so that you don't need to look around. You get the status, information about what lately happened, and if there was anything on the machine in one single place."
"I would like for them to continue building on IPS and IDS functionalities."
"I would like to see integration with SecurNX in the future."
"It could be improved by having a local data center and caching, which can provide protection support. I would like to be able to channel my intel and my network traffic to their clouds, and this feature is not available. Advanced protection or any malware file support, which might be required, is not available."
"The manufacturerers should have more transparancy about exactly what is getting filtered when you use the product and why."
"We need a better customer experience and more flexibility in the product."
"The initial setup could be simplified, there is a learning curve during the implementation."
"There is a real need to make sure all the updates and improvements are in order to keep the security at top performance to continue defeating threats that come daily."
"The solution could always use more security features. If it was more secure, it would be an even stronger product."
"Lacking filter for spam."
"McAfee Web Protection can improve the information provided for hybrid installations in the console. Additionally, having cloud protection would be good."
"The True Key version for mobile phones should be improved. The password manager is not as seamless as on the desktop. Once implemented, on the desktop, when you go to the site, it automatically fills and connects you, whereas, on the mobile phone, it doesn't do that quite seamlessly. You need to open the True Key application and then select the password you want to use. It then opens in the browser. There are fewer steps in the desktop version as compared to the mobile version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is quite good."
"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."
"We did a good negotiation, and at the moment, its price is fine."
"The product is pricey compared to Cisco Firepower."
"It has a reasonable price. It is certainly not as expensive as it used to be. It is in line with other offerings on the market. There are a number of different flavors of Umbrella. They could bring Umbrella SIG down a bit because its price is a little bit high for what it does, but I also understand why its price is high."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"When talking about Cisco solutions in general there pricing model is horrible. For example, you can sell a Meraki-based solution, but if the customer starts shopping around, someone is going to have access to the pricing at a level that you cannot compete because they do not have uniform pricing. Not everybody gets fair pricing. Unless you are one of the real major corporations selling the solution your ability to compete is impossible. Cisco will acknowledge the situation and assure you next time it will be in your favor but it never becomes favorable for you. Cisco is not very good in this regard. However, Umbrella is good."
"The price depends on the use case, and it's a bit linear. But it depends on the customer's strategy and how Cisco plans to optimize the costs."
"$150 Canadian per year."
"The license number would be approximately $35,000."
"The pricing is cheaper than some of the other options that are available."
"In McAfee Web Protection you have the ability to install any appliance you want with the same license. If you need an appliance on-premise, you can install it with the same license because the license is for users, not for appliances. If you need one more, you can install it and you don't have problems with the license or need to change your environment."
"It is not very expensive. It costs 100 Canadian Dollars per year per license. I buy one-year or two-year protection. The license covers my PC, laptops, and telephone. The cost is per user but for multiple devices. It has just the standard licensing fees. There are some options for extended protection. For example, if I wanted to have a VPN, there will be an extra cost. So, there are upgradable features, but I'm very happy with what it is giving me with the basic plan. It gives me the basic privacy protection that I need."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?
The pricing for Cisco Umbrella is fair compared to other platforms out there for DNS security. We acquired it as a bundle with other Cisco purchases.
Do you recommend McAfee Web Protection?
I highly recommend McAfee Web Protection. In my opinion, it is a comprehensive web protection platform with a great firewall. I find that it is a lot less bulky than competing solutions on the mark...
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
McAfee Web Gateway, McAfee SaaS Web Protection
 

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
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