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Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
124
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (3rd)
Menlo Secure
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
25th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (52nd), ZTNA (26th), Cloud Security Remediation (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 9.5%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Secure is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella9.5%
Menlo Secure2.3%
Other88.2%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

SS
Sr. Technical Executive at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Has required extensive customization for non-technical users and still needs better simplification
Customization for basic users can be complex, as it is targeted toward only technical users. It would be beneficial if Cisco simplifies the customization process while still ensuring strong security to prevent unauthorized access. Simplifying the customization part could enhance Cisco Umbrella, but overall, it is a good solution for me.
reviewer2701794 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its simplicity is most valuable. I can install it and get it up and running, and it can be pervasive across my business within a business day. It is pretty simple and straightforward to install and configure. Its remit is reasonably clearly defined. When you look at solutions like Darktrace and Carbon Black, the mission objective isn't as clearly defined. Cisco Umbrella, Sophos Central, or some of the other solutions have a more standardized approach to antivirus, which includes enhanced response from the machine learning or deep learning perspective."
"We use various types of Umbrella and I'd recommend the solution as one of the best on the market that works well in different environments and is extremely easy to deploy."
"When it comes to hybrid work it's pretty effective. We've got the agents. We can protect people inside our building and, when they're using their laptops out in the field, they're still protected. It's working well."
"Go for it; there is no better way to secure guest networks without any headaches."
"The user interface is great. It's very easy to tailor to our client's environment and needs."
"It is user-friendly. It is easy to manage the solution."
"We use Cisco Umbrella for web security and it's very good."
"There was a positive effect on productivity because we could track and confront the users that were frequently using social media or streaming video during the work day."
"Either you have access to something or don't have access to it, and if you do, we can ensure, 100 percent of the time, that there is nothing malicious that is going to impact our system in any way."
"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."
"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools prior to implementing them had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged."
"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."
"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."
"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."
"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."
"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."
 

Cons

"We need to work on integration as it is very complex."
"Hopefully, it works with the Canvas and starts feeding results into the AI canvas. That would be excellent."
"I would like to have the ability to prevent certain sites/data from showing on the reports."
"Cisco Umbrella does not have a Malware Protection engine itself."
"The pricing is a bit high."
"It has happened in the past that Cisco Umbrella has denied us access to secure websites."
"I would like for them to continue building on IPS and IDS functionalities."
"There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy.... when you want a specific task for specific rules and policies for user groups, you have to go three levels down in the menu, and it's hard to find where you do that task."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."
"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."
"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."
"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."
"The user monitoring could still be improved."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing and licensing of Cisco Umbrella is a bit confusing because you have to separate the DNS solution and the full-feature solution. Cisco in Portugal helped us understand which one was the right one for us."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"Pricing depends on the automation requirements of the organization."
"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."
"Cisco uses subscription models for the pricing and there are three subscription plans."
"Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive."
"​The pricing is fair."
"In terms of licensing, we're not able to be extremely clear with the customer because it's based on their reporting. It's not based on the actual traffic. If they say they have 50 users but they have 80, we'll just buy for 50 users. That's something where we'd like to have more flexibility."
"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."
"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Non Profit
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise52
No data available
 

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.
What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which mak...
What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic access, and by doing it that way, it has multiple use cases. For example, it man...
What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some of these functions, people typically choose another technology for those specifi...
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Menlo Secure and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.