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Cisco Umbrella vs TitanHQ WebTitan comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
12th
Ranking in Internet Security
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Filtering (4th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (12th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (11th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Ranking in Internet Security
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
TitanHQ WebTitan
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
26th
Ranking in Internet Security
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Filtering (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 1.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 18.6%, down from 22.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TitanHQ WebTitan is 1.4%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Alessandro Braga - PeerSpot reviewer
Has comprehensive reporting and scales easily
The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on. The integration between Cisco Secure solutions is pretty good. We have been able to deliver the solution in a few days. The integration of Umbrella and Meraki is literally one click away from the customer. One of the reasons why we chose Umbrella was its capability to perform end-to-end detection of malware and web traffic. In the last two years, we have been covered, detection has been faster, and we have been able to contain some potential threats along the way. We use the Umbrella stack from DNS protection to web and content protection. Our workforce is made up of 150 Macs; thus, we use Mac as a client. We have some PCs and integration with the network in our co-working spaces. Utilizing Cisco Secure has helped us save time. Being a nimble organization, we don't have IT staff who are fully dedicated to security. The maintenance is also not very time-consuming. In terms of the amount of time saved, it would be half an FTE a year, given the fact that we are informed and notified when threats arise. In terms of operating expenditures, we have been able to negotiate a better cyber insurance rate with our insurance company due to the fact that we are covered by Umbrella. Another benefit of using Cisco Umbrella is application scanning. We have been able to understand how many other applications we were consuming in the cloud, address them, and save money. Without Cisco Umbrella, we would not have realized that we had so many cloud applications in the company. We have been able to close at least four or five applications that were duplicates of others that we were already using in the company. We have realized approximately 10,000 to 12,000 euros a year of immediate savings in an organization of 150 people, which is quite significant.
Pusa Alexandru-Catalin - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides basic email protection features but needs improvement in learning capabilities
TitanHQ does a middle-of-the-road job like Bitdefender and SensorNet, and it has a learning feature, though it's not as advanced as previous technology. In the past, I used a far superior product with no false alarms and minimum spam. This tool learned quickly from my inbox, offering simple yet useful features, such as two links embedded in the email footer indicating whether the email was spam or not.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times."
"Helps block personal email accounts."
"What we like most is security and how easy it is to integrate with other appliances."
"Cisco Umbrella is such a solution and can be implemented very fast and easy. All that we must do is redirect the DNS registers in their routers, or the active directory service of the enterprise that are going to use in Umbrella services. If you buy the service now, in two hours you are protected by the service because it's very fast to put in service."
"We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway."
"The DNS data exfiltration and the blocking of DNS tunneling are the most effective features for threat prevention in our company."
"A single pane of glass saves time... This does have a lot of options available for us to see who's doing what, what trends, what errors. We can set up our alerting through it as well. It is definitely a great dashboard."
"The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple."
"I was able to implement it myself. It was really easy to install. You could install it on a server locally if you want to. If you have the biggest site, you would do that, but for my site, it was just directing all the traffic out through the Cisco Umbrella DNS. It was really handy. When the owners of the company went overseas, I knew that they would be secure because even if they were not on the company network, they would still go through the Cisco Umbrella servers. It was a complete solution for protecting the company with outgoing data."
"The web filtering is the most valuable feature. The OTG client was the determining factor."
"If someone is doing research and they're being blocked, and if we feel that it's a legitimate use, we can get them into the site they're looking for."
"The DNS proxy is also valuable. It has nothing to do with blocking websites, which we can do by sending all our DNS requests through WebTitan. However, the DNS proxy gives us more information about the machine sending the request. If you cross-reference that information with WADA, you can determine which user is making the request and create a user-specific policy or profile."
"Not a whole lot of oversight is required after WebTitan is installed. I get email notifications and occasionally browse the reporting. This is pretty important because I don't have the bandwidth to actively monitor all this stuff 24/7. It is just not possible. Therefore, it is important that it doesn't require a lot of my time once it is deployed and working."
"The monitoring abilities of the product are the most valuable for us. As you deploy it, you can adapt it. As you monitor, if employees go to things that you don't like, or to things that you need to allow, the ability to monitor and see how much is necessary—where they're getting shot down or blocked—is helpful."
"It doesn't require installing an agent or software on individual workstations, which is very important for us. I don't have to go around every single machine and/or push updates out because of this product. The product improves on its own without having to go to workstations, which is an ideal thing because it doesn't tie up staff's time to upgrade the machines. I don't need to upgrade the software to make WebTitan work. I wish all products were that way."
"I can go in and unlock something easily if I need to. For an adult, I can reset it if something has slipped by. It's very easy to set it up and block what I need to block."
"It's extremely stable. I would say it's flawless. We did have some concerns that, if it did fail, all internet access would stop for our people because the proxy wouldn't be there. That concern has subsided over the years because it's proven that it doesn't really fail."
 

Cons

"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"Its pricing could be better."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."
"The design of the screens could be improved. Sometimes you're trying to look for information, for what you think is critical that should be on that first screen of the dashboard so that you can quickly take screenshots to have people help out, but you have to hop between screens to find little pieces of evidence."
"Having ready-to-go templates with best practices is definitely something that would be an improvement. Deployment, from day one, is something that definitely needs to be improved for Cisco customers."
"Although Cisco Umbrella has an excellent global network footprint, there is still room for improvement and growth in this area. Additionally, there are bandwidth limitations associated with the connectors that need to be addressed. To be a viable solution for larger offices, Cisco Umbrella must continue to expand and improve its capabilities in these areas."
"I would like to have more applications being recorded."
"Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient."
"It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"There are a couple of interface issues. I know that they say that there are feature enhancements that are noted. For example, we've got the Cisco Meraki security appliances, and there, we geofence our company to where we're allowed to send and receive traffic. So, in our case, by default, we only allow traffic to six different countries, which allows us to effectively prevent traffic for the majority of bad players in the world, but they don't give you an easy way to do that in Cisco Umbrella. With Cisco Meraki, I can specify or pick the countries. I can say that I want to only allow traffic from these six countries, and I'm done. With Cisco Umbrella, I have to rely on the fact that they're going to prevent traffic to other countries. They're going to decide if it's good or bad."
"The locks and management could be better. The product is fairly new, and it may take some time to get all the features up and running."
"Sometimes it has been a little cumbersome to get the whitelisting just right. But that would be the only thing I've had any problems with."
"We have spoken with TitanHQ in the last month about improvements in functionality because we have used other similar platforms and have a different view of things. We have some concerns about the search and the filters. We need to quickly search which users can or cannot access a particular site and why."
"The technology employed by TitanHQ doesn't learn enough and is still on the basic side."
"The only thing I can think to change would be to give more options under the various categories for what you want to be blocked. There should be a way to be super specific."
"The interface is a little dated and a little awkward at times. That's a minor problem. It's workable."
"The technology employed by TitanHQ doesn't learn enough and is still on the basic side."
"I would like to have a live chat feature with their support. This is one of the things that I like that they haven't offered yet. If they have live support, then at least I can work with an engineer when I have a problem and not have to wait for the engineer to respond."
"I've been trying to install an OTG on Windows 7 machines, and I simply can't get it to work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"I think Cisco Umbrella is priced well. We have a mix of customers with different verticals such as education. We have clients in the commercial space as well. Umbrella is at a good price point for all of our customers."
"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."
"The pricing is pretty fair. It's good."
"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."
"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 think it's worth the money."
"Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis."
"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."
"For licensing, if I remember right, we told them how many users we have, and they told us the price, which we okayed. There were no add-ons. There might be a slight increase like everybody else, but there weren't any add-ons."
"The pricing is good. It's a substantial cost, but they've held their prices over the years, which has been good."
"It's very aggressively priced, which is something that we definitely like."
"The licensing, although I can't remember the exact cost, was very affordable. I want to say it was maybe $40 per license."
"It's very reasonably priced. We don't have to go for a monthly plan or anything like that. There are no extra costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"We pay an annual subscription for this. They have good pricing. They are not expensive compared to other solutions that we evaluated. I like the fact that it is just one price for the year. I don't have to worry too much about fluctuations."
"WebTitan helps reduce costs associated with web filtering. In the event that somebody was compromised due to browsing the Internet, there will be at least one device offline. The time and energy spent cleaning that thing up and getting it back online, as well as having that user set up with some sort of a solution so they can continue working, makes it well worth the money. If a single device has been compromised, my time and the potential of having to buy additional hardware is worth at least a couple thousand dollars. Worst case scenario, if our entire organization or the majority of our organization got compromised, then it could get into the 50,000-plus for recovery. It depends on if it is a massive ransomware attack where it has pretty much crippled our entire business."
"There are lots of products out there, and most of them are a lot more expensive. Overall, I'm very happy with SpamTitan. It has been a great solution for a very small library."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
I have the same complaint about them that I have about other software companies. Sometimes when you call in support, ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We are a PreK-12 public school district, and we use iboss to filter internet content for our students at home and sta...
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. Zs...
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-nat...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
WebTitan, WebTitan Web Filter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
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
Clarks, Pepsi, Purple, Comcast, Virgin, McDonalds, Sprint, Adtran, Xirrus, Eir, ViaSat
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. TitanHQ WebTitan and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,460 professionals have used our research since 2012.