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Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs Fortinet FortiMail comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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

Cisco Secure Email Threat D...
Ranking in Email Security
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiMail
Ranking in Email Security
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiMail is 4.6%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Enrique-Diaz Jolly - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides comprehensive threat protection with suggestions for modernizing controls
I use the email gateway as the core of the email exchange between the Internet and our domain. The email gateway serves as the email exchanger The product offers protection, email security, anti-spam, and antivirus. It includes threat intelligence with advanced malware protection and many…
MOHAN SUKUMAR - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure email management improves through advanced filtering and dynamic virus scanning
Fortinet FortiMail offers capabilities like settings for mail delivery, mail filtering, spam controls, and email bursting prevention. It also allows for email forwarding, dynamic filtering, and scanning based on virus signatures. I can set varying levels of security. The tool is flexible and provides essential features for mail security and management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very easy to deploy and configure."
"The product offers protection, email security, anti-spam, and antivirus."
"It has an efficient email filtering feature."
"This solution is easy to use."
"The solution is stable."
"I would say it's very comprehensive, with multiple antivirus OEMs, virus encrypt features, encryption, and more."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox can handle a complete portfolio, which is required to protect any kind of attack coming from emails. However, it does not have advanced phishing, but it is available through Cisco. If you compare Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox with the competition, in the competition you have to have one or two solutions together to address the customer's requirement, whereas Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox is addressing everything, such as web domain and email protection. If there is any kind of challenge it will come across through email."
"The ability to see east-west traffic is its most valuable feature. Traditionally, email defense focuses on north-south, inbound-outbound, egress-ingress traffic. With Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, it's able to quickly identify, track, tag, and categorize emails that are internal. That can typically give us visibility into if there's an internal compromised account (for example). Someone can then use that internal compromised account to email additional accounts with either malicious software or links, but internal within that Office tenant. Effectively, that email message never leaves the tenant. Any of the mail gateways really do not have any method or way of seeing this traffic since it's not leaving the environment."
"Clean user interface and good sandbox."
"The number of false positives is minimal."
"The biggest implementation my team has done for Fortinet FortiMail was for more than five thousand people, and the most valuable feature was its anti-spam feature."
"The deployment is simple and once up and running it is easy to manage."
"The integration with FortiSandbox is good, and something that we utilize often."
"Troubleshooting is very simple because you can see where the email was not delivered and why it would be considered as spam."
"It has a very high level of security through special licensing with solutions like FortiGuard, sandboxing solutions in the cloud, and URL rewriting solutions."
"Technical support is great. They're available 24/7 and their response time is typically within the hour."
 

Cons

"Customers will benefit greatly from monthly billing because the majority of customers today use the cloud, be it Office 365, or Google Cloud."
"The tool gives false positives and it needs to be more accurate. I would like to see AI as a new feature."
"We encounter issues while searching for missing emails."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox can improve by adding advanced phishing, then the solution would become the best in the market. However, this could increase the price even more. Additionally, if CES with domain protection could be added it would be an even better solution."
"The pricing could always be better."
"Cisco's multiple product lines and verticals made this just one of their many verticals, and we could see a shift in focus."
"From a technical point of view, Cisco is far behind in terms of cybersecurity, and it has to improve very much."
"This solution could be improved by integration with Sandbox."
"I would like it if the solution could be more affordable."
"Issues with the current email search functionality."
"The logging information is sometimes not clear or easy to understand."
"Fortinet FortiMail should allow more flexibility with the content rules."
"High Availability needs improvement."
"I think the security of the product could improve."
"The security products stop their operations once the subscription period expires. It is a wrong policy. If I trust a product, it has to continue working even after expiry. It should have a grace period of 30, 40, or 60 days. We can extend the subscription during those days. In some places, subscription extensions can take up to six weeks. During the renewal process, the support offered by the company is very poor. It also reduces security. We pay for the expired period but do not get protection during those times. The user of Fortinet FortiMail should have a feature to see spam names."
"It can be easier to configure or connect to the cloud to report on the attachments."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox does not have any competition with Sophos, Trend Micro, or other vendors of the world. However, there is a pricing premium for the solution. One has to look at it from that angle that while they are buying Cisco, there will be a premium, and Cisco justifies that premium value. That's why they're charging a high price."
"It is expensive compared to other vendors."
"The feedback from vendors and customer is that it is expensive."
"The solution’s pricing is manageable."
"It is a fairly priced product, considering what it does. The product offers good value for the money users spend on it."
"The pricing is good."
"The annual cost is $55,000."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"9,000 Euro per annum for Fortinet Mail and sandbox."
"It's not as that expensive with the competitive different brands. The products sell a lot."
"In terms of licensing, we are using a virtual machine license for the single virtual server which it runs on. Doing it this way enables us to cut costs by only licensing FortiMail for our exact use case. If you need to expand in future, you can later buy extra licenses per virtual machine."
"We paid approximately $30,000 for the solution. It is less expensive than some other solutions. We have one license that carries all the features that we wanted."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
28%
Healthcare Company
8%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Educational Organization
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Secure Email Threat Defense?
Secure Email Threat Defense's scalability is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Secure Email Threat Defense?
Cisco's closest competition is Proofpoint. Both are in the same range in terms of pricing. Pricing is on the higher side. That said, you get what you pay for.
What needs improvement with Secure Email Threat Defense?
The integration capability with other threat intelligence platforms is not optimal, as I have experienced difficulty in sending logs to our SIEM. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense's flexibility cou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail?
Fortinet FortiMail is considered overpriced by Indian rupee standards. My organization is not profit-making, and academic pricing is required, but it may not be available for security products like...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
Fortinet FortiMail should keep pace with features offered by cloud-based services like Google and Microsoft Outlook. Additionally, the transition from on-premises devices to virtual appliances may ...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, Cisco CMD, Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense
FortiMail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Luiss University, Lone Star College, T-Systems, Magyar Telekom
Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs. Fortinet FortiMail and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.