We compared Cisco Umbrella and Cloudflare DNS across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Cisco Umbrella is highly regarded for its seamless integration with existing infrastructure, extensive range of security features, and ability to centrally manage security. Cloudflare DNS excels in terms of performance and ease of registering domains. Users also like the solution's caching capabilities and API functionality.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Umbrella could enhance security by adding a transferring proxy feature and improving its Linux agent for Linux-based companies. Cloudflare DNS could improve API integration and dashboard analytics.
Ease of Deployment: Based on the feedback, Cisco Umbrella has a simple and user-friendly initial setup that can be completed quickly in around 30 minutes. Setting up Cloudflare DNS setup is also straightforward, but it may require more time, ranging from a few hours to a maximum of two weeks for inexperienced users.
Service and Support: Customers have praised Cisco Umbrella's support, describing it as excellent and superior to the customer service of other vendors. Most Cloudflare DNS customers perceive the support as dependable, although some feel that it could benefit from better responsiveness and more accurate responses.
Pricing: The cost of Cisco Umbrella differs based on the specific needs and approach of the customer, with flexible pricing and transparent charges. It is seen as reasonable and competitive by some, but a few perceive it as costly. Cloudflare DNS provides most of its core features at no cost, but customers can pay for additional services. Users consider the pricing for Cloudflare DNS to be minimal compared to other products.
ROI: Cisco Umbrella has proven to be a valuable investment by addressing maintenance concerns, reducing expenses associated with hardware updates, and effectively thwarting threats. It offers enhanced visibility and aids in remediation efforts. Quantifying the return on investment for Cloudflare DNS is difficult because it's challenging to estimate the potential financial impact of attacks.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella integrates well with infrastructure and offers comprehensive security features, whereas Cloudflare DNS prioritizes speed, privacy, and global reach. Both products have user-friendly setups. Cisco Umbrella allows for easy deployment across multiple locations, while Cloudflare DNS can be set up quickly within a few hours. Cisco Umbrella could offer better Linux compatibility, while CloudFlare DNS should improve its dashboard analytics and API integration.
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"It has the ability to quickly block new threats."
"For me, it's important that I get a connection to my corporate network in a secure and fast way. This product just runs in the background and doesn't need any attention. For me, as a user, it's perfect."
"Umbrella, being one pane for managing, being all-encompassing, allows us to quickly go in, make a change, and it applies to either every location, if we want it to, or we can have policies in place that only apply to certain users or certain computers."
"What we like most is security and how easy it is to integrate with other appliances."
"I like the DNS layer security."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its reliability."
"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."
"The initial setup is very easy and takes only a few minutes."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"The only thing I can think of is that I'd like to see a little more flexibility in policy creation. The way that policy is currently structured is like a "first hit succeeds" kind of policy. It would be nice if it were more hierarchical."
"It has happened in the past that Cisco Umbrella has denied us access to secure websites."
"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."
"Cisco Umbrella hasn't integrated customized reporting yet. With Cisco Secure Endpoint Hub, I can see a report on user downloads and set it up to constantly get an email alert. Based on my understanding, Cisco Umbrella can't do that. You can set it up with third parties, but it would be better if that were built into the platform."
"The integration with other solutions is a little complex. If you want to integrate with something like ArcSight or LogRhythm or Splunk, you need to do a lot of configuration. There are no easy ways to implement it."
"It would be good if the more complex versions of Umbrella are simplified so that we can offer them in a more standardized way. We, as a telco, do not operate the same as a traditional integration partner would, who can sell all its services. We try to have a standardized approach as much as we can so that we can sell the solution with as many services added to it as possible. If you look at the structure of businesses in Switzerland, 95% of them have 10 persons or less, and they do not have a security specialist. Therefore, the higher the automated and standardized features, the better it is for them."
"In my experience with Umbrella support, sometimes the response times take a bit more time than we would like... sometimes, if you go through email, it can take quite a while to get a response."
"There should be a way to monitor traffic at the user level."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Cloudflare DNS is ranked 1st in Managed DNS with 13 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Cloudflare DNS is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cloudflare DNS writes "A tool that offers good performance that needs to improve in areas like assessment and payload". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Fortinet FortiGate SWG, whereas Cloudflare DNS is most compared with Quad9, Azure DNS, Google Cloud DNS, Amazon Route 53 and Hurricane Electric Free DNS.
We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.