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.
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"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 solution is stable."
"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."
"We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway."
"The feature that we find most valuable is to be able to filter out those web requests that you don't want."
"The single-pane-of-glass management is really important. In today's era, administration costs and operational expenses will cost you a lot, and it reduces that as well. You don't need extra resources to manage all your parameter firewalls, looking at every single device to allow resources internal access. By just introducing the single-pane-of-glass management, it has lifted the burden off of management, especially the network management."
"One of the most important features is the security posture check which Umbrella offers when a user accesses any website. That is one of the most unique features that it offers."
"Application performance has greatly improved and there are less operational issues. Productivity has been going up because we have less operational issues. Also, we have happy customers."
"The weekly reportings are great. The investigation is super and the application management is equally great."
"The integration features within, for example, the Cisco VPN product and the Umbrella module are valuable."
"DNS protection, domain blocking, SIP component, and the Cisco Umbrella roaming client are the valuable features of Cisco Umbrella."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"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."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"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 solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"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 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"
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"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."
"It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes."
"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."
"The reporting could be improved by way of the information that's displayed. For example, when you pull a report, it shows an internal employee going to many websites, but you can spin that right down by saying a lot of it is being cached."
"Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better."
"Lower costs including licensing, support, and renewals would be beneficial."
"I would like for them to continue building on IPS and IDS functionalities."
"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."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"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."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
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 Netskope , 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.