We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Email and Symantec Messaging Gateway based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Email Security solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"Threat Explorer is one of the features that I very much like because it is a real-time report that allows you to identify, analyze, and trace security attacks."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"The most valuable features are protection against ransomware and spam."
"Capital expenditure is a significant consideration, and the impact on major expenditures prompts a careful analysis before onboarding the new product."
"It blocks bulk marketing messages, graymail, spam, and provides advanced malware protection."
"It integrates with Active Directory and we can limit specific users to using specific applications."
"It has the ability to tell us, after an email has been delivered, where else it went, once it got inside. Maybe it's something we wanted it to stop and it didn't stop it, but it notified us later that it was something that it should have stopped. It can give us a trajectory of all the other places that it went internally and it can tell us what files were transferred as well."
"The most significant enhancement we've gained is in terms of security through the upgrade we received."
"The most valuable feature is the different content filters we are using, such as DKIM."
"Cisco Secure Email has strong inbound services."
"The solution is excellent at blocking spam."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
"Symantec is a secure product."
"It has very good capabilities for managing malware."
"What I like most about Symantec Messaging Gateway is its usability. I also find its interface very friendly. The solution has a very good interface."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"The solution is highly customizable. You can make rules for domains and configure policies for spam or malware. Messaging Gateway is an on-prem solution, so it's useful for companies without a cloud presence."
"It is a solid and stable product."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should improve the troubleshooting tools. It's unclear whether the device is blocked at the firewall level or at the device itself. The granularity needed for troubleshooting is currently lacking. From my perspective, Microsoft should address this issue to benefit many users who likely share the same sentiment."
"In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features."
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky."
"The graphical user interface is not user-friendly like other vendors. I find it very difficult at times to find some options on the UI."
"The solution does not have a strong outbound service. It should also integrate DLP."
"They could improve the filters. In my time at the company, there were several times we had to contact support to update the filters."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly."
"We have Microsoft and we have the E5 licenses, they have more EDR responses on certain emails. That's something that Cisco ESA on the cloud doesn't have. They don't do anything about MITRE attacks. They only detect if there is a malicious email or a threat and they remove it."
"The user interface could be updated."
"The solution takes up a lot of memory."
"This product would benefit from better integration with Symantec Endpoint Protection."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway can improve detection because most of them are false negatives or false positives that we are trying to troubleshoot. Additionally, we are having routing problems and they are somehow connected to DNS issues."
"They really need to create a good package that competes with Microsoft."
"The documentation could have more detailed examples of how to use the product in various situations. As more companies shift to the cloud, they could better integrate the on-prem and cloud versions through an on-prem client."
"We've had issues in the past where the user finds spam, and Symantec does not recognize it as spam."
"The product must improve the user dashboards."
"They have updated the version of the Messaging Gateway and the new features they are adding the need to be re-evaluated. They have done some changes on the policy."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 55 reviews while Symantec Messaging Gateway is ranked 6th in Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with 20 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Symantec Messaging Gateway is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Email writes "Has effortless spam control, improves security posture, and frees up our IT department's time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Messaging Gateway writes "A stable and reasonably priced solution that performs well and has a very good malware database". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Proofpoint Email Protection and Barracuda Email Security Gateway, whereas Symantec Messaging Gateway is most compared with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Fortinet FortiMail, Trend Micro Email Security, Proofpoint Email Protection and Barracuda Email Security Gateway. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. Symantec Messaging Gateway report.
We monitor all Email Security 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.