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Appgate SDP vs Cisco Duo comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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 ZTNA as a Service
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (6th)
Appgate SDP
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
15th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA (7th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (17th), Microsegmentation Software (6th)
Cisco Duo
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (4th), Authentication Systems (2nd), Access Management (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the ZTNA as a Service category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.6%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Appgate SDP is 3.8%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Duo is 2.6%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA as a Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo2.6%
iboss3.6%
Appgate SDP3.8%
Other90.0%
ZTNA as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
Joseph Koomson - PeerSpot reviewer
Ip Network Security Specialist at MTN Ghana
Zero trust access has strengthened remote connectivity and secures diverse office devices
Appgate SDP support is always available to assist, which is the primary strength. However, there are areas for improvement. When a user is unable to connect, the platform should display detailed information such as the user's IP address, MAC address, and specific reasons for connection failure. Currently, aside from invalid username and password errors, Appgate SDP provides generic errors related to policy, such as a policy admin error. The system should provide deeper diagnostics to explain why a user cannot connect. The dashboard could also be enhanced with additional features and logins to provide better visibility. Sometimes there is no immediate clarity about what is happening. After using Appgate SDP for a long time and experiencing various errors, we have learned where to investigate, but this would be problematic for new users trying to resolve issues. The dashboard could display user connection times, failure reasons, and other relevant information. The user activity logs and accounting features should be improved in particular.
Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"I would say iboss is a very good product; its scalability is very good, and it's seamless for the user."
"This product is solid, fairly easy to use, and reliable."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe."
"It is pretty stable."
"The interface is really friendly. It's simple to understand."
"Previously, with AnyConnect, we experienced frequent issues, and in comparison to that solution, we have seen significant improvement and minimum downtime."
"Appgate SDP has positively impacted my organization, as we are using it to securely access the internet after the cyber attack."
"It is a scalable solution...The support answers your questions very fast."
"The flexibility of the tool is valuable; it is very robust, has a very robust configuration capability, is pretty well documented, and is also good interface-wise."
"The simplicity of the SDP platform is a standout feature; instead of navigating through intricate details, users can seamlessly connect to the company's network or switch to the internet with minimal effort."
"Appgate SDP is the best solution for micro-segmentation and supplying VPN solutions."
"It was a simple way of providing two-factor authentication for remote access when we hit the COVID pandemic. It was very easy and quick to get it going."
"The feature that my organization started using more recently in Cisco Duo is offline authentication."
"Cisco Duo just works; that is the best feature."
"The most valuable feature of Duo Security is the ability for the user to easily approve access. The application prompts the user, and they can see the location and the IP address. This makes it easy for the user to approve it and go through the process of logging in to the VPN."
"With Cisco Duo it's checking if you are allowed to submit a request to access this, doing a complete check of you before you access, instead of being just a simple MFA that only asks if you can go in or not."
"The feature of Cisco Duo that I prefer the most is the policies, being able to control what we need to within the policies. You can get pretty granular."
"Cisco Duo benefits my organization because we do not have too many logins since everything is in one place and we can use Cisco Duo for VPN, applications, and cloud solutions."
"All features of the solution are effective, Duo supports BYOD policies by allowing users to authenticate securely from their personal devices."
 

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 area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."
"I have heard they are doing DDoS filtering, but I am not certain if they are implementing it correctly."
"One limitation is that it's harder to provide access to multiple applications in the company with Appgate, but that's probably because of poor management."
"On the cloud, when you make some changes, it may be difficult."
"It would be better to connect to an application portal from any device. Documentation and support could be better."
"One thing that kind of sticks out to me is the ability to do a proper non-split tunnel. VPN tunnel-wise, it is not really a true unsplit tunnel, but I think that's just because of the way it's designed. A split VPN basically allows your system to talk to other systems without being forced down the tunnel. A VPN running in a non-split tunnel mode forces all the traffic down the tunnel to wherever you're VPNing to. It forces the traffic down so that the traffic is subject to the firewall and rules that you have in your corporate environment and such. It helps to prevent remote malicious folks that may be talking directly to that box from piggybacking into the corporate environment through it. They do it partially, but it would be nice to see more of an enterprise-level solution there."
"The user interface should be improved as it is not very easy to work with the updates."
"They could provide a single-box solution to manage tools for 4000 users. Additionally, they could add extra features to enhance remote micro connection."
"When a user is unable to connect, the platform should display detailed information such as the user's IP address, MAC address, and specific reasons for connection failure."
"One thing that kind of sticks out to me is the ability to do a proper non-split tunnel."
"Cisco can further enhance the integrations, as they possess exceptional integrations with various providers' products and feature sets."
"I would love to see improvements around Identity and Access Management with Cisco Duo, specifically how we can use that as a central source of truth for all of our IAM tools, including Active Directory."
"I believe Cisco Duo needs to be improved on the delay process because there is a delay when we send a Duo Push or when we are signing into any applications."
"The product price needs improvement."
"What I dislike about Cisco Duo is that anything that Cisco Duo lacks, we can do through Microsoft, which is a workaround because we're integrated with Microsoft, and that was the first thing I did."
"Cisco Duo could be improved, possibly by adding features for the healthcare space. If you're selling something to a healthcare provider, there needs to be consideration for how to launch Cisco Duo with a handheld device that is not native, where you can install the application."
"I think the prices of Cisco Duo are quite fair, but the main problem is that Microsoft Authenticator is built-in with M365, so everyone is switching to that and using it instead of Cisco Duo because it costs extra as a standalone product."
"Integration was probably the toughest part for us with Cisco Duo, as with any new product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"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."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is a pretty expensive tool. It is maybe about $20,000 per year for a hundred users or so."
"We pay $100 per user per month. One license for the site is around $17."
"The pricing is according to the market price. It is not a very cheap solution. They have some very aggressive promotions to sell the product in the market."
"Price wise, it's not cheap, but it's not expensive at all either. It's in the middle."
"It's very simple. Its price is fair. We use the hardware tokens as well. You get what you pay for. In terms of licensing, Cisco has very complicated products, but Duo Security was surprisingly easy."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"From a reseller perspective, it's still challenging to explain the whole license strategy to a client, so we really have to be ahead of that for all the true forward conversations."
"Their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing costs."
"Duo Security is free."
"Cisco has the most expensive products because market leaders tend to charge a lot."
"I haven't seen any information on the pricing in four years, so I can't comment on that."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise80
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
I think iboss could be improved by making reporting and dashboard customization more flexible, and simplifying troubl...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
I use iboss as a cloud-based secure web gateway to provide secure internet access, web filtering, and protect remote ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
My experience with iboss's pricing structure, setup cost, and licensing model has been positive, straightforward, and...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Appgate SDP?
Regarding pricing and setup cost, everything is already pre-installed in my organization, so I am not sure about pric...
What needs improvement with Appgate SDP?
Appgate SDP support is always available to assist, which is the primary strength. However, there are areas for improv...
What is your primary use case for Appgate SDP?
Appgate SDP is used for user connectivity both in the office and outside the office for remote connectivity. When out...
How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Du...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
Regarding Cisco Duo's affordability for the Ukrainian market, I think it is affordable. It depends on an installation...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
Cisco Duo is a fully cloud-based solution. It would be beneficial if Cisco provided a fully on-premise solution. I ha...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
No data available
Duo Security
 

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.
United States Air Force  FINRA Weight Watchers Rackspace  DataDog SageNet  Verdant Norwegian Cruise Line  VoiceBase  The Third Floor 
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Appgate SDP vs. Cisco Duo and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.