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AppRiver Email Security vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

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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

AppRiver Email Security
Ranking in Email Security
37th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of AppRiver Email Security is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 4.7%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Email4.7%
AppRiver Email Security0.7%
Other94.6%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

John Zupancic - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President / Branch Manager / Senior Technician at Aperion Information Technologies, Inc.
Pricing that is competitive, excellent technical support, and email security
They do a better job of distinguishing between what's real and what's not than most of the other solutions we've tried. They are very easy to use. We don't have as many problems with email security. They have some areas that could be improved. For example, we also use Zix email Encryption for email encryption, which was clunky and could be improved, but the email security itself has been excellent.
KS
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
Email security has protected financial data and provides clear tracking for every branch message
The areas of Cisco Secure Email that could be improved or enhanced are the slowness in the console. I don't think it was a database error or something, but we feel some slowness in configuring DLP and other content filters compared to other consoles. It may have been due to on-premises, but it was much noisy at some times while configuring DLP. When we tried to configure a DLP policy, the console became much slower. In that case, we cannot see what had happened in the mail which was blocked at that time. It may take nearly an hour to get back to normal while configuring policies. That is the major issue in the product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They are very easy to use."
"They do a better job of distinguishing between what's real and what's not than most of the other solutions we've tried."
"It's easy to use and user-friendly. Users can also easily release spam emails."
"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."
"Even though it's not perfect, it has the IMS engine, Intelligent Multi-Scan engine, and it does a good job, right out-of-the-box, of blocking the vast majority of things that should be blocked."
"Compared with other mail security things, Cisco Secure Email was much better and easy to deploy also."
"The filtering is definitely better at catching both spam and malicious messages, and there's a lot of extremely granular ability for setting up rules. You can do it the way you want to. The Microsoft solution tends to be pretty limited in how it allows some of that to be done."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The Cisco Secure Email Gateway, in my opinion, is a really good device."
"It integrates with Active Directory and we can limit specific users to using specific applications."
"The solution works well."
 

Cons

"It needs to make sure that the application is up to date with new attacks. They should also send us the demo or introductions for their new incoming features."
"Technical support is no longer as good as it once was."
"Email security checks contain a small number of false positives."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"They could improve the filters. In my time at the company, there were several times we had to contact support to update the filters."
"We cannot manage multiple devices from a single UI."
"The management features of the product are not up to date."
"The user interface needs massive improvement. While the device works fine and it's not complicated to write policies, renaming menu items and showing policy flow in conjunction with the application could help."
"There could be additional DLP functionality for it."
"I am not satisfied with the solution's reporting and logging."
"The configuration UI should be made more intuitive. Currently, it takes a while to understand how to do the basic configurations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They're fairly inexpensive, but they're right in the ballpark of most of the other online products like that."
"I can rate it five out of ten because there are different platforms that also offer the same services for lower prices. But AppRiver is more flexible."
"In addition to the standard licensing, there is a cost for SMARTnet as well."
"It's adapted to the market. It's similar to other vendors. We at least don't have many problems regarding that because Cisco is adaptable on that side. When we present the solutions to the customers, we tend to achieve the goals that the customer has in terms of the budget for such implementations."
"Cisco Secure Email is not expensive, and licensing costs are yearly."
"It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars."
"Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
"Compared to Cisco's on-prem service, the cost is the same, but you don't have to pay for the hardware and you don't have to maintain the system, as far as upgrades and hardware failures are concerned. It is cheaper to operate on their cloud service than it is to operate with their on-prem service."
"We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
"Cisco Secure Email is expensive, but we get what we pay for."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Email?
The pricing structure is good as it is user-based or email client-based, which is positive for clients.
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Email?
The areas of Cisco Secure Email that could be improved or enhanced are the slowness in the console. I don't think it was a database error or something, but we feel some slowness in configuring DLP ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Email?
We are using Cisco Secure Email to monitor the outgoing and incoming mail traffic in our financial institute. We have nearly 900 branches all over India. We have an on-premises mail server in which...
 

Also Known As

AppRiver Advanced Email Security
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IHMC
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Find out what your peers are saying about AppRiver Email Security vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.