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Barracuda Email Protection vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (13th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (20th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (12th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Security Incident Response (10th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
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 May 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.1%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 4.7%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Email4.7%
Barracuda Email Protection3.1%
Cloudflare One1.7%
Other90.5%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
Xavie Simons - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at Procter & Gamble
Improved email security has reduced spam, simplified encrypted mail, and strengthened user trust
The best features Barracuda Email Protection offers include good spam filtering and very good sandboxing of all links, as well as good encryption. It also has integrated logging for user management of their own spam. It has better filtering technology, so few are false positives as well, with excellent anti-spam engines and logging. It is extremely easy to install, configure, and set up, and there is excellent message tracking for folks that say they have not received an email they were expecting. Integrated logging and user management make my daily work easier because it is very easy to log in and to manage this tool, hence making it a very good tool for email protection. It also has excellent, easy-to-add designated users as site administrators, and it is competitively priced. It has a user-friendly portal, strong cloud-based features, and no additional maintenance cost, along with responsive support. Barracuda Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by handling encryption better than any other tool I have used before, which has increased our email protection significantly. Our security has also increased from forty percent to sixty-five percent, especially when dealing with all the threats that come through emails. It has been a great tool because we can handle email delays and delays on file scanning. When our partners are happy, we are very happy, and it has helped us have less time chasing bad emails. The fast implementation of encrypted mail keeps employees working with less interruption since they are happy, satisfied, and secure.
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

"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."
"Using Cloudflare One makes my work quite easy because for DDoS protection, all I need to do is understand the OSI model and click; it makes it easier than trying to write a command line or use a Linux command."
"This solution is easy to understand and easy to configure."
"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."
"We mostly use Cloudflare WAF, and gets basic Cloudflaire DDoS, caching as extra bonus . We like the factor these features are all integrated into 1 console, simple to manage."
"For Cloudflare Access, I am using the free plan...The most valuable feature is their protection."
"The capabilities of the software are strong enough for me to do what it's supposed to do. For me, we don't need to do a lot of configuration on our site. We just enable it and monitor it."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable aspect includes attempts to spoof or compromise domains from external sources."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"I don't see any other email security solution that stacks up against them."
"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft. If someone deletes something in Office 365, we can get it back within Office 365, but it's difficult. Barracuda is much easier. There is a lot less management needed using Barracuda. The management becomes much easier for Office 365 and it's no longer on-prem, so there are fewer hours managing on-prem devices, servers, and things of that nature. We don't have network appliances anymore for the backup of our information."
"The most valuable feature is the gateway."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft."
"This is one of the easiest, safest, and most secure solutions for security and email archival."
"There were detailed logs available. That was a seriously good feature... It turns out these were actually spoof emails that came into our environment. I got to know about them from the log system."
"We rely heavily on antivirus protection, email content filtering, and authentication mechanisms to ensure compliance with email security. Regarding phishing attempts, while phishing protection features are crucial, we also emphasize user education as a critical defence. The intelligence services Cisco provides, such as the Cisco Intelligence Center, play a significant role in analyzing and validating threats, including phishing attempts, in our email security practices."
"There are a lot of filters for scam emails and things like that work out of the box. You can also use the antivirus features. I like its features."
"What I find the most valuable about Cisco Secure Email is that the logs are not that difficult to see even if you're not used to them. The logs are reasonably readable and diagnosing the problem is not too hard with them."
"Because we scan products, and there is a lot of critical data, security is very important in these cases."
"Cisco's Secure Email integrates with Cisco Firewalls, utilizing the AMP as their anti-malware engine, which allows for information sharing between devices."
"The solution is very configurable. It has enabled us to configure some specific filters to stop emails that general configurations didn't stop. It's a powerful solution. It can analyze a lot of emails simultaneously, with no problems of capacity or system load."
"The technical support from Cisco is perfect."
 

Cons

"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."
"Lacks a VPN feature to provide a secure connection to the data center."
"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."
"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"The response time for support must be reduced."
"Sometimes, in some cases, this might end up with their teams being unfocused or a bit thin and stretched and super busy."
"The email encryption could be improved."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"Customers chose a different product after experiencing a problem when they upgraded the firmware, which caused the system to restart multiple times during working hours."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
"The licensing and pricing need to be improved."
"Regarding the price, I find it pretty expensive. It is not even reasonable; it is pretty expensive because we are dealing with the South African market and our currency is not as powerful as the dollar."
"The solution does not have a strong outbound service. It should also integrate DLP."
"The pricing needs to be reconsidered or enhanced."
"We cannot manage multiple devices from a single UI."
"The user interface needs some improvement to become more user-friendly. The graphics could be better. It's designed more for a technical user rather than a business user."
"The area of license renewal should be improved. We normally renew our license every year. There is a feature called smart licensing, and I switched from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode because of what I thought smart licensing does. I thought it would make licensing renewal seamless and very swift, but ever since I've switched to smart licensing, each time I want to renew my license, it is a whole lot of headache. The process is not smooth, and I had to keep calling Cisco TAC to see how the issue can be resolved. At one point, I wanted to revert back to the legacy mode, but I can't revert. Once you switch from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode, you can't revert. They should improve on the visibility of the smart licensing mode so that it can indeed be smart and easier to use for the license renewal every year. That is one challenge."
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky."
"We didn't get any malware, but a few phishing emails, maybe one or two, slipped in."
"I would like to see features like AI since it is currently an area that the product lacks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not that expensive."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"We pay annually. They never charged us for anything else. And they were quite a bit under that $20,000 mark. It was $19,074. And they've been pretty good about not skyrocketing the price or anything like that. It has gone up. It's gone up to $24,000 in 2020."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"The license was not per user, the license model was per feature. You could choose anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. It was feature-based and charged yearly."
"I rate the pricing a ten out of ten on a scale where one means it is less cost-effective, and ten means it is the most cost-effective solution."
"It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
"There are additional fees for adding features."
"The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market."
"You're going to get what you pay for. If you're not willing to pay the price of Cisco, you're not going to get a product that's as good as Cisco. I don't think Cisco is overpriced, because for the last two years I've been comparing it to Microsoft and Cisco has been cheaper and given us more features."
"Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
"At times, we feel the pricing is a bit too high, but then, there is also room for discounts. We enjoy a lot of discounts, and that is why we are still with them. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access provides secure access to internal applications for employees, external members of the organization...
What advice do you have for others considering Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access is one of the best integrations available. While about two hundred vendors offer similar services, ...
What do you like most about Barracuda Email Protection?
Barracuda Email Protection is easy to deploy and maintain. It doesn't require a specialized resource to manage this t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Email Protection?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I have not seen any higher costs. I find that Barracuda Email Protectio...
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Protection?
Considering it integrates with Azure, I would like to be able to effectively set up policies where people are by defa...
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Email?
Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.