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Cisco Duo vs Venafi comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Cisco Duo enhances security, boosts staff morale, saves costs, and improves operations, despite perceived productivity impacts.
Sentiment score
4.6
Companies achieve 80% fewer outages with automated certificate distribution, mitigating financial risks and improving operational efficiency.
I think Cisco Duo offers a good return on investment for startups, newer organizations, or those utilizing cloud-based applications.
I have not seen ROI with Cisco Duo; probably the opposite, because it impedes productivity time to be able to get into the system.
From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Cisco Duo is the security and the ease of setting it up.
With Venafi, it wasn't about saving time but achieving functionality that was otherwise impossible, such as distributing certificates without manual intervention.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Duo's support is highly rated for expertise and solutions, but some users note delays and improvement needs.
Sentiment score
8.1
Venafi support is highly responsive and expert, resolving issues quickly, though some suggest improved training.
They got back to us quickly, were nice, and gave us what we needed.
Other support sections have failed miserably because of the lack of response time.
I would rate the technical service and customer support of Cisco Duo a ten out of ten.
Inquiries are typically addressed the same day, with most issues, even complex ones, resolved within 24 hours.
Venafi's technical support is excellent, with even their first-tier support being in-house and highly competent.
Their technical support is knowledgeable and helpful, making Venafi stand out among other CyberArk products.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Cisco Duo is scalable, easily integrates across sites, and supports thousands of users without disruptions, adapting to various applications.
Sentiment score
6.3
Venafi excels in scalability, effectively managing certifications and supporting large user bases, though integration challenges exist.
I believe Cisco Duo is very scalable because it is cloud-based.
We started out with just the basics, getting a token, and then we changed to push, and now, we have added the offline mode.
It scales easily because it is just tied into our identity provider, and it grows along with that.
This role-based access control enhances scalability and efficiency by providing a focused view of necessary information.
Horizontal scaling is a necessity rather than vertical scaling.
Scalability with Venafi is good; you can definitely use it if you have ten thousand certs, a thousand certs, a million, or a couple million.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Cisco Duo is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and quick issue resolution, maintaining productivity efficiently.
Sentiment score
7.1
Venafi is generally stable, with minor issues mainly due to external systems, appreciated for consistent performance over competitors.
When there is a bigger problem, we get notifications from Cisco Duo saying, 'Hey, we have a problem,' and that has helped us.
It is very reliable, easy to use, and I don't have too many issues with it.
There has been no downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Cisco Duo.
Venafi's stability has been consistently reliable.
Venafi is a stable product. It's definitely more stable than others.
I would give it a seven out of ten for stability because I reported a bug after an update.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Duo needs telephony credit, integration, deployment, and user interface improvements, plus better licensing, documentation, and older app compatibility.
Venafi needs user interface, automation, HSM integration, and simplification improvements for better certificate management and user experience.
Cisco should allow easier integration with third-party equipment because Cisco's own equipment is expensive.
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.
There has to be a way to make the whole process of push notifications easier, so that when I have my phone with me, I do not have to do anything.
Expanding the range of out-of-the-box integrations would significantly improve the user experience.
The yearly DNS verification required by certificate authorities necessitates manual intervention, hindering full automation.
They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we prefer on-premises solutions due to regulatory concerns.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Duo's pricing is competitive, flexible, straightforward, and suited for large enterprises, with premium support and moderate setup costs.
Venafi's pricing is competitive, offering value with options for unlimited certificate storage, despite perceived complexity and price increases.
The approximate cost is around eighty dollars per user.
Licensing is straightforward and convenient for higher education because student populations are included.
I am pleased that the prices remained stable after Cisco acquired the solution.
Venafi offers good value for the cost.
The pricing has increased for us, impacting our organization due to its operational expenditure (OPEX).
I feel that it's fairly priced compared to other solutions we evaluated, such as IBM, SailPoint, and KiteServer.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Duo is praised for its versatile multi-factor authentication, integration, user-friendly interface, and adaptability to hybrid environments.
Venafi excels in automating certificate management, enhancing efficiency, integrating widely, and offering user-friendly interfaces and custom reporting.
From a management perspective, I appreciate that we can enroll or control devices on the back end for people who get a new phone and forget to handle Cisco Duo properly and need to add a new device.
The benefit of having a complete passwordless environment in our organization is that it's gotten people away from using the sticky note under their keyboard - which is a huge problem.
A valuable feature of the solution is its hybrid structure, which involves proxy agents running on-premises while other services are on the cloud.
The most valuable feature of Venafi is the automation that helps save time and reduce human error.
It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices.
What I like best about Venafi is that it's very easy to get somebody on a call and get any of my questions answered.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Authentication Systems
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (4th), ZTNA as a Service (7th), Cisco Security Portfolio (4th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (2nd)
Venafi
Ranking in Authentication Systems
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 9.3%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Venafi is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Thomas Botts - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing security policies effectively with seamless authentication
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. There isn't a lot of training that goes on in school districts. Email is an easy way where many people give out their credentials, so the level of protection is something that we definitely need in a school district. Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system has been easy when logging in, although the teachers don't appreciate it as much. We have it configured so users essentially just hit accept. If it sees any sort of built-in risk, then it steps up authentication. It's pretty easy. I appreciate it. I've encountered advantages with Cisco Duo in that it has stopped significant pushback from teachers. It has prevented credential sharing and unauthorized access. We've seen a huge decrease since we've rolled it out across the entire district.
Adam Goldstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates certificate management across platforms and has enhanced integration support
Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively. We integrated it with GlobalSign and aimed to automate DNS verification, although challenges remained. Venafi's platform-agnostic nature was beneficial for handling certificates across different systems like IIS, AWS, and Azure. It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices. It significantly improved our operational efficiency by automating certificate workflows. This reduced the number of certificates requiring manual management, freeing internal resources from deploying trivial certificates. While some complex certificates still needed manual intervention, automating simpler ones eliminated internal bottlenecks associated with tasks like uploading certificates to Imperva. By automating these processes, we reduced errors, streamlined workflows, and eliminated the need to repeatedly remember and execute complex procedures, ultimately increasing our overall operational efficiency. The automation capabilities are good; when properly configured, it performs as expected.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What do you like most about Duo Security?
They are users who, as mentioned before, utilize RDPAP and MDPAP. It includes functionalities related to finance, specifically in single sign-on.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Duo is honestly above my pay grade. I don't know any of that.
What do you like most about Venafi?
We use Venafi for PKI certificates.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?
I was the member who decided it, so I'm aware of the pricing. I feel that it's fairly priced compared to other solutions we evaluated, such as IBM, SailPoint, and KiteServer. It is fairly priced an...
What needs improvement with Venafi?
We have not faced any kind of disadvantage regarding Venafi, but they could improve on the bugs, as sometimes the system gets stuck.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Duo Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Venafi and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.