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Cisco Secure Email vs Menlo Protect comparison

 

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

Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
Menlo Protect
Ranking in Email Security
55th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (15th), Enterprise Browsers (8th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 5.6%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Protect is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Secure Email5.6%
Menlo Protect0.3%
Other94.1%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Kostas Karidas - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps prevent security breaches but fails to improve in the area of AI
I have not noticed any impressive advanced threat protection mechanisms in the tool. I don't know if there are any AI features in the product. I don't know if there is any other technology embedded in the solution. Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats. My company has seen plenty of scenarios where Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats, spam emails, and fraudulent domains. The product is good for dealing with spam emails, and it can take care of more than 100 spam emails per day. A huge number of spam emails are monitored with the help of Cisco Secure Email. I would not recommend the product to other businesses because you need to have some kind of expertise in configuring and knowing a bit about the tool's GUI. The tool also lacks in the area of AI mechanics. If I would like to have an overview and review another solution, I would go for another product other than Cisco Secure Email. I can definitely suggest others to look at the product and review it, but I would also recommend that they compare it with the other solutions in the market. I wouldn't prioritize Cisco Secure Email over other tools. Either the support partner of the product or I take care of the tool's maintenance phase by looking into the configurations and doing some fine-tuning. I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.
Gerard GLOWKA - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable and scalable solution with a great threat isolation engine
Menlo Security RBI is mainly used to do basic cloud migrationary technologies Menlo Security RBI's best feature is its threat isolation engine. Menlo Security RBI could be more cloud-friendly, and its mobility could be improved. In the next release, I'd like Menlo Security RBI to include a…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Spam controls are excellent because they are a powerful feature that operates almost effortlessly."
"The most valuable features are protection against ransomware and spam."
"It's a bit easy to handle Cisco Secure Email; it's not that difficult. For the logs, which are in PDF format, it's not hard to read them. We don't need Wireshark much to analyze the logs."
"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."
"The logs are easily readable and help diagnose problems, although they can be difficult to find initially. The solution addresses our email security, but for the rest of our security, we would use multiple vendors. It covers everything through email, like antivirus, IDS, and IPS."
"Cisco Secure Email has strong inbound services."
"ATP has been the most valuable in improving our email security posture."
"Capital expenditure is a significant consideration, and the impact on major expenditures prompts a careful analysis before onboarding the new product."
"I can't say that there is one specific feature that is most valuable. It's the overall platform that is well-suited to our needs. It's something that is different from a lot of other products or platforms in the marketplace."
"Menlo Security RBI's best feature is its threat isolation engine."
 

Cons

"I would like to see features like AI since it is currently an area that the product lacks."
"There could be additional DLP functionality for it."
"The primary areas for improvement are the pricing and the complexity of deployment."
"Cisco Secure Email can be improved from the administrator's point of view. Usually, you have to work with different areas, and they can try to make it easy for the administrator to use different functions."
"Scalability has certain shortcomings and needs to be improved because there are service providers who provide better scalability.v"
"The initial setup was complex because I have two sites with physical clusters."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability."
"We have been struggling in the last month with Cisco encryption and with the S/MIME encryption. I don't know if it is an issue on our side or if these features of the solution are not working very well."
"There are several features, such as supporting web technologies, that the company is working on implementing in the platform. There are a lot of backend web technologies in use on various websites, for example, two-way audio/video and WebGL, for which support may not be fully implemented in the product."
"Menlo Security RBI could be more cloud-friendly, and its mobility could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Cisco Secure Email is not expensive, and licensing costs are yearly."
"It is expensive. I would rate it 2 out of 10, where 1 is the most expensive and 10 is the cheapest."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"The pricing for the Cisco Email Security Appliance involves recurring costs for licenses based on the contracted time frame, such as one year, three years, or five years. Renewals are required after the license expires."
"In my previous organization, avoiding four instances of CryptoLocker within an estimated six month period is approximately $600,000 in lost time and effort. Our five year cost was about a million dollars, and the four outages that we had equated to 65 percent of that five year cost."
"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."
"It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
"Menlo Security RBI can be very costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise25
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 user interface of the Email Security Gateway ( /products/security-gateway-reviews ) should be improved. It would be beneficial to have the functionality of the Email Threat Defense integrated i...
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Also Known As

Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
Menlo Security Email Security, Menlo Security Remote Browser Isolation
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Macy's, HSBC, Bank of Hawaii
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. Menlo Protect and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.