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Cisco Umbrella vs EfficientIP DNS Firewall comparison

 

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

Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
EfficientIP DNS Firewall
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 18.1%, down from 25.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of EfficientIP DNS Firewall is 2.0%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella18.1%
EfficientIP DNS Firewall2.0%
Other79.9%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

BB
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Ensures comprehensive protection with seamless threat logging and efficient policy management
My favorite feature of Cisco Umbrella is probably just the DNS and the fact that when a security threat happens, all of that gets logged in their Umbrella portal, and it's very easy to find who's been accessing the site and how many people have accessed it, so that we can go to them and make sure they're not compromised. The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by providing less time to search for things through logs, to look for what we need. It's just one place to go, and we just search for it, and we find it really fast. The fact that there's a virtual database that has all that information is great on our portal.
reviewer1080873 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Easy to set up and use, and has a helpful network device inventory function
The vendor needs to do more to promote this product in certain regions, helping it to gain market share in territories where it is not widely adopted. The problem with this vendor is that they are too focused on revenue and sales numbers. If a partner is not able to generate the revenue that they're expecting, they put them on hold until they can generate interest and traction in their region for the products. It comes down to the management's mindset. They have a good product but they don't have much patience for a territory that is slow to adopt.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very good for helping workers feel safe, secured, supported, and included."
"This is a good solution, and there are many advantages to this solution."
"ROI benefits both the reseller and the client in Managed Services because of its proactive approach to network security."
"With the Experience Insights feature of Cisco Secure Access, we've seen impacts on the management of user connectivity by allowing us to deliver safe connectivity."
"Web proxy adds an effective layer for security."
"Overall, it has been pretty helpful for what we're using it for."
"Umbrella offers protection against malicious websites by stopping users from visiting them."
"The most valuable feature for us is the DNS-based protection."
"This product is very stable. The entire Amazon Web Service, AWS, is powered by EfficientIP."
"This product has an inventory function to help maintain a list of the equipment, which is quite good."
 

Cons

"It should have a real-time malware classification engine. It should check the malware on the website. It would be good if it had a real-time malware check for the websites because currently, it just compares the DNS queries of the blacklist. It should also have malware control over file execution and the types of files that the users are allowed to download."
"I would like the product to offer more security features, such as IPS, IDS, DDoS prevention, etc."
"This solution does not give us full, 360-degree protection."
"Network connectivity was a bit of a challenge at the beginning, but we were able to get the right help from Cisco."
"Actually, we recently switched over to Zscaler because it has more features and it's more scalable than Cisco Umbrella."
"The pricing changes too fast. We get the license and we need to relicense it because they already made changes to it. We always need to be on top of the licenses because they're always changing."
"For us, as an MSP, the initial licensing changes were a roadblock, and they still could be a lot clearer. Specifically, it's an honor-based licensing system. We'd like it to be more specific to our traffic or our users so that we can make sure that the customer is paying for all their licensing."
"In the past, Cisco Umbrella has denied us access to secure websites."
"The vendor needs to do more to promote this product in certain regions, helping it to gain market share in territories where it is not widely adopted."
"The vendor needs to do more to promote this product in certain regions, helping it to gain market share in territories where it is not widely adopted."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be lower."
"The price of Cisco Umbrella is a little higher than similar solutions, like Gateway."
"The price could be lower."
"I am not sure, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think it's $1.00 or so per device/month."
"I think it's worth the money."
"In terms of licensing, we're not able to be extremely clear with the customer because it's based on their reporting. It's not based on the actual traffic. If they say they have 50 users but they have 80, we'll just buy for 50 users. That's something where we'd like to have more flexibility."
"The product is pricey compared to Cisco Firepower."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"The price of this product is very reasonable, especially considering that a company's reputation is priceless."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Non Profit
7%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?
The pricing for Cisco Umbrella is fair compared to other platforms out there for DNS security. We acquired it as a bundle with other Cisco purchases.
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Also Known As

OpenDNS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim
De Montfort University, STMicroelectronics, Leeds Beckett University
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Infoblox and others in Domain Name System (DNS) Security. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.