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Cisco Umbrella vs EfficientIP DNS Firewall comparison

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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
125
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (3rd), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
EfficientIP DNS Firewall
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 17.0%, down from 22.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of EfficientIP DNS Firewall is 2.2%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella17.0%
EfficientIP DNS Firewall2.2%
Other80.8%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

KamranJameel - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of IT at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Secure browsing has protected users from DNS threats and improves malware defense
The major issue is that sometimes when you install the client, it shows you protected and displays that it is live with the backend servers and everything. However, in reality, it was not getting any feed from the main client and is just sending your traffic to open DNS, which sometimes causes an issue because the protection you have implemented can be breached by users. The primary thing that Cisco Umbrella lacked most of the time is their client. Previously, they had a separate Cisco client. Now they have merged everything into the Cisco Secure Endpoint client—one client for everything, for Cisco Endpoint, for Cisco AnyConnect, and for Cisco Umbrella, which they did probably in 2025.
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

"I haven't needed to reboot the servers for years due to their excellent stability."
"I had worked for Juniper support before and I worked for other tech support teams and I feel that Cisco's type of support is the best."
"I haven't found any issues related to latency or any other issue."
"In general, it increases the security level, helps us prevent threats from being accessed, and increases the visibility into internet-bound traffic, so overall it increases the internet security of the organization."
"Cisco's support is fantastic, providing assistance when needed, especially during the initial installation process."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"For us and for customers, it's the ease of integration with Meraki. It's just a couple of clicks. That allows us to deploy very fast, and it doesn't change the way a customer uses his service. It's just more secure."
"ROI benefits both the reseller and the client in Managed Services because of its proactive approach to network security."
"This product has an inventory function to help maintain a list of the equipment, which is quite good."
"This product is very stable. The entire Amazon Web Service, AWS, is powered by EfficientIP."
 

Cons

"The locks and management could be better. The product is fairly new, and it may take some time to get all the features up and running."
"Sometimes there are some lags, and I have to refresh multiple times to access parts of the dashboards. Sometimes the dashboard pages crash and I'm not sure why, so that's one area for improvement."
"Improvement could be made in the area of detailed reporting analytics broken down by client name for individual custom reporting."
"It could be improved by having a local data center and caching, which can provide protection support. I would like to be able to channel my intel and my network traffic to their clouds, and this feature is not available. Advanced protection or any malware file support, which might be required, is not available."
"Although Cisco Umbrella has an excellent global network footprint, there is still room for improvement and growth in this area. Additionally, there are bandwidth limitations associated with the connectors that need to be addressed. To be a viable solution for larger offices, Cisco Umbrella must continue to expand and improve its capabilities in these areas."
"Actually, we recently switched over to Zscaler because it has more features and it's more scalable than Cisco Umbrella."
"It is a value for money product for sure. However, it does not have that kind of awareness plus brand within the customer, as they are influenced more by brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"I would like to see a graphical representation of the entire network."
"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

"Cisco uses subscription models for the pricing and there are three subscription plans."
"Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive."
"Its value exceeds its pricing."
"The licensing part for Umbrella is really flexible."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"When talking about Cisco solutions in general there pricing model is horrible. For example, you can sell a Meraki-based solution, but if the customer starts shopping around, someone is going to have access to the pricing at a level that you cannot compete because they do not have uniform pricing. Not everybody gets fair pricing. Unless you are one of the real major corporations selling the solution your ability to compete is impossible. Cisco will acknowledge the situation and assure you next time it will be in your favor but it never becomes favorable for you. Cisco is not very good in this regard. However, Umbrella is good."
"Our costs were negotiated, and they are okay."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"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
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise31
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?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing reveals that the pricing is acceptable, but it is marginally a bit high. However, the services provided are much better, leading to a good retu...
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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: October 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.