We compared Cisco Umbrella and Cloudflare DNS across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Cisco Umbrella is highly regarded for its seamless integration with existing infrastructure, extensive range of security features, and ability to centrally manage security. Cloudflare DNS excels in terms of performance and ease of registering domains. Users also like the solution's caching capabilities and API functionality.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Umbrella could enhance security by adding a transferring proxy feature and improving its Linux agent for Linux-based companies. Cloudflare DNS could improve API integration and dashboard analytics.
Ease of Deployment: Based on the feedback, Cisco Umbrella has a simple and user-friendly initial setup that can be completed quickly in around 30 minutes. Setting up Cloudflare DNS setup is also straightforward, but it may require more time, ranging from a few hours to a maximum of two weeks for inexperienced users.
Service and Support: Customers have praised Cisco Umbrella's support, describing it as excellent and superior to the customer service of other vendors. Most Cloudflare DNS customers perceive the support as dependable, although some feel that it could benefit from better responsiveness and more accurate responses.
Pricing: The cost of Cisco Umbrella differs based on the specific needs and approach of the customer, with flexible pricing and transparent charges. It is seen as reasonable and competitive by some, but a few perceive it as costly. Cloudflare DNS provides most of its core features at no cost, but customers can pay for additional services. Users consider the pricing for Cloudflare DNS to be minimal compared to other products.
ROI: Cisco Umbrella has proven to be a valuable investment by addressing maintenance concerns, reducing expenses associated with hardware updates, and effectively thwarting threats. It offers enhanced visibility and aids in remediation efforts. Quantifying the return on investment for Cloudflare DNS is difficult because it's challenging to estimate the potential financial impact of attacks.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella integrates well with infrastructure and offers comprehensive security features, whereas Cloudflare DNS prioritizes speed, privacy, and global reach. Both products have user-friendly setups. Cisco Umbrella allows for easy deployment across multiple locations, while Cloudflare DNS can be set up quickly within a few hours. Cisco Umbrella could offer better Linux compatibility, while CloudFlare DNS should improve its dashboard analytics and API integration.
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"Stability-wise, it's good. I have never encountered any bugs."
"You can manage and create policies based on a group of users. It can permit some URLs and block others."
"It makes it really easy to accomplish content filtering. We don't have to do a lot of customization. You just click the box for the content category and it's up to date."
"The most valuable feature is that it secures our network against blacklisted or malicious websites."
"Cisco Umbrella is absolutely stable."
"We can have a full overview and a quick overview of all the DNS requests. For us, it's quite important."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Cisco's support is better nowadays."
"When it comes to hybrid work it's pretty effective. We've got the agents. We can protect people inside our building and, when they're using their laptops out in the field, they're still protected. It's working well."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"The reporting could be improved by way of the information that's displayed. For example, when you pull a report, it shows an internal employee going to many websites, but you can spin that right down by saying a lot of it is being cached."
"It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes."
"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."
"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."
"I would like for them to continue building on IPS and IDS functionalities."
"I would like to see DLP integration in the next release of this solution."
"Having ready-to-go templates with best practices is definitely something that would be an improvement. Deployment, from day one, is something that definitely needs to be improved for Cisco customers."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Cloudflare DNS is ranked 1st in Managed DNS with 13 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Cloudflare DNS is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cloudflare DNS writes "A tool that offers good performance that needs to improve in areas like assessment and payload". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Netskope , whereas Cloudflare DNS is most compared with Quad9, Azure DNS, Google Cloud DNS, Amazon Route 53 and Hurricane Electric Free DNS.
We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.