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Cisco Umbrella vs Cloudflare One comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 5, 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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (3rd)
Cloudflare One
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
11th
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (20th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (22nd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (9th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (14th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (7th), ZTNA (3rd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 9.4%, down from 16.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare One is 4.5%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella9.4%
iboss3.2%
Cloudflare One4.5%
Other82.9%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
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.
CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"As I mentioned, the return on investment is significant, as it saved our office locations' bandwidth because when you are working remotely at home, your internet traffic routes directly to iboss and will not go to your office building, saving bandwidth bottlenecks and ensuring that issues with our building internet circuits will not impact your internet connectivity because you are directly going to the iboss data center."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"The main advantage of iboss is its cloud-based security centralized policy management, which helps organizations protect users working from different locations, secure access to cloud applications, and reduce security risks."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"The Secure Internet Gateway benefits my company because now our whole traffic goes to the Umbrella Cloud and it gets checked there, so nothing malicious is coming into our network."
"Its simplicity is most valuable. I can install it and get it up and running, and it can be pervasive across my business within a business day. It is pretty simple and straightforward to install and configure. Its remit is reasonably clearly defined. When you look at solutions like Darktrace and Carbon Black, the mission objective isn't as clearly defined. Cisco Umbrella, Sophos Central, or some of the other solutions have a more standardized approach to antivirus, which includes enhanced response from the machine learning or deep learning perspective."
"Overall, as a program, it has saved us a ton of time and stress by not having to worry about malware or viruses or anything malicious."
"The primary advantage of Cisco Umbrella is its ability to safeguard our users no matter where they are working from - whether it's in the office or remotely, as per the new work model that has emerged globally. This integrated security solution has simplified our lives by combining all the necessary security measures in one product. Additionally, deploying the product is all it takes to protect all our users."
"If you buy the service now, in two hours you are protected by the service because it's very fast to put in service."
"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."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the Web Filtering and the APT."
"I haven't needed to reboot the servers for years due to their excellent stability."
"Cloudflare Access is part of the Zero Trust philosophy."
"The capabilities of the software are strong enough for me to do what it's supposed to do. For me, we don't need to do a lot of configuration on our site. We just enable it and monitor it."
"Cloudflare Access is a stable solution."
"Cloudflare is by far the most effective solution that I have come across."
"Cloudflare DDoS is better than its competitors for its security, deployment, and scalability."
"Cloudflare One has assisted in securing my remote workforce through a SASE solution with Cloudflare One and the Workers part, although I am not currently using the Workers component."
"I'm very satisfied with the environment and the dashboard."
"We mostly use Cloudflare WAF, and gets basic Cloudflaire DDoS, caching as extra bonus . We like the factor these features are all integrated into 1 console, simple to manage."
 

Cons

"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"I would like to see simpler dashboards, more detailed reporting, and faster performance in iboss."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Support for multiple domains is important to us."
"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."
"I would like to have more applications being recorded."
"I think there is some room for improvement with regard to the Windows client."
"It would be better if there was a little bit of flexibility for organizations that don't have SD One in their environment. Because of the complexity of the environment, it's not easy to actually turn on the feature of the secure internet gateway for our users. We have not been able to explore that option yet."
"I would be happy if they could add the whois information of an IP."
"The detection of wireless attacks or targeted attacks reports many false rates. This is an area that needs some improvement."
"The biggest frustration I have encountered with Cisco Umbrella is that people can exit the Cisco Umbrella roaming client to bypass security, and some technically savvy individuals might know how to bypass it by modifying the hosts file to exclude Cisco Umbrella."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"Feedback could be enhanced."
"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"I would like them to include a VPN feature to provide a secure connection to the data center."
"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"The software has automated alerts, but the automated alerts are not available in the mobile app."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"Cisco solutions are generally perceived to be rather expensive. We have constant internal discussions as to whether we should offer lower-priced security solutions from some of the competitors."
"The price of Cisco Umbrella is a little higher than similar solutions, like Gateway."
"The price is fair, and the licensing cost is based on the number of users. We have seen a good ROI."
"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."
"We did a good negotiation, and at the moment, its price is fine."
"Cisco has a model called ELA. With ELA, if you buy the solution you will have the complete security portfolio and you can pay it yearly or after three years, it depends on the contract."
"You can request an evaluation license​."
"There is a subscription cost."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
I think iboss could be improved by emphasizing the modular function even more during sales presentations and demonstr...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
iboss is primarily used for content filtering within school districts and public K-12 school districts, and it can al...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
My experience with iboss's pricing structure, setup cost, and licensing model has been positive, straightforward, and...
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. Zs...
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-nat...
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 bu...
What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.
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
23andMe
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Cloudflare One and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.