Cisco Umbrella vs. Cloudflare

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Umbrella
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Cisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.N/A
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud is a unified platform of cloud-native services designed to help enterprises regain control over their IT environments. Powered by an intelligent, programmable global cloud network, it is built to offer security, performance, visibility, and reliability.
$20
per month
Pricing
Cisco UmbrellaCloudflare
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Pro
$20
per month
Business
$200
per month
Free
Free
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco UmbrellaCloudflare
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco UmbrellaCloudflare
Considered Both Products
Cisco Umbrella
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella better integrated into our Cisco environment.
Chose Cisco Umbrella
I reviewed it, but the minor differences were outweighed by the seamless integration with our existing Cisco infrastructure.
Chose Cisco Umbrella
I have used several different solutions over the years. The Cisco Umbrella solution is by far a way better solution than anything I have used. IT is easy to easy with basic implementations vs. others. Cisco Umbrella is more accurate than other solutions (though not as deeper …
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Different products in different spaces. The Z3 was more of a VPN endpoint so that users didn't have to worry about a client. If they are at home, they are on their corporate network and able to access resources. Cisco Umbrella can be used then to serve corporate DNS across the …
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella have the biggest brainpower behind their products and is also from one of the biggest and best players in the Network market.
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Cisco has more options in configuring monitoring/blocking.
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella did what we needed it to do far more than the other apps that we tried out. For mobile work on MacBook and iPads, Cisco Umbrella was the best option for our district. The cost was lower as well and did not lower the level of security we received because of lower …
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Have not used similar products
Chose Cisco Umbrella
I really like it for this price point.
Chose Cisco Umbrella
We evaluated a lot of products. The good part is that we didn't go outside. So Ineos grew by acquisition and therefore we inherited a lot of products there. So we looked at the Netskope and Fortinet because they were within our sphere of product portfolios that we had in the …
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Price and integration to Meraki MX, plus ability to protect endpoints with roaming module. Umbrella also came with DLP and evolved to Cisco Secure Connect (special offering for Meraki)
Chose Cisco Umbrella
We just trust Cisco provides a solid reliable solution in Cisco Umbrella, so no other was really needed to be considered.
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Better integration with other Cisco portfolio of products.
We have an enterprise subscription and Cisco Umbrella dns was already included as part of the offering.
Also we are looking into integration with sd-wan in sites where it is hard to provide full spectrum of services that …
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Webex calls are protected by Cisco Umbrella
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Auto SIG Tunnels is a feature that helps in provisioning tunnels automatically using Cisco Umbrella APIs and so this is one win for choosing Cisco Umbrella over others. With Cisco SD-WAN Viptela, the Cisco Umbrella stacks up well because its the same vendor so less …
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Legacy implementation, which was unscalable.
Chose Cisco Umbrella
I am evaluating Cisco umbrella against forcepoint we proxy to consolidate two solutions into one
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Curated filtering lists make Umbrella much easier to maintain than running your own DNS-based filtering
Chose Cisco Umbrella
Barracuda has some additional feature sets in its physical Web Security Gateway hardware, however Umbrella has been more reliable for what we are doing in our environment.
Cloudflare
Chose Cloudflare
A few years ago, GoDaddy started charging us to be their DNS provider, and Cloudflare didn't charge, so we moved to Cloudflare. Also, Cloudflare was known for security protection, for example DDOS protection, and we haven't had any issues since moving to Cloudflare.
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare is on another level compared to any other CDN provider out there.
One of the reasons is that encompasses all the tools into one big products instead of relying on many different products from many companies - DNS, CDN, WAF are all managed in one place and connected …
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare was better, because we do not have to host or purchase any additional hardware. This means reduced costs for us to have to buy the hardware. Then, hire people to run the hardwar, and support the hardware. And, it also means you need SME's for the tool that have used …
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare's cloud/geo-relative implementation is best-suited for publicly available web resources.
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare's product offering is more mature and has demonstrated success in preventing some of the largest DDoS attacks observed. Cloudflare also continues to reinvest in their core product offering to ensure they maintain a position as leader in the cybersecurity space.
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare knows what they're doing when Load Balancing and Redundancy meet the cloud. AWS is a partner, and we're exploring other solutions which are performing at the highest level.

Peak season is upon us, and we cannot suffer downtime. DDoS Protection is another interesting …
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare has much better interface and is easier to use on a daily basis
Chose Cloudflare
Amazon CloudFront is a highly scalable CDN service integrated with AWS. Couldflare provides us more other functions and services than Amazon CloudFront. Google Cloud CDN offers fast and reliable content delivery with integration into Google Cloud services. But we didn't deploy …
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare is complex to set up but is still better suited to our environment.
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare addresses Pipefy a well-defined cache system with several features to improve the performance of the applications. This is the main focus + excellent reliability and stability.
Chose Cloudflare
Overall we are using Cloudflare as well as AWS cloud across various domains in our organization. To some extent such as DNS management on Route53, CloudFront takes advantage of Cloudflare as it provides a straightforward UI for DNS management. But when it comes to traffic …
Chose Cloudflare
20% of the entire world traffic run through Cloudflare data centers
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare can't compare to the reliability and ease of setup configuration.
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare is much easier to configure compared to these services.
Chose Cloudflare
Low investment, easy setup, great product, and solid security features.
Chose Cloudflare
AWS Cloudfront is so poon in UI, features. Almost you cannot compare them because the scale is too large.
Chose Cloudflare
Better than other software in the same field as per price time to implement easy to learn and use, good simple easy to understand user interface and very few false positives plus our compliance with cyber insurance is right on the money we no longer have to jump extra hopes to …
Chose Cloudflare
It's much cheaper even has free version, easy to use and integrate with our current system, it has so many features in the dashboard that I need.
Chose Cloudflare
ZScaler Private Access and Cloudflare Access are very similar product sets that trade blows when it comes to features and capabilities. In my experience Cloudflare unified dashboard and distributed infrastructure has the upper hand when compared to ZScaler.

As a Home Lab …
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare has lower starting cost for backend Workers and good pricing model with steps.
Auto-scaling by default better than microservice/docker or EC2.
Security makes simpler.
Chose Cloudflare
They have the most generous free offering, and after the free offering limit is reached - you're still getting plenty of value for the buck.
They have very good reputation.
They have an ever expanding list of tools that can support multiple scenarios under one roof.
Best Alternatives
Cisco UmbrellaCloudflare
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

IBM Cloud Internet Services
IBM Cloud Internet Services
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Zscaler Internet Access
Zscaler Internet Access
Score 8.8 out of 10
Akamai App & API Protector
Akamai App & API Protector
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco UmbrellaCloudflare
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.7
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.5
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.5
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco UmbrellaCloudflare
Likelihood to Recommend
It is good for whole network protection, and individual PCs with the client. Provide good reporting on where your network is going on the net. One thing I would like is a longer history with the logs 14 and 30 days are too short some times.
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Cloudflare works well as security measure that gives peace of mind without needing to work too hard to get it functioning well. It provides great tools to customize the security experience as well. This is all the same for the caching tools as well. They have a lot of built in tools that make using the caching easy right out of the box, but they provide the customization options to get things just right for your site.
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Pros
  • Managing the overall security policies is quite seamless in Cisco Umbrella. it is quite easy to set up and implement web filtering rules and other necessary configurations without any hassle.
  • The reporting features like 'activity search' provides greater visibility of our user's internet activity within our organization. We can identify security related risks quickly and take decisions to mitigate them.
  • The deployment and integration of Cisco Umbrella with other vendors product is quite appreciable. We other non cisco security devices which Cisco Umbrella was integrated with without any major issues.
  • We can easily track down any user that goes to the internet through the activity search feature.
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  • Registrar and DNS services are impeccable, with registrations done at cost and without ADs. DNS services setting standards for speed of resolution.
  • DDOS protection. With their content distribution network to back them they have the bandwidth and tools to be both proactive and reactive to bad actors.
  • WAF - Their Web Application Firewall helps mitigate common site vulnerabilities and has active zero-day protection running for breaking exploits
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Cons
  • There's always room for improvement in all products for sure. On the umbrella part, I would say that the room for improvement is on the data loss prevention part. So it sits on the PCs, it sees a lot of the traffic that goes on, it knows what files are on the PCs, but it's actually not stopping some of the intellectual property or personal identifiable information from going out. So we are able to block users from accessing applications and websites or even IP addresses, but we're not able to go a bit more granular, more on the data loss side. So that's a gap that I have in the product.
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  • In some cases, using Cloudflare can actually lead to slower website speeds if the network is congested or if the website's traffic is particularly heavy.
  • Some website owners may find that the level of customization offered by Cloudflare is limited, especially in comparison to other solutions.
  • While Cloudflare is easy to set up and manage, it may be too complex for users who are not familiar with web technologies.
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Likelihood to Renew
First off I never give anything a "10" unless it's perfect. LOL - I grade on the curve. I think OpenDNS/Umbrella is a very good product. I think that fact that Cisco absorbed them is one of the proofs of that. I have used the product back when it was free for companies our size. I have not always appreciated the cost - but in the post pandemic cyber chaos, I believe the cost benefit ratio is still very high. I have honestly not looked at other products because Umbrella continues to work to my satisfaction. I consider Umbrella to be one of the key layers in my cyber security strategy.
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CF is a core piece of our cloud infra.
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Usability
The product was easy to install and get running. To maintain the product is also a simple matter of maintaining lists of wanted and unwanted domains or URLs. The basic and advanced security features all do what they are intended to do with no known erroneous outcomes
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Everything is extremely concise and all settings apply immediately and take effect globally. There is no reason to explicitly plan/think in terms of individual regions as one would have to traditional cloud offerings (AWS, OCI, Azure). All Cloudflare products integrate seamless as part of a single pipeline that executes from request to response.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco umbrella services in the cloud are always available. However, the weakness is the VM installed in the data center that are the first resolvers. If the VMs become unavailable for any reason or the vSphere goes down, then all DNS is affected
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In 6+ years of relying on Cloudflare, I think we experienced one or two brief outages that were Cloudflare's fault.
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Performance
our experience with cisco products has always been awesome and same is the case with cisco umbrella .Under umbrella cisco provides flexible and scalable software solution to use across different dept and sites . These softwares are very user friendly ,pages load quickly as these applications are designed for minimum latency and reports are also provided quickely
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They are built to be fast and deliver very well on this. Performance has never been a problem.
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Support Rating
Whilst the support is good once you get through to them, it's email only and the response is slow. This is a issue, because its a core system that needs to work. We have had issues in the past where several of our companies have gone down due to Umbrella and support is nowhere to be seen. It is very difficult to know whether Umbrella is having service issues, since they do not regularly update customers on the status of their services, such as is seen by providers such as Microsoft (status.umbrella.com just seems to show up all of the time, I'm not sure it's even updated)
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I have only used their support a few times, and most times, they are responsive and able to resolve my issue with a minimal amount of time and effort. However, there was one instance where I simply asked about how to purchase some more resources (redirect rules), and I received some type of automated/AI response that was very unhelpful and gave me no opportunity to escalate to a person.
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Online Training
Quite easy to understand training modules prepared by knowledgeable trainers. Training modules have included all the desired features of these softwares and the content delivery is very good from the respective module trainers and it explains in details the features and apart from that further training material support is also provided if needed.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
At the time we were forced to move from Cloud Web Security to Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Umbrella was far from being a direct replacement. It was frustrating and difficult to migrate due to the lack of functionality. This has since been addressed, however we now have legacy rulesets that were built as bandaids that cannot be removed. Hopefully the migration to Secure Access will address this.
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Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
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Alternatives Considered
Different products in different spaces. The Z3 was more of a VPN endpoint so that users didn't have to worry about a client. If they are at home, they are on their corporate network and able to access resources. Cisco Umbrella can be used then to serve corporate DNS across the VPN tunnel to the Z3 device and extend the capabilities of Cisco Umbrella.
Read full review
Nothing like it. Organizations can utilize these Cloudflare products to enhance their online presence by improving security, performance, reliability, and developer efficiency. Cloudflare is an American company that delivers services such as DNS, a content delivery network (CDN), and various other additional services to make websites faster and more secure. Cloudflare is used by over 26 million sites, resulting in the processing of more than 1 billion IP addresses each day.
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Scalability
Cisco umbrella provides fleaxible and scalable software solutions which are easy deploy across multiple departments and sites wherever needed and this softwares are very easy to use and provides the best interface along with cisco support for other devices apart from cisco infrastructure but still there is scope for improvement on the inclusion of latest features
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They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.
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Return on Investment
  • It's too early for us to say now. We started with Cisco Umbrella with the migration and during the migration we choose all the specific access. Now we are going to Cisco Secure Access in our simulations there will be much of cost savings because we don't need the on-premise data center anymore for the ASARs and for the local firewalls and the people, they are managing that on-premise. So we estimate there will be a lot of cost savings, but currently it's not on the paper yet. So we have to wait what the experience is with it, but we are optimistic.
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  • We have seen reduced usage and downtimes after using Cloudflare for Caching. This has already yielded ROI as minimal downtime ensures consistent user traffic and increases revenue.
  • It can handle significant traffic spikes and shields the website from DDOS attacks. We have prevented a number of DDOS attacks after using Cloudflare and hence we are already seeing an ROI by using it.
  • Some of the integrations with Cloudflare are really painful and we have faced a lot of issues because of not having native integrations to certain 3rd party apps.
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