Cisco Secure Email alternative: an honest comparison

The short answer

Cisco Secure Email Gateway suits large organizations and enterprises that want deep policy control: content and outbreak filters, data loss prevention, outbound encryption, a choice of Cisco-hosted cloud, virtual appliances or a hybrid of both, and central management across many gateways, bought through Cisco or a Cisco partner. iBlockSpam suits small and mid-sized businesses that want hosted inbound filtering they can buy themselves, with a flat per-domain price, unlimited mailboxes, flexible digests, free DNS tools and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Competitor details below were checked on Cisco's own pages in October 2026.

Side by side

What it costs at 10 and 50 mailboxes

Assumptions: one domain, published prices only, USD, excluding tax.

Cisco says its Secure Email portfolio uses tiered pricing by mailbox count, but it doesn't publish the tiers. If you also run virtual appliances, add the cost of the servers or cloud instances they run on and the time to keep them updated.

When Cisco Secure Email is the better choice

• You're a large organization that needs deep policy control. Content filters, outbreak filters, DLP policies and per-group mail policies go well beyond a per-domain filter.
• You must keep the gateway on your own infrastructure. Cisco's virtual appliances run on your own hypervisors or in AWS or Azure; iBlockSpam is hosted only.
• You need outbound encryption and DLP from the same vendor. Both are in the Advantage bundle or available as add-ons.
• You already run Cisco security products and want one vendor, one support contract, or a Cisco Enterprise Agreement.
• You handle mail at a volume beyond our limits. iBlockSpam includes 100,000 inbound messages per domain a month and a 400 MB maximum message size.
• Your team knows AsyncOS. Years of tuned mail policies are worth a lot; don't throw them away for a lower price.

When iBlockSpam is the better choice

• You're a small or mid-sized business without a mail admin. There's no appliance, hypervisor or policy engine to maintain.
• You want prices you can read. Prices and per-domain limits are on the pricing page, and you can sign up without a quote.
• You have many mailboxes or aliases on one domain. One price per domain covers unlimited mailboxes and domain aliases; see per-domain vs per-user pricing.
• Your Cisco x95 hardware appliances are nearing end of support and a full enterprise gateway is more than you now need.
• You want each user to choose their digest schedule. Digests can run hourly, daily, on a chosen weekday or custom.
• You want DNS drift alerts and free tools. Domain monitoring is included, and our tools need no sign-up.

If you're weighing a gateway against an API product such as Cisco's Threat Defense, read secure email gateway vs API email security.

How to switch from Cisco Secure Email

1. If a Cisco partner manages your gateway, agree a cutover date with them, and check when your subscription term ends.
2. Export what you rely on: safelists and blocklists, content and message filters you want to recreate, and any DLP or encryption rules. iBlockSpam doesn't replace DLP or encryption, so decide where those will live.
3. Save your current DNS with the Email Health Check and lower the MX TTL a day or two ahead.
4. Add your domain in iBlockSpam and follow the guided setup for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or your mail server.
5. Update any connector or firewall rule that only accepts inbound mail from your Cisco gateway, and move your outbound relay if mail leaves through Cisco.
6. Change MX, test with the Email Header Analyzer, and keep the Cisco gateway accepting mail until the old TTL has passed and no new mail arrives there.

Our migration plan covers each step and the rollback.

Cisco, Cisco Secure Email, IronPort and AsyncOS are trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc.; iBlockSpam is not affiliated with Cisco.

Sources

Checked October 2026.

• Cisco: Secure Email gateway licensing (Essentials and Advantage bundles, per-user licences, add-ons, management included in cloud licences and required for on-premises and hybrid)
• Cisco: Secure Email Gateway and Secure Email and Web Manager data sheet (cloud, virtual and hybrid deployment, dedicated cloud in Cisco data centers, supported hypervisors, 1/3/5-year terms, tiered pricing by mailbox count, 45-day Cloud Gateway evaluation, Spam Quarantine, DLP and encryption)
• Cisco: AsyncOS 16.0.1 user guide, Spam Quarantine (end-user notifications, release links, safelists and blocklists, local and external quarantine)
• Cisco: end-of-sale and end-of-life notice for the x95 hardware appliances (last order October 31, 2023; end-of-life milestones; migration options)
• Cisco: Secure Email Gateway support page (formerly Email Security Appliance)
• Cisco: Secure Email Threat Defense data sheet (Essentials via journaling with no inline change; Advantage inline gateway)
• Cisco: Secure Email product page (Threat Defense per-user subscriptions of 1, 3 or 5 years; how to buy)
• Cisco newsroom: Cisco announces agreement to acquire IronPort, a maker of messaging security appliances (January 2007)