DNSFilter vs
Cisco Umbrella

Escape High Costs and Complex Tools with DNSFilter, a Cisco Umbrella Alternative

Tired of Cisco’s rising prices, clunky UI, slow support, and forced migrations? So were thousands of organizations who switched to DNSFilter. We give you faster protection, easier management, real support and no hidden surprises — all deployed in an afternoon.

Stop threats faster — DNSFilter blocks malicious domains an average 10 days sooner than competitors that rely on third party threat feeds.

Simplify deployment — Customers report DNSFilter’s setup takes minutes, with intuitive policy management built in.

Avoid costly errors — Cisco Umbrella customers often encounter configuration issues with IP filtering and SSL decryption — errors that take days to resolve.

Real support, real fast — While Cisco struggles with slow or unresponsive support, DNSFilter delivers fast, knowledgeable help whenever needed.

Continuous innovation — DNSFilter is actively investing in faster filtering, better reporting, and smarter protection — unlike Cisco’s stagnant platform.

Features

DNSFilter

Cisco Umbrella

Stable & Global Network

LAN Proxy/Virtual Appliance

Policy Change Update

INSTANT

UP TO 15 MIN

Desktop Roaming Clients

Mobile Roaming Clients

Imagery-based Anti-phishing

Whitelabled for Resale

Domain Categorization

Bulk Block Lists

Percent of customers up and running in a month

95%

46%

Cisco Umbrella Roaming Client vs. DNSFilter Roaming Clients

Roaming Clients give you the ability to deploy AI-powered threat blocking and content filtering to your endpoints, and it’s a useful tool if you’re interested in more granular reporting.

Cisco Umbrella's Roaming Clients reached End-of-Life April 2025, requiring Umbrella customers to migrate and re-implement their Roaming Clients using the Umbrella Roaming module in Cisco Secure Client. Avoid the complexity, downtime, and resource drain of Cisco’s next forced migration. Choose DNSFilter—the easy-from-the-start solution for smarter, seamless endpoint-based threat and content filtering.

Cisco Umbrella RC End-of-Life: What You Need to Know

With an impending migration for Cisco Umbrella Roaming Client customers on the horizon, now is the time to make the switch to protective DNS you can count on.

Migrating from Cisco Umbrella to DNSFilter: It Pays to Make the Switch

The End-of-Life process for Cisco Umbrella's Roaming Clients will require you to migrate anyway. DNSFilter is making that transition easier—and cheaper—than ever!

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Cisco Umbrella Pricing, Licensing, & Package FAQs

As millions of Cisco users prepare for Umbrella Roaming Client's end-of-life, what are your options?

What is Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco Umbrella (previously OpenDNS) is a cloud-based DNS security solution, similar to DNSFilter. Umbrella provides basic web filtering, and integrations with platforms like Connectwise PSA and Amazon S3 for log export. DNSFilter matches these capabilities, offering log export options and integrations with six of the leading PSA platforms, including Connectwise.

However, Cisco Umbrella is not as effective at threat blocking as DNSFilter, which leverages AI-based detection to identify new malicious domains an average of 10 days sooner than competitors. Cisco Umbrella is harder to deploy and has not continued to update or invest in their product over time—really since they acquired OpenDNS.

Is OpenDNS the same as Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco Umbrella began as OpenDNS in 2008 as the first cloud-based protective DNS service. OpenDNS was purchased by Cisco in 2014. The name OpenDNS is now used for free filtering for home and families. It has different settings to block threats and/or adult categories compared to its Cisco Umbrella counterpart. In 2022, Cisco announced that while OpenDNS will remain free for home use (with limited features), old OpenDNS MSP programs reached end-of-life.

What is the pricing for Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco Umbrella does not have public-facing pricing. Learn more about Cisco Umbrella Pricing, Licensing, and Package FAQs.

What challenges do Cisco Umbrella customers encounter?

When a customer signs up for Cisco Umbrella, they face a slew of challenges. The first, and the one we hear repeatedly from our customers and prospects, is the total lack of support for the product. When you have an issue with Cisco Umbrella, it can be nearly impossible to get a hold of someone. This leads to impacted Cisco customers without any DNS security for large chunks of time.

The Cisco UI/UX is not intuitive and takes a more technical individual to implement the setup. This means you might need senior technical resources to take on a deployment they don’t have time for, as opposed to passing it over to a more junior engineer. Not to mention, within the Cisco Umbrella UI it is difficult to find things and some things are in multiple places, making it even harder to maintain a sense of where things are and where you can update them.

Other common Cisco challenges customers endure are long contracts that lock you in, no investment or innovation on the product (the UI has not evolved very much since its OpenDNS days), and a slower anycast network.

What is the biggest difference between DNSFilter and Cisco Umbrella?

The biggest difference between DNSFilter and Cisco Umbrella is the efficacy of DNSFilter's domain classification, which relies on our ML Webshrinker. Further, DNSFilter has an approachable company culture, and customers are involved in our decision making process of which features to implement. We have a transparent pricing model displayed on our public website and our support team is incredibly responsive compared to Cisco's. DNSFilter also offers more whitelabeling options for MSPs.

What does it mean to me that Cisco Umbrella has end-of-lifed their roaming clients?

As of April 2025, Cisco Umbrella Roaming Clients officially reached end of life. Customers who haven’t already migrated will need to migrate to the Umbrella Roaming module in Cisco Secure Client—or risk operating unsupported clients with no access to updates, no compatibility guarantees with new operating systems, and increased security risks. Read more about this change and how to migrate to DNSFilter.

DNSFilter vs Cisco Umbrella

ArcLight Group Case Study

“We'd tried the Cisco Umbrella way and they just were not overly friendly to the MSP market at the time. They had some really bad or unwieldy requirements on limits and so on, and we were just trying to get started. So, we shopped around, we tried them for a while and then we landed on DNSFilter.”

Healthcare System: Cisco Umbrella vs DNSFilter

DNSFilter vs Cisco Umbrella

Healthcare System Switched to DNSFilter from Cisco Umbrella

"The impending renewal of their Cisco Umbrella contract, due roughly two months from the initial contact, created a sense of urgency to find an alternative solution that could meet their needs more cost-effectively."

DNSFilter vs Cisco Umbrella

Oetker Collection Relies on DNSFilter to Stop Threats in Real Time

"After deciding his team couldn’t move forward with Cisco Umbrella, Florian turned to Reddit to read discussions about web filtering solutions. He found other IT professionals mentioning DNSFilter. He started his free trial, and shortly after signed."

DNS Filtration that just works

I haven't found anything I don't like about DNSFilter. I've never had issues with it or needed to troubleshoot it. It just works and it listens to me. Customer support is extremely responsive, gives quick and concise answers with little to no time wasted.

Does what the product claims; good value for the price

We use the product for handling business URL filtering. The DNS look ups are fast and the management of allow/deny lists is pretty easy. Reporting is useful. There are some cool features for granular management at an individual machine level. The price is quite reasonable for what it does. It's pretty much set and forget.

Its raining malware but I wont reach for my Umbrella, but DNS Filter instead

The ease of use and overall ability to block applications, limit search engines, block a number of threat types and add good sites to a whitelist or block a known bad site in a blacklist. Reporting is also the BEST I have seen as it is so easy to find good and bad blocks...allowing you to easily and daily to monitor and update lists as needed.

DNSFilter - A Fast, Easy, And Reliable DNS Filtering Solution

Setup and deployment were super easy. Support has been excellent. Overall, the product is a nice addition to our security stack, blocking threats at the DNS level.

DNSFilter Is A No Brainer. It Cost Less Than Its Competitors And Easy To Setup.

DNSFilter is easy to setup and configure. I was up and running in a day. It works on all OS platforms and doesn't interfere with our end users doing their jobs.

Compliance Level DNS Filtering

Provides client level installation for DNS filtering when outside of the building. Complements EndPoint and Firewall web filtering by processing all DNS requests through an active filter to help stop malware distribution. We can distribute the product uniquely using RMM to each customer and management and controls are customer unique.

Great platform, even greater customer support

It is incredibly easy to get started. The interface is very user-friendly. If you have any issues, the customer support chat is handy. You get connected to an actual human, not just a chatbot.

Fast to deploy, protect an entire network in a minute

Good web filtering for all our locations, we also deployed the roaming client to cover our users when they are outside the company network. It is also our first level of defense if there is a threat as the domain might be blocked before our EPP / EDR detect something.

Easy-to-use DNS security solution

I love how DNSFilter is constantly being updated with new features and security updates. This gives me peace of mind knowing that my business is always protected from the latest online threats.

Finally, a DNS filter that actually works!

DNSFilter has proven to be one of the easiest solutions to implement. The intuitive interface makes on-going administration a breeze. We're happy to know our internet security stack is protected and the accurate categorization of traffic has not interfered with approved business functions.

DNSFilter vs
Cisco Umbrella

Escape High Costs and Complex Tools with DNSFilter, a Cisco Umbrella Alternative

Get the Full Cisco Umbrella Head-to-Head Report