Why are MSPs choosing WebTitan over Cisco Umbrella?
Key Function Comparison
Cisco Umbrella Pricing and Cisco Umbrella Packages
WebTitan offers flexible pricing based on the customer’s preferences – we can price based on AP’s, IP’s or locations – the customer decides.Read more WebTitan Web Filter reviews.
- We don't operate monthly minimums - we'll grow and shrink with our customers
- OpenDNS Cisco Umbrella offers complex pricing tiers and charges additionally for support and forces customers to accommodate their overly complex buying process.
- You can see all of our WebTitan web filter pricing completely openly displayed on this page - our pricing is entirely transparent. Compare OpenDNS Cisco Umbrella pricing to WebTitan right here
Differences in Support levels between Cisco Umbrella and WebTitan
Support from TitanHQ is hands-on and world-class including contact with a qualified engineer through the entire process.
– this includes full support during the trial period, migration help and on-going free technical support when you become a customer.OpenDNS Cisco Umbrella does not offer you this. With TitanHQ there are no additional support costs or add on pricing
– all features, upgrades, and support are included in the price quoted. TitanHQ are very hands-on when it comes to support.
We have had several customers migrate to WebTitan because of poor post-sales support from Cisco Umbrella.
WebTitan is Easy to use and manage
Cisco Umbrella cost is an issue. With WebTitan there are No minimums, No DNS request limits, No extra support costs, No unanswered support calls. No add on costs for roaming clients. Once you are a WebTitan customer, you are a customer. There are No tiers or costly minimums just a solid product and great service. As a business, we will grow and shrink with you. Can Cisco Umbrella say the same?
Data Compliance - Where exactly is your data with OpenDNS Cisco Umbrella?
WebTitan can guarantee that your data stays in your region. OpenDNS Cisco Umbrella is a shared AnyCast system – there is no guarantee that your data is staying within your region.
WebTitan Cloud is regionalized so ALL info is guaranteed to stay within the same region (US/EU/ANZ etc.) Our private clouds are located in your data centre or in AWS locally.
Twice as much custom reporting with WebTitan than OpenDNS Cisco Umbrella
WebTitan offers twice as many custom reports as OpenDNS Cisco Umbrella. Custom reports allow for flexible reporting based on an organization’s specific requirements. When Active Directory integration is in place WebTitan offers an additional 10 reports as well as the ability to add filters to the pre-canned reports.
WebTitan reporting is also renowned for its speed and real-time functionality. All of this reporting is available via our extensive API.
Google Safe Search problems with OpenDNS
With WebTitan you can enable safe search for Google and Bing with just one click. When SafeSearch is on, it helps block explicit images, videos, and websites from Google Search results. This is an integral part of web filtering. Why block content in the search results if users can see the content in images and videos. Because of the Anycast system used by OpenDNS, this on/off safe search feature is not possible, thus allowing pornographic and inappropriate imagery to display even when content is being filtered.
OpenDNS customers wishing to apply safe search must do so themselves at the router level. This is a serious limitation of the Open DNS Anycast system. This has been a bugbear with Open DNS Cisco Umbrella for a long time and is a limitation of the anycast system. Users are reporting jumping through hoops to get this set up with every path leading to a dead end. With WebTitan implementing safe search is simple, fast and effective.
WebTitan Extensive API Calls
WebTitan’s extensive API set facilitates simple integration for users. The OpenDNS API is not as extensive with less customization possible. WebTitan Cloud allows deep integration making ‘Cloud to Cloud’ integration straightforward. Our backend expertise brought through to your front end provides you a single pane of glass view.
Benefits of an API driven architecture:
- Easy - Backend functionality is split from front-end allowing easy back-end integration.
- Scalability - You can add more clients as you wish and all call the same API.
- You save time by removing the need to repeat laborious tasks and increase organizational efficiency.
Email Alerts
With WebTitan you have the ability to set up email alerts to be notified if a user hits a page/domain that’s blocked (for security reasons). An administrative alert email is immediately sent to the admin account or another designated user in the account. OpenDNS umbrella does not offer this option.
Post-Sales Support from Open DNS Cisco Umbrella
We routinely receive great feedback (98% customer satisfaction) for our post-sales support. Hands-on contact with a qualified and experienced engineer at all stages is an important factor in this high rating. Customers we’ve migrated from OpenDNS see this as a key factor in moving to WebTitan.
Active Directory Integration
OpenDNS Active Directory integration and multiple policies run off a policy ranking system, Web Titan Cloud runs off a group ranking system. From customer feedback, our ranking system is a lot more user-friendly and easier to manage.
Your Own Private Web Filtering Cloud versus OpenDNS Anycast
TitanHQ has always been MSP focused when it comes to features and product development. This web filter was built by MSP’s for MSP’s. WebTitan can be deployed as a private cloud with all of your customers on your private cloud. With WebTitan there are lots of customizations options, the solution can be fully white labeled. OpenDNS is a shared platform with limited customization options.
- Your own private dedicated cloud.
- Allows for extensive customization.
- Allows for deep integration with your interface.
- Unlimited capacity, from small MSPs sent to the Telco deployments.
- Extensive white labeling.
The Cost of Free
What happens when a free service and business service mix? The paying customers unwittingly end up subsiding the free service. For the people using the free service this is fantastic however this means the paying customer is invariably overpaying. OpenDNS provides free DNS resolutions for millions and millions of systems. Who pays for this? Well, business customers actually. Are you overpaying and subsiding the free users of OpenDNS?
WebTitan customers only ever pay for what they use.
Additional Notes:
- OpenDNS charges per remote agent deployed, with WebTitan Cloud all remote agents are included.
- WebTltan Pricing models are scalable for MSPs.
- Flexible Pricing options, AP's, IP's, per location.
Freshness of Threat Intelligence is much more important than size
Bigger isn’t always better especially in the world of malicious threat intelligence. WebTitans’ dynamic, lean and fast DNS filtering platform has been proving very popular amongst legacy OpenDNS/Cisco Umbrella customers.
In the evolving world of threat intelligence bigger isn’t necessarily better. Freshness of threat intelligence is much more important than size.
Determining the efficacy of a malicious database does not equate directly to superior protection. The web is made up of close to two billion sites and significantly more full-path URLs. It is also continuously evolving and importantly the threat vectors evolve and change constantly. Certain changes are particularly dangerous; compromised websites, new malicious phishing sites, new iterations of malware or new ransomware etc.
Because domains and URLs on the internet are continuously changing any premium web filtering solution that stores a classification must “revisit” those destinations on a regular basis in order to stay fresh. It’s nearly as important as the finding of the original URL. This freshness is particularly important for malicious categories which often blink on and off to fulfill a specific, malicious purpose. Heavy, bloated databases can find this process unwieldy, slow and difficult.
Scary fact: 1 in 13 web requests leads to malware and roughly 20% of malicious domains are very new and used around 1 week after they are registered. Here is where regular active threat detection and freshness and agility are the key benefits. In 2016, approximately 84% of phishing sites existed for less than 24 hours, with an average life cycle of under 15 hours. In 2019, the average lifespan of a phishing site was under 40 minutes. The median time for the first user to click on a phishing URL is less than four minutes. The increased adoption of single-use phishing URLs slashes the time to live down to zero seconds from first user access.
The fleeting lifespan of phishing URLs is driving an urgent need for accelerated phishing detection and protection. This is where you need a fast, lean solution rather than the traditional bloated, super sized databases. Local threat databases must be updated with phishing detections in a matter of seconds, to adequately protect users. This type of zero-second phishing protection requires an entirely different approach to detection and protection – the WebTitan approach.
Regular fast, revisits of malicious classifications do two things:
- They ensure the malicious database is an active representation of current REAL TIME threats on the web
- they prevent database bloating. It’s easy to find lists of malicious threats or feeds and include all of them into one super-duper master malicious database. Unless you have the AI-based and crowd-sourced systems to revisit and re-analyze at scale and with high accuracy that database quickly becomes obsolete.
Cisco Umbrella’s defense when challenged with the speed, dynamism and cost efficiencies of WebTitan has been to roll out the old line that “more” means better web protection. Unfortunately, that is lazy and dated thinking – you’re picking Andy Ruiz instead of AJ. To reiterate the freshness of the database is the key.The key takeaway here is that a larger database does not equate to higher levels of web protection. Accuracy including freshness of the database, how recently analysis and classifications were made, as well as high coverage (which WebTitan accomplishes through crowd-sourcing) are the most important success criteria of a malicious database for your threat intelligence.
Summary
The size of a malicious database is not an accurate measurement of the level of protection or value it provides. The number of malicious URLs that threaten users and devices on the internet will vary significantly from day-to-day, month-to-month, and so on. The same is true for the number of malicious status changes that occur every day (a safe site becomes malicious, or a malicious site is cleaned and becomes safe). Hence, the importance of having a system that continuously revisits and re-assesses the malicious status of identified malicious URLs on a regular basis. The value and protection from a malicious database is derived from a high level of coverage (of all URLs), freshness (how recently they were reviewed), and accuracy of the classification systems.
