Amazon WorkSpaces vs. Cisco Duo

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon WorkSpaces
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Amazon WorkSpaces is a managed, secure cloud desktop service. Amazon WorkSpaces removes the complexity in managing hardware inventory, OS versions and patches, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
$21
per month
Cisco Duo
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Duo is a two-factor authentication system (2FA), acquired by Cisco in October 2018. It provides single sign-on (SSO) and endpoint visibility, as well as access controls and policy controlled adaptive authentication.
$3
per month per user
Pricing
Amazon WorkSpacesCisco Duo
Editions & Modules
Starting Price
$21.00
per month
Maximum Price
$140.00
per month
Duo Essentials
$3
per month per user
Duo Advantage
$6
per month per user
Duo Premier
$9
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon WorkSpacesCisco Duo
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon WorkSpacesCisco Duo
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Amazon WorkSpacesCisco Duo
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
Amazon WorkSpacesCisco Duo
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(7 ratings)
9.5
(158 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(9 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.9
(75 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(8 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.9
(89 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(9 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(8 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon WorkSpacesCisco Duo
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
With a substantial free tier, AWS is a solution for fast, reliable and secure access to tools and workflows for any project. AWS is still the most intimidating cloud solution to approach. While there is no shortage to power and solutions, it is not for the faint of heart. It is easy to get lost while using AWS though the solution is there. Amazon WorkSpaces (VDI) requires an IT manager with experience deploying applications and building databases. Comparably, Parallels is a much easier UI to navigate, along with many open source and free options.
Read full review
Cisco
For secure access to apps and business data, I recommend Cisco Duo. It offers SSO, MFA, and Passwordless access, ensuring teams can securely access business data. It is easy to customize and comes with top-tier security features. It protects business data, apps, and users.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Quick, clean access to the VDI images.
  • Easy provisioning of images to use based on multiple criteria.
  • Integrating with our other products (AV/AM, productivity, etc.).
Read full review
Cisco
  • We use Cisco Duo with different type of device and application, but we never face any difficulties to integrate Cisco Duo with any of them.
  • We integrated Cisco Duo with some of our active directory and some of the OS are quite old but Cisco Duo works totally fine with them.
  • The end user application is very easy to use. We never had any complain from non tech team members of having trouble of using Cisco Duo.
  • There are several authentication methods available rather than passcode. I personally like the push notification which is always on time and quite fast.
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Copy and paste does not work well
  • The performance is degraded during the day being slow at the end of the journey
  • Some user interface issues displaying the page
  • Sometimes when I type a word a letter is pasted many [times]
Read full review
Cisco
  • Should have device to device connection ability whereas internet is not met.
  • Changes of device can be sorted and easily made using a second email address or any other identification method.
  • Troubleshooting should be easy to sort out. One time, a Duo admin deleted the authentication group, and some employees were not getting push notifications. It was very hard to find out the cause. Duo should have some troubleshooting finder.
  • Sometimes push notifications are delayed, and the code does not work. At that time, we need to enroll the device again. Not sure why it happens. Duo should give reasons for the error.
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cisco
There are a lot of competing solutions on the market; however, Duo "just works", and there is little to no learning curve for the new members to be acclimated to it. As long as that continues I see it as the preferred option moving forward
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Usability
Amazon AWS
For its Primary purpose in our organization, providing developers and testers a clean, isolated and configurable environments which saves hours. The usability is nearly perfect. Usability is only suffering when user is into more intensive task like any kind of graphic works. At that time user is not experiencing the smoothness like a local machine
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Cisco
La interfaz es intuitiva y fácil de navegar, lo que permite a los usuarios administrar sus dispositivos y acceder a las políticas sin problemas. La integración con las aplicaciones SSO y SaaS facilita aún más el proceso de acceso, mejorando la experiencia del usuario.
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cisco
In the last 5+ years we've been using Duo, there may have been 1 outage that impacted us. We do receive periodic notifications of issues but, for the most part, they impact carriers or functionality that we either don't use, or do not care about.
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Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cisco
We do not see any degradation of performance of the protected applications. There are occasional lags in receiving the push but no show stooppers.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
AWS support in general is pretty good, and WorkSpaces is no exception. We haven't had too much need for support but on the occasion we have, they've been quick to respond and helpful. Our issues have been resolved rapidly.
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Cisco
I have not needed direct support for Cisco Secure Access by Duo as I have not had a problem with it, but I have full confidence that the support is outstanding. It is now a core component of the corporate technology stack - a problem would mean a serious degradation in the ability of the company to function.
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In-Person Training
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cisco
There was no in person training but checking the box was the only way I could complete all of the questions.
Read full review
Online Training
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cisco
This was not organized training but the videos that Duo provides to teach you how to install a particular integration are top notch.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Documentation could have been better. I had to piece together different KB/admin guides to make certain things work and I also had to use third-party guides to get bits of information that were missing from Cisco Duo documentation. Support was also engaged multiple times to figure out an issue and after some back and forth it was usually determined that the information I needed was hidden somewhere else and had no direct correlation with the document that was linked from the platform.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Cisco AnyConnect is a VPN client and using a VPN can reduce the internet speed. It is not quite reliable as workspaces. Cisco AnyConnect is not at all optimised for linux machines. They suffer a lot from crashing and loss of internet speed. Workspaces works quite well even on linux machines
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Cisco
Ultimately we ended up going with Cisco Duo because we are a Cisco shop. All of our networking infrastructure, our phones, our wireless environment is Cisco based. It made logical sense to stay with a product that we already have a line of support with. With a smaller support / tech group we depend on outside Cisco support. That support is already here for us, so we stayed with a Cisco product.
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Scalability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cisco
So far, the only limits we've encountered were tied to our imagination. Duo's strong list of supported integrations is amazing.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Faster project deliverables
  • Security of our database
  • Have complete control over virtual networking
  • Vds Lagging issues at times due to heavy usage
Read full review
Cisco
  • It's one of those things that only costs money in the sense of you have to convince a leadership team to spend money to save money, right? Like a compromise is far more expensive than duo paying for duo. So specifically it's really just about trying to prevent problems. And so while it costs money and we don't have a direct return on investment that we can point out immediately, I would still always advocate for it just because it keeps security. Paying for security is cheaper than getting compromised essentially.
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