How does pricing for OpenDNS and WebTitan DNS Filter work?
This article discusses Cisco OpenDNS pricing compared to WebTitan pricing and also covers OpenDNS MSP Pricing.
Cisco announced the end-of-sale and end-of-life dates for the Managed Service Provider (MSP) contracts with OpenDNS, effective July 31, 2022. This is a crossroads for MSPs and an opportunity to evaluate what aspects should be considered when choosing an alternative to Cisco OpenDNS.
To support MSPs impacted, TitanHQ is offering a free, fully supported trial for our DNS security solution.
OpenDNS price and cost ranges from $19.95/year for the VIP Home subscription to $20/user for up to 5 users as of 2023. OpenDNS also has a free version, but it’s built for a consumer’s home rather than for enterprises.
OpenDNS is marketed for home users and retired support for MSPs, so managed service providers need a cost-effective but effective way to secure enterprise businesses. WebTitan is built for MSPs and enterprises that require more advanced content filtering and DNS-based security.
WebTitan DNS filter from TitanHQ is the main OpenDNS alternative and, from a pricing perspective, is much better value with AI-driven threat intelligence and superb support.
Cisco OpenDNS is built for home users, and it no longer has an MSP version as of 2022. Because Cisco OpenDNS targets individuals, MSPs, and enterprise clients are persuaded to use Cisco Umbrella. Cisco Umbrella is built for enterprise clients and MSPs overseeing several businesses simultaneously. The current 2023 OpenDNS pricing comparison that we are seeing when talking to prospective customers is as follows:
OpenDNS Price versus WebTitan Web Filter
OpenDNS per unit Cost: $19.95/year
WebTitan per unit cost: $1.42 (SAVE $1.28c)
This price is per user per month, with 100 users for the same essential feature set and threat intelligence.
The monthly costs for 100 users would be as follows:
OpenDNS Pricing: $270 per month
WebTitan Pricing: $142 per month (SAVE $128 per month)
For a managed service provider who is providing DNS filtering for 3,000 endpoints, the monthly pricing differential would be as follows:
OpenDNS Cost: $8,100 per month
WebTitan Cost: $4,260 per month (SAVE $3,840 per month)
TitanHQ will negotiate pricing at this level.
For a managed service provider who is providing DNS filtering for 3,000 endpoints the yearly pricing differential would be as follows:
Opendns Cost: $97,200
WebTitan Cost: $51,120
| Pricing Comparison | OpenDNS | WebTitan |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per user | $19.95/year | $1.42/month |
| Monthly cost for 100 users | $270 | $142 |
| Monthly cost for MSPs (3,000 endpoints) | $8,100 | $4,260 |
| Yearly cost for MSPs (3,000 endpoints) | $97,200 | $51,120 |
WebTitan is a DNS filtering and DNS security solution providing AI driven threat protection and advanced web content controls. DNS Filtering is one of the best ways to protect your users against online threats such as phishing and malware.
DNS filtering serves two main purposes providing IT teams with visibility into online activities by staff and allows restrictions to be placed on online activities to prevent certain types of website from being accessed.
WebTitan DNS filter is the main OpenDNS alternative.
Unlock WebTitan's Potential: WebTitan offers top-notch DNS security and content filtering at a fraction of the cost.
Start Free TrialOpenDNS offers pricing ranging from $19.95/year for home subscriptions to $20/user for up to 5 users. On the other hand, WebTitan pricing starts at $1.42 per user per month for a comparable feature set, providing substantial cost savings.
OpenDNS caters more to home users and has phased out its MSP version, directing enterprise clients toward Cisco Umbrella. In contrast, WebTitan, built for MSPs and enterprises, offers a much more cost-effective solution, starting at $1.42 per user per month compared to OpenDNS's $19.95/year.
OpenDNS amounts to $270 per month for 100 users, whereas WebTitan costs $142 per month, resulting in significant savings of $128 per month.
For MSPs managing 3,000 endpoints, OpenDNS would cost $8,100 per month, while WebTitan comes in at $4,260 per month, resulting in substantial monthly savings of $3,840.
Annually, OpenDNS for 3,000 endpoints would cost $97,200, while WebTitan’s yearly cost would be $51,120, showcasing a significant cost difference.
WebTitan provides DNS filtering and security solutions with AI-driven threat protection, advanced web content controls, and the ability to restrict certain online activities. It offers superior threat intelligence and content filtering capabilities.
DNS filtering, as offered by WebTitan, not only protects against online threats like phishing and malware but also provides visibility into online activities, allowing IT teams to enforce restrictions on specific types of websites, enhancing security measures.
WebTitan offers robust DNS security and content filtering at a significantly lower cost compared to OpenDNS, providing businesses with substantial savings while ensuring advanced threat protection and comprehensive web content controls.
The current OpenDNS pricing comparison that we are seeing when talking to prospective customers is as follows:
WebTitan DNS filter offers flexible pricing options based on the customer's preferences - we can price based on AP's, IP's or locations - the customer decides.
We don't operate monthly minimums - we'll grow and shrink with our customers.
OpenDNS offers complex pricing tiers and charges additionally for support and forces customers to accommodate their overly complex buying process.
OpenDNS Pricing Versus WebTitan Pricing
Our pricing is entirely transparent. You can see all of our WebTitan web filter pricing completely openly displayed here.
Compare OpenDNS pricing to WebTitan DNS Filter pricing right here.
You can start a FREE trial of WebTitan here.
We also have a detailed comparison between OpenDNS and webtitan the OpenDNS alternative here.
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3. FamilyGuard Wi-Fi solution provider selecting WebTitan over OpenDNS
OpenDNS and WebTitan DNS filter are the two leading DNS based web filters. So what does OpenDNS really do. It identifies and blocks access to malicious links and websites via the DNS layer. So before a user can access a malicious site and before it hits your network OpenDNS and webtitan block the site. This has become one of the key methods of protecting businesses against malware and ransomware.
There has been some great OpenDNS Pricing conversations on social media including on reddit, G2 Crowd and Spiceworks. Some of the highlights are below:
1. OpenDNS Pricing and Plans
It's $38.00 per user, per year... minimum 10 users. No drop in pricing up to 90 users, and then it ask you to request a quote. That's for their small business "professional" package, which looks to be the lowest level. This is too expensive for the 5-6 people in my office, as that's twice as much per person as our virus scan subscription, which offers a lot of the same protection. Plus we'd be paying for 4 users we don't actually have.I would have used the basic free OpenDNS, but their ToS says: "You acknowledge that the OpenDNS Home Internet Security Services (e.g. OpenDNS Home, OpenDNS Home VIP and OpenDNS FamilyShield) are for your personal home use only."
2. G2 Crowd commented that:
Small-Business: $$$ Opendns was 9% more expensive than the avg. DNS Security product
Mid-Market: $$$$ Opendns pricing was 26% more expensive than the avg. DNS Security product
3. OpenDNS Plans & Pricing
This post is about OpenDNS Home, and I mentioned OpenDNS Family Shield. There are 2 other OpenDNS plans for home/residential users: OpenDNS Home VIP and OpenDNS Umbrella Prosumer. Here are a few details and prices from OpenDNS:
• OpenDNS Family Shield (free): “Preconfigured to block adult content”
• OpenDNS Home (free): “Our classic, free service with customizable filtering and basic protection”
• OpenDNS Home VIP ($19.95/yr): “OpenDNS Home package, plus one year of usage stats & optional white-list mode”
• OpenDNS Umbrella Prosumer ($20/user): “Protects personal laptops anywhere they go via our Windows or Mac agents”
4. OpenDNS MSP Pricing
Has anybody had recent MSP pricing from OpenDNS?
Pricing is all in USD right now. It starts at $2.70/user per month, but there is a referral discount for people who come from r/msp so make sure when you speak with us you mention that.
Umbrella for MSPs (the MSP product) has all of the different deployment options of professional and insights, so you'll absolutely have access to AD integration if you work with us as a MSP.
I am in talks with them during our evaluation and they have tiered pricing based upon the number of endpoints you have managed, that is why it is not published. Of course the more agents under management the cheaper per seat.
5. OpenDNS MSP Alternatives?
Are their any alternatives to OpenDNS?
I really like the idea of "problems never being resolved" so to speak. They want something like $2/user/mo. Especially for my Police/Sheriff were i have 9pc and 40 users this is crazy. Once they clarified that it is indeed per user, i just ended the communication.
EDIT: OpenDNS Umbrella has both per-user and per-device available. All this said, Opendns and platforms like it, are going to have to be the future of content control and CIPA compliance, for the simple reason that from a pedagogical perspective, learning within the physical school network is no longer a guarantee or in some cases, even a desire; and because we are subject to HIPAA etc we must find "defendable" products to accommodate those education goals. Umbrella is among the best for it, even with its shortcomings.
I used to be an opendns fan, but their adult categories have been updated as they should be. So, both umbrella and the free OpenDNS tend to miss a lot of sites that should be blocked:
We have OpenDNS and we love it, but it’s more of a black hole dns not really a content filer, I would not use that for it to be CIPA compliant
I would not use that for it to be CIPA compliant
Care to elaborate on this? I ask because from my experience, most schools have a higher are than what CIPA asks for, and for us, we don’t need much.
Also, Cisco has a whole page or two dedicated to showing how Umbrella meets CIPA compliance.
We use it, it works good for what the price. It does its job at keeping CIPA compliant, and the added security features are just icing on the cake.
As far as "cisco all the things" we run it on a mixed adtran/ubiquity network, with a FortiGate firewall. It works, the VAs and Windows/mac clients work just fine, and the newly released Chromebook client is a start, but they have a way to go with it.
We switched to OpenDNS from Lightspeed this school year and it has its ups and downs.
The downs are the fact that it isn’t very good at giving you detailed information about what the kids are searching. Most Content filtering allows you to see what their searching on google, Bing, etc. with umbrella you only see that they visited google. Another big problem we ran into is the fact that you can only block or allow the top-level domain. For instance, if i wanted block a certain google site someone created i must block sites.google.com vice sites.google.com/personal webpage. Not sure if you have chrome books or not but umbrella's new Chromebook agent isn’t nearly as good as lightspeeds was. You cannot block by a certain group in google it is by user. So, you can’t have a different policy for Elementary vs HS.
The positives are that it is 2nd to none when it comes to blocking out any kind of malware sites. We got hit with a viruses last year and we used it to quickly identify all affected PC's that were calling out to malicious domains which is one of the reasons we made the switch.
If i had to do it all over again i would probably still go toward a web filter that was more geared to the k12 environment vs umbrella.
Some clever MSP's have stacked 5/6 products with OpenDNS/webtitan and sell it as a security bundle - their loyal, good customers trust them that this is what they need, they hit the new customers with the FUD messaging.
If you are getting anyway technical in your sales pitch here, then you are losing the battle.
I'll leave you with one thought when you are thinking about how to sell this - what do 99% of people care about 99% of the time??
Here's how we differentiate what we do compared to OpenDNS: WebTitan Cloud Versus ODNS
It should just be part of your per-seat pricing, you shouldn't need to pitch it individually. At most you should say "securing your systems is important to us so we put in place multiple layers of protection including DNS, firewall, antivirus, etc." Decision makers are like us when we go to the butcher, I don't care what knife the butcher uses, I just care that he gets me a nice cut so I can have my steak. Similarly, they don't care what tool you are using, they care about outcomes so sell the outcomes.
LIke others, we don't sell it, it's included in the MSP agreement. When we rolled it out, we just did a $1/mo. price increase and explained it as enhanced security given the daily new threats that are emerging. We made more on the cost savings from not fighting those fires.
All good answers here so far! I spend quite a bit of time on this subject with our partners - I’m out of town until the 27th but happy to discuss once I’m back.
If you haven’t already, ask your rep for the partner enablement pack. We’ve tried to do some of this for you and I’ve seen some folks create impressive collateral based on the framework we provide.
I always tell my customers, its URL filtering and stops their users from getting to known bad links that come in through email or adds on websites. Its protection for when they click on bad things...and it’s not if the click on them, it’s when!
Like a few have said, we don't sell it. We include it. We force the client to use it as a part of our stack. Where are hired to provide business continuity, that includes taking measures to prevent infections and phishing attacks. We decide what is best for the client based on our testing and decades of experience.
$2 is less than 2% of our per-user pricing. Well worth it IMHO.
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