We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and Palo Alto Networks based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both products received high marks from users. Meraki MX has a slight edge in this comparison. According to its reviewers, it is easier to deploy and more reasonably priced than Palo Alto Networks.
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"The security on offer is very good."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"It has a helpful feature for database troubleshooting issues."
"In a week, we can make new policy and view what all our users did."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the Meraki dashboard, which is a single pane of glass."
"When you try to create an IP or when you have an alert about when a website is banned, these features are helpful."
"Meraki makes it easy to be secure and know where the holes are to fix them. We have been fixing anything that we have ever found for 20 years. We keep up-to-date with firmware upgrades. We just try to stay on top of everything for security, like maintaining updates and getting rid of old systems. I feel like we're on top of it."
"The features we have found most valuable are the firewall and the monitoring tools."
"It is very fast to implement."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"Ability to log each and every application."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities."
"The solution is user-friendly. It's secure and easy to understand your network visibility, control the network, and prevent attacks."
"I like the sandbox feature, and it's very good. It kills each malware deployment in the sense of signatures within five minutes. So, we can secure our network and infrastructure very well within the stipulated time. The WildFire functionality is very good because a few files are also getting blocked. It's critical as malware attacks are also getting ignored, and the logging is very well maintained in this firewall. The most valuable solutions in this field are application-based firewalls. That is the main criteria of the firewall and functionality. We can get all the logs related to this and each and every packet. I like that the firewall is working as an application. The application-based entity we have deployed is well maintained and working very well. We were able to find lots of vulnerabilities when we deployed it, but we could not disclose all. But there were vulnerabilities we could block by updating the firewall and taking actions on clientside machines. So, we got to know that we have lots of vulnerabilities inside the organization too, and we took lots of steps and resolved the number of vulnerabilities. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is an all-in-one solution. It provides every entity log, which is a very good functionality of this firewall. It gives every packet and aspect that the firewall is performing through its logs, and it does it very well. This firewall's unified platform helped eliminate multiple network security tools. If anyone uses P2P sites, cryptocurrency websites, or any illegal sites, we can block it easily. It gives us a proper alert for these kinds of sites, and it properly secures our network. Monitoring is the best thing we are doing here, and we can block this kind of vulnerability as soon as it comes to us."
"I like all the functions and features."
"Palo Alto NGFW provides a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities, which is very useful. This prevents us from having to go to a lot of different systems, and in some cases, many different systems in many different regions, because we are a global company with 60 remote offices around the world in 30 different countries. Its centralized platform is really what we look for in all services, whether it be security or otherwise."
"We have found the application control to be the most valuable feature. Also, Layer 7, because all other products are working up to the maximum capacity. But Palo Alto is benefiting us, especially in application control management. We are able to differentiate between Oracle traffic and SQL traffic."
"This solution not only provides better security than flat VLAN segments but allows easy movement through the lifecycle of the server."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"The captive portal could be improved."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"You can only have one tunnel in the whole infrastructure — one tunnel with one device."
"Right now, you can postpone the update but eventually, if you don't do the update, it will install the updates automatically for you and that's something that is not working for me."
"Meraki MX firewalls are great for small to medium-sized businesses, but other solutions are better for enterprise-sized companies."
"We have been having a problem with the VPN. When the energy goes down and is back again, the VPN link doesn't get established. We have to manually turn off the modems and other pieces of equipment and manually establish the VPN. It has been around one month since we have been having this problem, and we don't have enough support from Meraki to solve the problem."
"The problem is that the two licenses do not currently integrate. We have to create separate companies and do an interconnection."
"FortiGate is cheaper than Meraki. Even the license renewal is less than Meraki."
"Management can be improved in Meraki MX."
"They need to improve the link between Meraki and Active Directory."
"Need improvement with their logs, especially the command line interface."
"Overall it is good. It is reliable and easy to understand. However, the monitoring feature could be improved."
"The solution's VPN, called GlobalProtect, could be improved as I've had a few issues with that."
"Once in a while, they have new features being released that can be buggy. My criticism is more general to all sorts of network or security devices. In general, everybody is releasing less-tested software. Then, it usually ends up that the first few customers who get a new release need to end up troubleshooting it."
"In my opinion, the training provided is satisfactory, but there is certainly room for improvement. It would be great to have more comprehensive training at a lower cost, or even for free."
"The advanced manual protection needs to be improved a little bit because they used to make a cloud manual analysis for the cloud."
"It's not so easy to scale out your security capabilities."
"The pricing could be improved upon."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 58 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Meraki MX is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ, Netgate pfSense and SonicWall NSa, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Meraki MX vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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