We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and SonicWall NSv based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"Using Palo Alto Networks Panorama, we were able to deploy a single point of management and visualization of the firewall infrastructure in cloud, on-premise and integrated with Azure to automate scale up. Its security features, i.e. anti-malware, threat prevention, URL Filtering, VPN, and antivirus are the most valuable. The ID-User integrated with AD and 2FA features are also very useful to provide secure access to servers and some users in the company. "
"I have not actually called their support line, because we have a direct contact to a senior engineer in the company for any issues that we handle with them. I will say they are very responsive, and they do give you the information you need when you need it."
"The most effective features of the solution for threat prevention are Layer 7 inspection, SSL decryption, IPS, and the web filtering profile."
"Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view."
"It provides complete security posture from end-to-end. This has given us better visibility into what our security aspects are."
"The most valuable feature is the Posture Assessment."
"It gives us the ease that we are secure. We have set up the proper things that help make our data safe."
"App-ID and User-ID have repeatedly shown value in securing business critical systems."
"One of the standout features of SonicWall is its simplicity in creating and managing rules."
"We purchased the AGSS Bundle (Advanced Gateway Security Suite) for the security services, such as antivirus, intrusion prevention system, and anti-spyware botnet GUI."
"The customization of firewall rules provides great value to our customers as it allows them to lock things up in the way that they desire. When it is used for internal access, with a VPN in place for remote workers, the firewalling services provided by Azure, such as the default services that can be turned on, are applied. However, the use of a software-based virtual firewall gives us greater flexibility in introducing security controls for customers who are publishing applications that are publicly accessible from the public cloud. This virtual firewall provides an additional layer of security and more extensive security control options to ensure the protection of our customers' valuable information and assets."
"SonicWall NSV is easy to use, and you can use it to manage the logs easily."
"The product helps improve our security."
"The security of this system is fantastic, including the IPS and IDS."
"The solution has no additional charges and no restrictions on the number of users."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"They've become quite expensive."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"Palo Alto is that it is really bad when it comes to technical support."
"The user-friendliness of the UI could be improved."
"The product could be better in terms of performance than one of its competitors."
"I would like to see a more thorough QA process. We have had some difficulties from bugs in releases."
"There are various reports that come with the box or with the VMware, but you can only run them daily."
"We don't know how it will scale once we start putting more load on it."
"It would be good if the common features work consistently in physical and virtual environments. There was an integration issue in the virtual deployment where it didn't report the interface counters, and we had to upgrade to the latest version, whereas the same thing has been working in the physical deployment for ages now. It seems that it was because of Azure. We were using VMware before, and we didn't have any such issues. We do see such small issues where we expect things to work, but they don't because of some incompatibilities. There also seems to be a limitation on how to do high availability in a virtualized environment. All features should be consistently available in physical and virtual environments. It is not always easy to integrate Palo Alto in the network management system. We would like to be able to compare two network management systems. They can maybe allow monitoring an interface through the GUI to create a reference or do a baseline check about whether your network monitoring system is actually giving you the correct traffic figures. You need traffic figures to be able to recognize the trends and plan the capacity."
"I would like a way to do everything programmatically, or be able to copy the configs from different prices at different levels."
"SonicWall NSV's initial setup is complicated and requires good knowledge."
"It has been brought to our attention by a few customers that they are dissatisfied with the fact that our virtualized service is only offered as a subscription option on the cloud. However, it is worth noting that many other similar services are also offered through a subscription model on the cloud and not through perpetual licensing. It is unclear why these customers would have an issue with this subscription service when so many others are utilizing similar methods."
"An area that could be improved is the export and import settings functionality."
"SonicWall NSV's SSL VPN could increase its number of users to 100-plus users."
"I would like to see the reporting opened up and have several more opportunities for automatic reports."
"There are limitations to bandwidth management."
"We face some challenges when we upgrade the solution."
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews while SonicWall NSv is ranked 35th in Firewalls with 7 reviews. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6, while SonicWall NSv is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSv writes "Easy to use, stable, and the security features work well". Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas SonicWall NSv is most compared with Azure Firewall, SonicWall NSa, SonicWall TZ and Fortinet FortiGate-VM. See our Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. SonicWall NSv report.
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