We compared Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Azure Firewall based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
The Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is praised for its strong security measures, effective threat prevention, and reliable customer support, offering scalability and flexible pricing. On the other hand, Azure Firewall is commended for its seamless integration with Azure services, robust security capabilities, and excellent customer service from Microsoft, but could benefit from enhancements in logging and reporting capabilities, rule customization, and user interface improvements.
Features: According to user feedback, the most valuable features of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series are its strong security measures, comprehensive firewall capabilities, effective threat prevention, and seamless integration with existing infrastructure. In contrast, Azure Firewall is praised for its robust security capabilities, seamless integration with other Azure services, comprehensive monitoring and logging functionality, user-friendly interface, and excellent support from Microsoft.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is considered to be affordable and straightforward, with flexible licensing options. In comparison, Azure Firewall also offers a reasonable pricing and straightforward setup cost, with a hassle-free licensing process., The Palo Alto Networks VM-Series offers increased network security, threat prevention, and visibility, along with scalability and flexibility. Users have praised its comprehensive features and responsive support. On the other hand, Azure Firewall enhances ROI by offering cost-effectiveness, improved security measures, and reliable performance.
Room for Improvement: Palo Alto Networks VM-Series could improve its user interface, documentation, performance, integration with third-party apps, supported platforms, and reporting capabilities. Azure Firewall could benefit from advanced logging and reporting, better customization options, and an improved user interface.
Deployment and customer support: The user reviews for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series show a varying duration for establishing a new tech solution, with some users spending three months on deployment and an additional week on setup. On the other hand, the reviews for Azure Firewall also mention a varying duration, with some users spending three months on deployment and an additional week on setup. However, for users who required a week for both deployment and setup, it can be assumed that these terms refer to the same period and should not be considered separately., The customer service for the Palo Alto Networks VM-Series product has been highly rated and reliable, with customers speaking highly of the professional, prompt, and knowledgeable assistance provided. On the other hand, Azure Firewall also receives positive responses for its excellent customer service, with users appreciating the prompt and helpful assistance provided by the Azure team. Both products ensure users feel supported and valued.
The summary above is based on 27 interviews we conducted recently with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Azure Firewall users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The interface is very good."
"FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"The simplicity of the product is great. It's very easy to use, which is a compliment we get all the time in terms of feedback."
"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"The initial setup is straightforward; Azure Firewall does not have a complex implementation process. It is very simple; you just need to enable the service within Azure. It does not require any maintenance because it is managed by Microsoft, that is, it is a fully managed service."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is the control over the network permissions and the network."
"One of the notable advantages of Azure Firewall is its user-friendly interface, which closely resembles or shares similarities with other Azure components."
"The solution can autoscale."
"It provided ease of maintenance. If a new firewall was needed, we only had to run the pipelines for this. So, the maintenance was very easy."
"You already can scale it if you put it in Auto Scaling groups. If you put it in a load balancer, it should already be able to scale."
"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."
"It is an easy-to-scale product."
"Embedding it into my application development lifecycle prevents data loss and business disruption, allowing the adoption to operate at the speed of my AWS Cloud."
"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. "
"The VM-Series scalability is fast and easy to implement, improving our security posture as our Azure network grows."
"They now know the details about their network traffic that they did not know before: Applications that they are using and some application they did not know they were using."
"The product provides more visibility into our traffic."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."
"It is a cloud service, but the lending speed for each region is not always the same. For example, in China, the speed is slow. They need to think about how to make sure that the service pace or speed is always the same in all regions. It would be a great improvement if they can provide the same pace worldwide."
"The threat intelligence part could be better. I don't see why our customers have to get an additional solution with Azure Firewall. It would be great if they made it on par with Palo Alto."
"It would be much easier if the on-premises, firewall rules, had some kind of export-import possibility in place, which is not the case right now."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"The product needs improvement in their Secure Access Service Edge."
"They made only a halfhearted attempt to put in DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
"It is not very easy to scale up the solution."
"The DLP functionality or data classification can be improved in the solution's basic firewalling."
"The interface is all Java-based. I would prefer an HTML5 interface."
"Palo Alto is that it is really bad when it comes to technical support."
"The one issue that I didn't like is that the SNMP integration with interfaces didn't record the interface counters."
"All areas need improvement: manufacturing, education, financial, etc."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Check Point NGFW and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Juniper SRX Series Firewall and Huawei NGFW. See our Azure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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