We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and SonicWall NSa 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 most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"It is useful for protecting and segregating the internal networks from the internet. Most of our customers also use the FortiGate client to connect to their offices by using the VPN client, and of course, they usually activate the antivirus, deep inspection, and intrusion prevention services. They are also using it for web filtering and implementing various policies dealing with forwardings, NAT, etc."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is very easy to use."
"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."
"It has the ability to create Palo Alto VM-series using software."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its stability, ease of implementation, ease of operation, and security."
"We use the product on our Azure network firewalls."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series's most valuable feature is the visibility of the environment."
"It scales linearly with load and no issues."
"The firewall feature is most valuable since my work is to analyze if there is any potential attack. SonicWall NSa gives the perfect analysis."
"I really like the performance; there are no delays and no latency, which is a unique quality in firewalls nowadays."
"The solution can scale."
"Easy to setup and implement"
"We have not found any vulnerabilities since implementing the solution."
"Sometimes I have some queries, and the SonicWall support team resolves my queries."
"SonicWall NS has a lot of valuable features. One of the best SonicWall NSa features is the ability to collect mini routers and get only one user connection."
"Easy to scale solution that provides advanced threat protection. Their technical support is very good, very knowledgeable, and easy to reach."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"The current licensing model can be a sore point as we're paying for features we're not fully utilizing."
"We don't know how it will scale once we start putting more load on it."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a complex product to work with."
"The product could be better in terms of performance than one of its competitors."
"It is not very easy to scale up the solution."
"We have run into some issues with scaling and limitations associated with some of the configurations."
"The solution needs to improve its visibility. It's not straightforward to use. Understanding the policies, authorizations, and initializing features requires careful review. The product needs to offer proper training."
"At the beginning of the implementation, we had some difficulties with the scripts, but Palo Alto Networks support together with a local partner finally fixed it."
"We're not particularly fond of the way it generally performs. We are finding ourselves rebooting often. There are freeze-ups and that kind of thing. The stability needs to improve exponentially."
"The product could expand its throughput capacity."
"The cloud services may be in need of some improvement."
"The solution can be a bit expensive."
"The product must enable integration with endpoint protection tools."
"Competitors provide SSL encryption licenses for free, whereas SonicWall only provides two licenses by default, but you have to pay for the rest of the licenses."
"We still get phishing emails that manage to come through from time to time."
"The filter settings are confusing and overly complicated. The user interface can be improved."
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. 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 NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". 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 NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Netgate pfSense. See our Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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