We performed a comparison between Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and SonicWall SMA based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Enterprise Infrastructure VPN solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It's an ideal gateway solution for small and medium businesses, i.e., around 300 devices can be easily handled."
"The solution has good performance."
"It protects all app traffic so that users can gain access to all apps. Unlike other solutions that only work from ports 80 and 443, which are predominantly for web traffic, Prisma Access covers all protocols and works on all traffic patterns... The most sophisticated attacks can arise from sources that are not behind 80/443."
"Its hands-off security and the fact that we don't have to maintain it are the most valuable features."
"The features I find most valuable is WildFire, user integration, and the basic technology features."
"Monitoring is the most valuable feature because we can easily monitor all kinds of stuff coming over the network. We can check the dashboard and work accordingly."
"I like it because it's very easy to use. You install the client and you have to know your gateway, but that's something we give to our users. Beyond that, it takes about three seconds to train them on how to use it. And it just works well. That's great for us because it means less administrative time."
"The Autonomous Digital Experience Management (ADEM) offered by Palo Alto is a good reporting tool. It gives insights into how things are going within the network. It takes all the data from the users' endpoints and does an analysis, and it suggests changes as well."
"There is a system for monitoring the traffic. You can monitor the traffic of the connected people and point out any issues on the connection part."
"It is geographically dispersed, and it sits on top of Google and AWS platforms. Therefore, you don't face the standard issues, such as latency or bandwidth issues, that you usually face in the case of on-prem data centers."
"It is faster than other security options when using remote connections."
"This solution has many options for remote desktop and access."
"Blocklisting and allowlisting are the most beneficial features for network security."
"The performance is good."
"The management and the dashboard are the solution's most valuable features."
"SonicWall SMA allows us to provide CML-based access to any user."
"I like the load balancing capability."
"Secure Mobile Access (SMA) is easy to configure and the deployment is straightforward. However, this is mostly because of the AWS setup."
"There must be a more easy-to-use GUI."
"It would be nice to manage Prisma Access through the cloud instead of through Panorama. You can use the cloud version to monitor Prisma Access, but it doesn't have all the features yet, and it's not 100% done."
"The tools' scalability is subject to some limitations when done on-premise due to the need for additional licenses. However, in other scenarios, increasing scalability involves expanding infrastructure to accommodate more third-party VPN access. It is scalable as long as you pay the money. Also, it needs to improve security."
"It applies commits to the firewalls slowly. There isn't an API you can use for anything. We've previously had trouble with the egress IP addresses though we expressed to engineering that those mustn't change. They changed several times without warning, causing a lot of headaches."
"If you compare Prisma SaaS against other products, such as Cloud Log, it's a little bit tricky to understand, but it offers different functionality that other products don't have. From a user usability point of view, you need some training for this product, as an admin, you need a couple of demos."
"There can be some latency issues with the solution that should be improved."
"The initial support team is not very good. Most of the time, I have found that they are one to three years experienced only. They don't have network expertise. They know about Palo Alto products but don't know how to troubleshoot the issues. We have to guide them most of the time to troubleshoot correctly since their approach is not developed."
"Prisma's integration between operational technology and IT should be more seamless. Right now, it requires additional setup and maintenance."
"It is a managed firewall. When you run into issues and have to troubleshoot, there is a fair amount of restriction. You run into a couple of restrictions where you don't have any visibility on what is happening on the Palo Alto managed infrastructure, and you need to get on a call to get technical assistance from Palo Alto's technical support. You have to get them to work with you to fix the problem. I would definitely like them to work on the visibility into what happens inside Palo Alto's infrastructure. It is not about getting our hands onto their infrastructure to do troubleshooting or fixing problems; it is just about getting more visibility. This will help us in guiding technical support folks to the area where they need to work."
"SonicWall's reporting isn't good. Reports should be part of a data plan. The login mechanism should be improved. It would be helpful if the client could use an agent to log in. An agent-server model would improve the performance of the RDB, which consumes a lot of bandwidth."
"I'd like to see the product maybe polish keyboards in Bookmark."
"The product's technical support services could be improved."
"User interface could be improved."
"SonicWall SMA is difficult to use and it does not provide easy access to different parts of the network."
"The product itself is very good, but Dell needs to work on product visibility in their advertising."
"The solution has 2FA, it will generate a token and send it to an email, but multifactor authentication is not available. I would suggest that there should be MFA integration and provided with the appliance."
"The only thing that they could try to improve is the support for enterprise customers. Normally enterprises and SMBs can create a ticket, but for enterprises, SonicWall SMA needs to provide a global view, and this is what's currently missing. It's not even a question of timing. It's a question of the global vision because currently, it's lacking. They concentrate on the topic, but not on the means and not on the global picture. In most cases, there's something wrong with the integration of SonicWall SMA with other products, so that could also be improved."
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Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 5th in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN with 59 reviews while SonicWall SMA is ranked 18th in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN with 14 reviews. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.2, while SonicWall SMA is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks writes "Integration with Palo Alto platforms such as Cortex Data Lake and Autofocus gives us visibility into our attack surface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall SMA writes "It allows us to provide CML-based access to any user, but the reporting could be better". Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Netskope , Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Internet Access and Prisma SD-WAN, whereas SonicWall SMA is most compared with Fortinet FortiClient, Cisco SD-WAN, SonicWall Netextender and Ivanti Connect Secure. See our Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs. SonicWall SMA report.
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