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.
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"Fortinet FortiGate protects against internet-based threats, both internal and external. It is scalable, stable, easy to use, and easy to install."
"The security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"Real Auto VPN with load balancer without needing a public IP. It is simple and functional."
"Meraki MX offers advanced filtration options, plus it behaves like a router and a firewall at the same time."
"It has the most advanced security features, for example, layer 3 and layer 7 firewall capabilities and the end team and IPS protection. It also has IPS, and it has very good functioning of cloning services. You don't actually have to touch the device. If you have multiple companies in different countries, you don't really require this device to be touched. You can get it delivered directly to any office of a country, and then you can simply put your configuration over the cloud. It's very simplified and easy to manage. It gives a very good granular visibility about your network. Earlier, a lot of things were lacking in the network. We were unable to identify where the problem was, but after implementing Meraki MX, we are able to dig down and identify where is the problem. We can easily and quickly identify the sources and the root causes of the issues."
"I love the simplicity of Meraki MX — specifically, the simplicity of the dashboard."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki MX is I can manage the solution from anywhere remotely, I can throttle bandwidth, and create all rules. Additionally, it is secure for our customers."
"It has a helpful feature for database troubleshooting issues."
"MX is easy to manage, configure and install."
"You can use your web browser to do the configuration which is easier than Cisco CLI transcripts."
"I like all the functions and features."
"I like the remote access and URL filtering features that are available on global products."
"Palo Alto offers better Layer 7 protection than competing solutions by Cisco and Fortinet. I also like the VPN client more. The interface is simple, so administrators can deploy and configure it much faster than other firewalls"
"They have a good system operator in the firewalls and it provides many tools that they can use to protect their networks."
"I have found it to be reliable and very easy to use. I haven't really encountered many problems with it because its documentation is clear and readily available on their website."
"The ease of use and the ease of configuration of our policies are the most valuable features."
"It helps the organization function better by virtue of cleaner and more predictive Internet access and usage being conducted by the employees and constituents of the company. It helps ensure that they have a stronger security posture. It is preventive medicine If you have DNS Security in place. You will be happy you had it. If you don't have it, you may never need it. However, if you did need it, and didn't have it, you will wish that you did. It is one of those things, like insurance."
"Good functionality and features."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"The pricing could always be better."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"The Wi-Fi controller needs a lot of improvement."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"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."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"The configuration options for firewall and IPS have limitations."
"The problem is that the two licenses do not currently integrate. We have to create separate companies and do an interconnection."
"You can only have one tunnel in the whole infrastructure — one tunnel with one device."
"Could possibly use deeper configurations."
"Expensive licensing and firewall stops immediately working if the license is not renewed at expiration date."
"In the next release, because the security is pretty basic, I think they could include additional security features."
"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."
"Meraki MX can come across as an expensive solution."
"I would like to see it provide us with intelligent information from the data that it captures, within the same cost."
"Generating reports is not so easy."
"Palo Alto can do a little bit better when it comes to the User-ID part. I've been facing problems related to double authentication. You have a computer user, but you also have a VPN user, and when you do a single sign-on to another page, these logs can sometimes generate a problem notification. It doesn't happen a lot, but in some networks, it could be a problem. It would be very helpful to have the ability to restrict the connections that you can have in your VPN. For example, if you have the credentials, you can connect with the same user account from different computers or devices. If you have the domain information, you can connect from different devices. That's a problem that they need to address and resolve. They should ensure that at any moment, only one person is connected through a specific user account."
"The performance of the Panorama interface needs to be improved. It tends to be very sluggish at times."
"Palo Alto has introduced new features in their next-generation firewall, such as SD-WAN. However, the technique of SD-WAN implementation is not easy to understand. It is not easy to deploy at this moment. Maybe, in the future, they can improve the process and how the administrators, partners, or support team can easily deploy this SD-WAN solution on their next-generation firewall. The SD-WAN solution from Fortinet is easy to do. It does not take more than five or 10 minutes. When we talk about Palo Alto, it takes extra effort to implement SD-WAN."
"The only downside of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, in my opinion, is the relatively higher price compared to Cisco FortiGate. This is especially noticeable when deploying basic configurations and considering the cost of licenses."
"Having a better pricing model would make this product more competitive, and more affordable for our customers."
"The price of the solution is very high."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 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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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.