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.
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"It's an easy solution to set up."
"The technical support is great."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"Simple to manage."
"The initial setup for me was straightforward."
"They have very good technical support and I have relied heavily on them."
"The most valuable feature is that we didn't have any problems with Meraki MX."
"Site to Site VPN: The device can establish a VPN connection to multiple sites in a mesh environment in seconds, and without complex VPN knowledge."
"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 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."
"The trackability is most valuable. When a port is open for a protocol, such as port 443 for HTTPS, it can look inside the traffic and identify or verify the applications that are using the port, which was previously not possible with traditional firewalls."
"The WildFire reporting and Cortex XDR platform have huge infrastructures in the cloud that secures the network against threats. So, we have the potential on the system, specifically for users, where we take care of this since the user is the most dangerous. We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis, rather than a daily or weekly update like I used to with different AV vendors. These features can detect viruses and malware more quickly, which is super important."
"I like the navigation of the general Panorama solution. I can easily navigate around and get to the thing I need. I'm not wasting time trying to find something."
"I found Palo Alto NG firewalls more intuitive compared to other products. I value the capability to identify a cloud solution."
"I like that Palo Alto does a good job of keeping the firewall updated with the latest threat signatures."
"The solution is very stable."
"The solution is scalable"
"This is arguably the best security protection that you can buy."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"The Web-filter in this solution is not very good."
"The Wi-Fi controller needs a lot of improvement."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"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."
"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."
"The problem is that the two licenses do not currently integrate. We have to create separate companies and do an interconnection."
"We feel that Cisco provides smaller features, with fewer possibilities versus other solutions out there."
"You cannot use switching behaviors as you see on the Meraki switch."
"What I would like to see in the next version is to have more interfaces for WAN links."
"MX can only be managed via a web interface, but I'm accustomed to using a CLI or a graphical interface. I would also like to see more reporting features. It doesn't provide enough information for me to know precisely about some clients."
"When we do API integrations with Meraki, they have always been hard as well as tedious to build. The data that we want out of the API integrations has been only recently available. Six months ago, it was hard to get someone to build something correctly or useful with Meraki APIs. Recently, they have made more data available on the API, but it is just a start. They need to do more."
"The price is high and has room for improvement."
"The customer-facing side needs to be improved in terms of the engagement and involvement of support staff."
"They can work on the price. They are a little bit expensive, and not all customers are able to afford this solution. Taking into consideration that there is huge competition in the market and there are multiple firewall companies that are much cheaper than them and offer almost the same features, it would be good to improve the price."
"The analysis of the ITS ID by Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls could be improved."
"In the future, I would like to see more OTP features."
"I wish that the Palos had better system logging for the hardware itself."
"I would like them to bring in some features that would encourage traffic shaping or bandwidth routing, like other UTM firewalls, because the solution should be capable of limiting the bandwidth for rules."
"Maybe they could add some tools and more competing services, like servers, but that would increase the cost of the solution."
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 161 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.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
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.