We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and SonicWall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls offer advanced features such as embedded machine learning, real-time attack prevention, and evasion blocking. SonicWall TZ stands out for its unified threat management, VPN capabilities, web security, simplicity, stability, and performance.
Palo Alto has the potential for enhancement in areas such as customization, machine learning capabilities, troubleshooting tools, documentation, VPN availability, and security functions. SonicWall TZ could benefit from improvements in throughput, DNS hosting, cloud management, user interface, integration, marketing, reporting, ports, and support.
Service and Support: Some customers appreciate the knowledgeable support team and prompt issue resolution provided by Palo Alto Networks. However, there are challenges in reaching support and problems with the ticketing system. SonicWall TZ's customer service is mixed. Some find technical support to be satisfactory, while others face delays and language barriers.
Ease of Deployment: Users find the initial setup for both Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and SonicWall TZ to be straightforward, easy, and intuitive. They do not require complex procedures and can be completed within a relatively short time frame. Training materials are readily available for Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, making it user-friendly.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is often seen as higher compared to other options, whereas opinions on the pricing of SonicWall TZ are varied. Some users perceive SonicWall TZ as a cost-effective choice for medium-sized businesses, while others believe it to be expensive and recommend improved pricing.
ROI: Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide a comprehensive solution that enhances productivity and diminishes the need for extra resources, ultimately leading to enhanced visibility, reporting, and protection. It effectively blocks malicious behavior and safeguards against data breaches, contributing to its value. SonicWall TZ has demonstrated a favorable return on investment through its efficient attack prevention capabilities, although upgrading to newer models is advisable for optimal performance.
Comparison Results: Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls emerges as the preferred choice over SonicWall TZ. Users find the initial setup of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be straightforward and user-friendly. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls offers advanced security features such as embedded machine learning, application identification, and DNS security, which are highly valued by users.
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"FortiGate improved our security. It's one of the best hardware firewalls."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"The first time I came across these firewalls, what surprised me the most was their web user interface. It is complete and gives you a lot of information. You can do 80% of the things related to your network and firewall through the web UI. In some of the other devices, the UI is not as complete. App-ID is also very valuable in customer networks. When you're seeing a lot of traffic in your network, you can see in your web UI which users have the applications that are consuming the most bandwidth. You have a broad context, which is very good."
"The solution is user-friendly. It's secure and easy to understand your network visibility, control the network, and prevent attacks."
"Protection from a single packet and ease of making security rules."
"You can easily integrate it with Active Directory, and you can use the GlobalProtect VPN for internal and external purposes. The URL Filtering is also clear and the application filtering is a plus. The application filtering is much better when you compare it to FortiGate or other firewall vendors."
"I like the sandbox feature, and it's very good. It kills each malware deployment in the sense of signatures within five minutes. So, we can secure our network and infrastructure very well within the stipulated time. The WildFire functionality is very good because a few files are also getting blocked. It's critical as malware attacks are also getting ignored, and the logging is very well maintained in this firewall. The most valuable solutions in this field are application-based firewalls. That is the main criteria of the firewall and functionality. We can get all the logs related to this and each and every packet. I like that the firewall is working as an application. The application-based entity we have deployed is well maintained and working very well. We were able to find lots of vulnerabilities when we deployed it, but we could not disclose all. But there were vulnerabilities we could block by updating the firewall and taking actions on clientside machines. So, we got to know that we have lots of vulnerabilities inside the organization too, and we took lots of steps and resolved the number of vulnerabilities. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is an all-in-one solution. It provides every entity log, which is a very good functionality of this firewall. It gives every packet and aspect that the firewall is performing through its logs, and it does it very well. This firewall's unified platform helped eliminate multiple network security tools. If anyone uses P2P sites, cryptocurrency websites, or any illegal sites, we can block it easily. It gives us a proper alert for these kinds of sites, and it properly secures our network. Monitoring is the best thing we are doing here, and we can block this kind of vulnerability as soon as it comes to us."
"It is pretty important to have embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention, because all these different attacks and threats are constantly evolving. So, you want to have something beyond just hard pass rules. You want it to learn as it is going along. Its machine learning seems pretty good. It seems like it is catching quite a few things."
"We have found the DPI ability to understand web applications and build access rules on web application categories first to be a great feature."
"The most significant benefit is threat protection. Anti-malware uses signatures, so dynamic analyzers like WildFire are the best way to protect the company. It is a firewall based on application control, user ID, and security policy. We can use it based on user and application ID without a stateless firewall or TCPIP ports."
"The feature with SonicWall that I have found most valuable is that all the models have the same interface. We don't need to learn different interfaces in the smaller or bigger models."
"SonicWall TZ think it's a good, solid, and stable product."
"The solution is priced fairly and competitively."
"It is very stable with no issues. The firewall's been up for the past 35 days non-stop. It's performed great. It has performed as it should perform."
"Good VPN connection."
"Once it's configured properly, the solution is unbreakable."
"The VPN is quite useful for us, as well as the ATP."
"From our point of view, the most valuable feature was the ease of deployment."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more storage in the hardware for log data."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"The reports are very basic."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"The cost of the device is very high."
"When you delete and add a new rule, because of the one hundred rule limit, if the new rule has an ID that is greater than one hundred, even though you have fewer than that, it will not work."
"The first level of support will usually do nothing for you. If you're an IT company, you're not looking for level one support. You need to escalate. Other vendors have a direct support line for enterprise clients, but not Palo Alto."
"The scalability compared to other products is not good. You need to change the box whenever you want your number of connection sessions to increase."
"Generating reports is not so easy."
"Technical support could be faster."
"We would like to see the external dynamic list for this solution improved. The current version does not automatically block malicious IP addresses, which would be very useful."
"The analysis of the ITS ID by Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls could be improved."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"The solution's pricing could be made cheaper."
"There can be an improvement in analysis and reporting. We need enhancement on the reporting side."
"The dashboard needs to be improved."
"User interface could be improved."
"The market seems to be going to a cloud-supported, new generation of firewall products. I think that's probably going to be important to us, the next time around."
"It needs more robust self-help documentation along with examples and things to watch out for."
"The price could be better for us in Bolivia."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 161 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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