We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls 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 CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"It is easy to use and performs very well."
"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"The most valuable feature is advanced URL filtering. Its prevention capabilities and DNS security are also valuable. It pinpoints any suspicious activities and also prevents the users from doing certain things."
"It's a next-generation firewall and it's pretty stable. You don't have to worry about if you restart it for some maintenance. It will just come back."
"The most important part of this solution is its reliability, as it just works without any fancy features."
"This solution not only provides better security than flat VLAN segments but allows easy movement through the lifecycle of the server."
"The feature that I like the most is its IPS model, the WildFire model. I really like how the whole threat protection model functions, including the vulnerability and anti-spyware aspects. That is really awesome."
"One of the simple features I like about Palo Alto firewalls is that it's extremely easy to find out what's happening in the network. The reporting is phenomenal, and it's easy to find which threats have been detected and what traffic is going through the box. When a customer notices something is wrong, you can quickly check the amount of traffic going through the firewall around that time. If there is anything out of the ordinary, you can decide it needs to be investigated further."
"The most valuable features include the different security zones and the ability to identify applications not only by port numbers but by the applications themselves... And with the single-pass architecture, it provides a good trade-off between security and network performance. It provides good security and good network throughput."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is pre-sales and post-sales because of the support and relationship building."
"The most valuable features to us are the security services which is a critical factor in our deployment. Today we need to have all the security services enabled because firewalls are not enough."
"Content filtering reduces the load on the available bandwidth and restricts employees from using distracting websites on the job, which leads to more productive hours."
"Sometimes I have some queries, and the SonicWall support team resolves my queries."
"SonicWall NSa's most valuable features are the ease of configuration and the GUI."
"What I like best about SonicWall NSa is the security it offers compared to other solutions in the market. Its reduction rate is also better than others."
"This product is user-friendly and easy to configure."
"The stability is better than other products."
"Support is usually good when it comes to helping with issues."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"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."
"I would like to see better integration with IoT technologies."
"When we looked at it originally, we needed to host the Panorama environment ourselves. I would prefer it if we could take this as a service. It might be that it is available, but for some reason we didn't choose it. The downsides of hosting are that we need to feed and water the machines. We are trying to move to a more SaaS environment where we have less things in our data centers, whether they be in our cloud data centers or physical data centers, which can reduce our physical data center footprint."
"The data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities need to be beefed up."
"Its stability can be better. Their technical response from the support side can also be better."
"In the last three years at least, they have been lagging behind their competitors. The main issue is the support that we can get... You have to wait for them to get back to you and sometimes it's random. And the biggest problem I have is that you have to wait hours on the line when you're calling them to get a hold of the next available engineer."
"The solution would benefit from having a dashboard."
"The solution is very expensive. There are cheaper options on the market."
"You can do zero-trust networking with them, but it's not easy."
"In terms of improvement, features like App Control do not work properly"
"The product must enable integration with endpoint protection tools."
"Customer support is severely lacking with very slow response times."
"The ongoing service fees are high."
"I feel that the SSL VPN client software needs a lot of improvement."
"I'd like to see integration with Microsoft 365 for authentication."
"It is not scalable. If your enterprise is growing hard then you have to buy another, bigger product. Maybe if you use it virtually it is more scalable."
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 NSa is ranked 20th in Firewalls with 77 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. 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 NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX and Sophos XG, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Check Point NGFW. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. SonicWall NSa 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.