We performed a comparison between Prisma SD-WAN and Steelhead based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two WAN Edge solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."When it comes to supporting large, complex, network architectures, it's a very simple architecture. The main component is the fabric. It's very easy to troubleshoot if there is an issue happening in the underlying network."
"Prisma's analytics provide a lot of valuable data. I like the internet health chart that shows latency, dropped packets, MOS for data quality, etc. It also runs a continuous speed test in the background. I've used it multiple times to troubleshoot internet connections when the service provider has attempted to claim nothing is wrong with the circuit. It gives me data to send them showing we're not getting the speed we should, or there is constant packet loss."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Prisma SD-WAN is intuitive. We have a better idea of the different tools we can use and jump between the menus quickly."
"Prisma supports all of the applications we're currently using."
"It is flexible to use the internet connection via local breakouts without going to data centers."
"The gateway is available on the cloud which allows you access from anywhere and still connects to your home gateway."
"If the MPLS goes down, there is a really smooth transition for a branch site to take traffic over the Internet. It will advertise the routes of that site in a jiffy."
"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."
"The connectivity to speed is the valuable feature."
"Scalable data referencing is a great feature."
"SteelHead works from the application. I use it to optimize traffic from Amazon. It is mainly used for customers who need to increase the traffic to 33K. For other users, it has been more of an operation."
"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."
"TCP optimization... caches a particular TCP connection and the next time a user uses that connection he will reach the destination easily."
"It is very easy to install the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."
"We are incorporating their zone-based firewalls. Prisma SD-WAN has limited documentation on how it manipulates traffic, e.g., how it is interacting with TCP and UDP. We recently had some traffic that was black holing. We literally had to do packet captures to see that the new zone-based firewall, which runs on top of Prisma SD-WAN, was causing issues."
"Sometimes, during the product's initial setup phase, bypass pair or couple ports don't come up normally, and it requires an hour and a half to troubleshoot to reset the box from Prisma SD-WAN to factory default."
"Customer support is our biggest pain point. The quality of support has gone down a little since we initially deployed this product. I don't know if this is due to turnover at Palo Alto or a lack of training. It is now taking one or two days to get an initial response that says, "Hey, we've looked into this, can you pull this data for us?" In the past, we'd immediately get a response."
"Prisma SD-WAN's technical support should be improved."
"Event correlation and analysis capabilities do not help minimize the number of alarms from a single event. That is the problem. We are getting a lot of incidents, and there is some issue with the correlation. That is still a drawback."
"The only con is the pricing because it's more premium."
"I would also like to see improvement in the product training for customers. Palo Alto has not initiated very much training but they have to do so because this is a new product. If you have experience in a legacy environment, and you are moving to Prisma SD-WAN, you don't have a training framework. That is one of the disadvantages."
"Prisma could be a little cheaper."
"If we load a primary firewall, the secondary firewall usually handles all the active connections, but in Riverbed, this isn't the case. We lose all the active connections at the moment of failure."
"One area for improvement is related to monitoring and visibility."
"They should include a network switch in a future release."
"Steelhead's handling of encrypted traffic could be improved because it requires some complex configuration to optimize encrypted traffic, especially when working with Microsoft protocols for mail servers and VPN services"
"The product should offer more integration capabilities."
"I would like to see improvement in the solution’s configuration and protocol aspects. We have got some configurations that are not set. I would also like to simplify the call detection of some protocols."
"The application response time of the solution can be improved."
"The solution needs to have alert notifications."
Prisma SD-WAN is ranked 7th in WAN Edge with 11 reviews while Steelhead is ranked 15th in WAN Edge with 22 reviews. Prisma SD-WAN is rated 8.6, while Steelhead is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Prisma SD-WAN writes "A stable tool that offers a good uptime and ensures a return on investment". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Steelhead writes "Exceptionally stable and reliable but costly". Prisma SD-WAN is most compared with Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Cisco SD-WAN, Meraki SD-WAN and Fortinet FortiGate, whereas Steelhead is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform, WAAS, Citrix SD-WAN and Vcinity UltimateX RadicalX. See our Prisma SD-WAN vs. Steelhead report.
See our list of best WAN Edge vendors.
We monitor all WAN Edge 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.