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 initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"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 most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"I am happy with the technical support for the solution. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"It is very easy to use and manage. It is also very easy to scale."
"Meraki MX offers advanced filtration options, plus it behaves like a router and a firewall at the same time."
"They have very good technical support and I have relied heavily on them."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"Real Auto VPN with load balancer without needing a public IP. It is simple and functional."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"It is easy to manage, which is one of the most important things for us. It is also flexible, stable, and scalable."
"I can enable the features I want and configure the policies based on the user and not all users and network traffic, making firewall management much easier."
"Some of the valuable features in this solution are traffic monitoring, GUI functionality, and it very easy to troubleshoot if there is any problem that happens."
"It is very scalable."
"Operationally, it is easier, and the manageability and their security features are good."
"One of the things I really like about it is that we have the same features and functions available on the entry-level device (PA-220), as do large corporations with much more costly appliances."
"It's quite nice. It's very user-friendly, powerful, and there are barely any bugs."
"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."
"Ability to log each and every application."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"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."
"Could possibly use deeper configurations."
"The whole Cisco Meraki range requires easier access for cameras. For a security center, it would be helpful to have easier access to cameras through the portal. Its licensing cost could also be better."
"The configuration options for firewall and IPS have limitations."
"I need more UTM protection security features."
"The only stability issue is in Content Filtering. Sometimes we need to report these types of issues to Cisco support."
"Meraki has some hidden features and information that is only privy to their engineers. If that information became available to us, then it would improve our ease of management, and we would be able to make certain adjustments instead of having to go to them."
"The product doesn't support route summarization and BGP dynamic routing protocol."
"As far as what needs to be improved — nothing really comes to mind. It does what we need it to do."
"Its stability can be better. Their technical response from the support side can also be better."
"The level of control and granularity in terms of rule customization could be enhanced. However, compared to our previous solution, Palo Alto provides much better drill-down capabilities."
"The whole performance takes a long time. It takes a long time to configure."
"Personally, I feel that their dashboards for reporting and things like that need some improvement."
"We're working with the entry-level appliances, so I don't know what the higher-end ones are like, however, on the entry-level models I would say commit speeds need to be improved."
"The support could be improved."
"We would like to see improvement in the web interface for this solution, so that it can handle updates without manual intervention to put the data in order."
"This solution cannot be implemented on-premises; it's only a cloud solution. The price is high as well."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 58 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.
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.