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Ably vs Hillstone Networks Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall comparison

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Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Ably
Ranking in AWS Marketplace
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Hillstone Networks Hillston...
Ranking in AWS Marketplace
460th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Uday Nagpure  - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Manager at Zensar Technologies
Reduced manual work and built reliable real-time collaboration with serverless messaging
I love Ably for its advanced pub/sub messaging capabilities, which help us with messaging Delta Compression, allowing us to send only changes from previous messages instead of entire payloads every time. For example, if I have to say 'hi', instead of sending the whole payload, it only sends the change in the current payload, reducing bandwidth consumption and enabling high-frequency data streaming. This major change has made our clients really happy as they receive notifications and messages without latency. Additionally, if a client goes offline, Ably stores messages in history for up to 72 hours, allowing clients to query history and catch up on missed events, ensuring complete stream continuity. It also supports multi-protocol, using WebSockets and gracefully falling back to server-sent events and long polling as needed, including support for MQTT and IoT devices along with pub/sub control for easy migration.I appreciate the serverless integration that has the integrated native web hook, instantly triggering serverless functions such as AWS Lambda and Azure Function when specific real-time events occur. It also allows Kafka Connector for seamless ingestion of messages from Kafka topics to stream them out to millions of users in milliseconds.
Centralized security has protected hybrid workloads and provides deep visibility into cloud traffic
Cloud-native automation and IaC: Terraform support, auto-scaling templates, and API maturity lag behind Palo Alto VM-Series and FortiGate-VM. Dynamically scaling in public cloud requires more manual effort. Third-party integrations and ecosystem: fewer native connectors with SIEM/SOAR platforms, CSPM, and third-party tools compared to market leaders. Documentation and training material: technical documentation and community resources (forums, tutorials, KB) are more limited, which lengthens the learning curve for new teams. SASE/SSE capabilities: the integrated SASE/ZTNA offering is less mature compared to the convergence already provided by Fortinet or Palo Alto. Centralized multi-instance management: managing large fleets of virtual appliances could be smoother; centralized management (HSM) works, but some users would like more granularity and automation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We experience vast improvements across many areas with Ably; when users connect bank accounts, we previously had to poll repeatedly, which is now replaced by Ably's real-time infrastructure that maintains a persistent back-end connection, significantly reducing the need for infrastructure management and API load, resulting in average bank connection display times decreasing from eight to twelve seconds down to one to two seconds, and with persistent back-end connections reducing API calls, we achieve a lower operational load, seeing an impressive reduction of thirty thousand to forty thousand calls monthly."
"Ably has positively impacted our organization by providing a good return on investment by avoiding the labor cost of building and maintaining a custom WebSocket server."
"Ably has a big capacity to stream data all over the world, has higher reliability and a 99.99% uptime, offers robust security guarantees and ease of integration, and saved at least 80% of the cost that would have required more developers and more time for integration testing and development."
"My most-liked feature is its highly reliable real-time messaging capacity."
"Ably has improved our organization by enhancing real-time communication capabilities and providing reliable data delivery."
"Ably's API integration is intuitive; it definitely improved our efficiency, and we saw faster user interaction and around a 20% reduction in latency during peak times, which improved user experience as well."
"On balance, Hillstone CloudEdge is a solid and highly competitive solution within the virtual NGFW firewall segment."
"The most valuable aspect is the combination of traditional firewall functionality with cloud deployment flexibility."
"CloudEdge has helped us apply consistent security controls to our AWS workloads with our on-premises workloads."
"Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual Firewall provides advanced security for cloud and virtualized environments through next-generation firewall (NGFW) capabilities, including application visibility and control, intrusion prevention (IPS), antivirus protection, VPN services, threat intelligence, and advanced attack defense mechanisms."
 

Cons

"Ably can be improved in several areas."
"It falls just short of a perfect ten only because full twenty-four-hour phone or live chat escalation is heavily gated behind their highest enterprise pricing tiers."
"Overall, Ably appears strong for managed real-time operations, but could improve areas such as pricing predictability."
"The setup cost is more expensive with similar features."
"Additional automation resources for AWS would also be helpful."
"Cloud-native automation and IaC: Terraform support, auto-scaling templates, and API maturity lag behind Palo Alto VM-Series and FortiGate-VM."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
28%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Consumer Goods Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Ably?
For the use I have made, I didn't see any limit or margin to implement to go higher.
What is your primary use case for Ably?
My main use case for Ably is integrating the Kafka queue with Ably and sending notifications to IoT devices like a smartwatch. After the topic was reached by the message, Ably can fetch it from thi...
What advice do you have for others considering Ably?
I would recommend trying Ably if you have a wider range of IoT device types to deliver notifications. I gave this review a rating of 9.
What needs improvement with Hillstone Networks Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall?
Additional automation resources for AWS would also be helpful. More comprehensive CloudFormation or Terraform examples, deployment templates, and guidance for high-availability architectures could ...
What is your primary use case for Hillstone Networks Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall?
We deploy Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall in AWS to protect workloads hosted inside our VPC. We use it to inspect north-south traffic, enforce access-control policies, secure communication bet...
 

Comparisons

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Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Ably vs. Hillstone Networks Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.