No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Exinda comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 10, 2024

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

Cato SASE Cloud Platform
Ranking in WAN Optimization
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (16th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (11th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (8th), WAN Edge (10th), ZTNA as a Service (9th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (6th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Exinda
Ranking in WAN Optimization
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the WAN Optimization category, the mindshare of Cato SASE Cloud Platform is 10.9%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Exinda is 7.3%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
WAN Optimization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cato SASE Cloud Platform10.9%
Exinda7.3%
Other81.8%
WAN Optimization
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2697738 - PeerSpot reviewer
Product & Services Integrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Cloud security has unified global network design and has simplified threat visibility
I think all of the functionalities, such as the secure web gateway feature, are quite good. I also believe Cato SASE Cloud Platform is one of the only solutions that has not only a software firewall solution but also a physical software solution where you can change the company's firewalls and put in sockets from Cato SASE Cloud Platform, which I see as an advantage for them. The single-pass architecture has improved user experience with Cato SASE Cloud Platform as it provides security teams in companies a platform where they can easily obtain information if there are breaches or security issues. I assess the benefit of integrating WAN optimization as good. There is ease in making rules between WAN optimization, especially when it comes to global connections because of all their points of presence that are spread over the world. I think the real-time threat protection of Cato SASE Cloud Platform is also good. Their points of presence are quite efficient, and I do not see any delays in that area.
EH
Director of Network Services at a university with 201-500 employees
Gives us the ability to prioritize network traffic into a hierarchy
Creating the custom application is a bit awkward. I kind of have to guess my way through it sometimes. A lot of working with this solution is really intuitive. I have picked it up mostly on my own. I'm sure that there are some things that maybe I hadn't thought of or really hadn't considered, and I think it would be good just to promote some day courses. I don't really see a whole lot that comes out for Exinda as far as training or informational sessions through our normal resellers. It would be cool to know more about the solution by utilizing educational resources or even have Exinda promoted a bit better.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable solution...it is a scalable solution."
"The product's most valuable features include advanced firewall capabilities for robust security, a secure gateway for safe data transmission, and next-generation anti-malware for threat prevention."
"If you really want to have a solution that has an easy deployment and provides SD-WAN and firewall abilities, go with Cato Networks."
"We never really had any outages."
"We appreciate the optimization and acceleration of the performance of SDP users."
"The solution is stable and reliable, our customers haven't had any complaints about its quality, it is quite simple and easy to use, and the support, overall, has been okay."
"The most valuable feature is that it also works as a next-gen firewall because it has security features."
"The Cato SASE Cloud Platform supports my customers' needs for connectivity and security by removing the throttling from the headquarters and putting a firewall in the cloud, instead of having to use a costly MPLS network to perform security inspection on all traffic from various branches."
"Compared to some of the stuff that I've used a decade ago, the Exinda solution is night and day."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to create policies where we can tailor them to the customer. It enables us to prioritize apps and users for bandwidth."
"The most valuable features are the shaper, accelerator, and the reporting... it will shape the traffic better than, for example, a Cisco, because it's more gentle on the shaping side of things. Suppose you were selling a 20-meg link. Because you can shape to the nth degree of traffic, the 20-meg link feels like about a 30 to 40-meg link."
"A customer can either buy 50 Mb with us or 50 Mb with somebody else, but they'll get a 70 Mb feel with us because we can shape it a little bit better."
"Customer Service: Top notchTechnical Support: Top notch"
"Getting Exinda was a life saver for our voice traffic"
"It has the ability to prioritize, providing an automatic optimization. I can put it in a hierarchy and know that certain devices will be prioritized over others. It is able to identify the traffic. It can pick out whether if its a Zoom meeting (or something like that), then it's able to put that somewhere in the hierarchy based on the traffic type."
"Exinda can show you which product uses how much throughput and can help you manage it."
 

Cons

"Cato Networks security could be better."
"Web application firewalling (WAF) is a feature we would like to have in this solution and does not exist yet."
"For a packaged solution, needing external intervention or a system integrator to get other features not offered by Cato Networks could be an area for improvement."
"Its functionality is a bit limited in some areas as compared to a Cisco solution. It is not as granular. It doesn't have the manageability, feature set, and capabilities of a larger or an enterprise-level solution. It just needs a more robust feature set and granularity."
"The price could be better."
"I am located in South Korea, and I can say that most people here have no idea about Cato Networks. I think Cato Networks should promote its network services in various countries."
"They can't do one-to-one NAT (Network Address Translation) in AP (their access point), and that is something that Palo Alto can do."
"They should include a web application firewall feature in the solution."
"Creating the custom application is a bit awkward. I kind of have to guess my way through it sometimes."
"The updating of applications that the system knows about could be a little quicker. For example, Zoom had been out for a while, but it took a while for it to show up as an application that Exinda could natively handle. We had to write some things in order to handle Zoom, initially."
"One of the concerns that we've had with Exinda is the fact that ever since GFI took over Exinda, they haven't really put in much time into actually developing the product."
"The stability was terrible in version 7.0 but it's been good since version 7.2."
"The areas for improvement would be around the support service that GFI provides."
"Fundamentally sound with WAN acceleration, but needs to expand the range of accelerated applications."
"There might be room for improvement in the speed and throughput of some of their devices. They're getting a bit slow on some of the bigger devices. It would be helpful if there were some sort of an ISP model."
"In terms of improvement, one thing that has always frustrated me about it is that when you look at real-time monitoring, you can only filter it by IP address. You can't filter it by anything else. It would be good if we could filter by VLAN."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of this solution depends on what you need. It is based on bandwidth."
"The platform is expensive."
"The solution is reasonably priced since Cato Networks provides features like SASE and monitoring, which I am very happy with currently."
"The product is very competitively priced, and that's compelling. They don't charge the customer based on the operational cost like other brands such as Palo Alto. Cato has its own fully-fledged cloud, with their own data centers, equipment, and so on, which is an advantage. I rate the solution five out of five for affordability."
"Cato Networks is an expensive product, but it works out of the box, so that's the usual trade-off, make versus buy. If you decide to buy a product that doesn't require much programming, then you'd want to go for Cato Networks, which will work naturally, and immediately without any complex setup. However, the product is a little bit more expensive than the competitors. On a scale of one to five, I'd rate the pricing for Cato Networks as four."
"You pay yearly based on the speed of your network. If you increase the speed of your network, you increase the cost for your throughput. It is by bandwidth for the most part and then licenses for VPN. There is some per-seat licensing for VPN access, but the majority of it is minimal. It is like $30 a year per client. The rest is based on how much bandwidth you'll use. You pay for that upfront for the year, and if you have to increase it, you increase it, and then they let you send more data through. There are no additional costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The price of Cato Networks is in the middle range compared to other solutions. NetFoundry is a less expensive solution than Cato Networks."
"I'd rate Cato SASE Cloud Platform's pricing as about five or six out of ten. It's not the cheapest solution, but it is cheaper than Palo Alto and even VeloCloud. We've been working with them for a while and have significant discounts. Our licensing costs vary because we keep adding sites, but it's about 280 per month per site. This includes additional features beyond the base product, starting at around 200."
"It is priced well for the market, for what it needs to do."
"The pricing and licensing are pretty fair and really competitive. There are other SD-WAN solutions that are pretty costly because they build in a service where they'll manage it for you, which is really great. I don't know if Exinda has that option as well. However, we are a small shop and cost-conscious. For things like this, we are accustomed to self-managing and this solution suits us just fine. For a tool that gives you, like the graphs and reporting, it has a fair price point."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which WAN Optimization solutions are best for your needs.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Cato Networks?
I can see that I am a consultant at a reseller and I am the architect of Cato SASE Cloud Platform designs. In the baseline, I usually recommend Cato SASE Cloud Platform for international companies ...
What advice do you have for others considering Cato Networks?
It is difficult to find types of companies I would not recommend Cato SASE Cloud Platform to, and I believe you can use Cato SASE Cloud Platform in most environments, although there could be some c...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cato Networks?
I do not find it particularly expensive, but for some companies, they may not have the budget to be at that level of security for their networks.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cato Networks
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Paysafe, AdRoll, Pet Lovers Centre, Arlington Orthopedics, Humphreys & Partners Architects
UMass Dartmouth, MLB Network, R&R Ice Cream, Savills, Manhattan School of Music, Blum Shapiro, Cincinnati Public Schools, City of Richmond, Genting Casinos, The Salvation Army, VoIP Unlimited, Frontier Silicon, Lakeshore Toltest, CTI Foods
Find out what your peers are saying about Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs. Exinda and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.