Cisco Meraki MX vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall comparison

Cisco and Zscaler are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Additionally, 93% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Zscaler users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Meraki MX and Zscaler Cloud Firewall 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.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Meraki MX vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Meraki MX vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall

July 2025

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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

Fortinet FortiGate

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.

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MURALI NIDAMANURI

Managing Director at VIPUN COGNITIVE SOLUTIONS PVT LTD.

Experience improved network management with flexible and secure connections

I recommend that Meraki MX should improve to be a better solution for the next release by being more competent so that we can offer it as a primary solution among all other brands, although I don't have any specific feedback, while the competitors are also ahead of these solutions. Enhancing user experience is always required. Enhancing the seamless connectivity is crucial and user experience enhancement is needed daily, otherwise people find it outdated. New features should look and be dynamically connected, and users should not be bothered frequently when connectivity issues occur. It should automatically remediate and find out the issue and then resolve it on its own without interrupting the work of the employees.

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Bhaskar Rao

Network manager admin at Yamaha

Though it helps deal with web traffic or any malicious traffic, it needs to work on its DC performance issues

The product's initial setup phase is moderate in level, so it is neither very complex nor very easy. For the deployment, my company first needs to gather all the requirements of the users and the domain names and consider how many users there are in the company. In the implementation and planning part, my company needs to consider what kind of policies we will create while ensuring that the policies are created based on the requirements of the users. There is a need to segregate the users' requirements since there are separate departments in the company, like the HR department, sales department, IT department, and manufacturing department, so that our company can create policies depending on their requirements. On-site, if you want a GRE tunnel, our company can handle GRE tunnel traffic routing and Zscaler Cloud Firewall, after which Zscaler will take action based on the policies created by our organization. For the deployments and maintenance, a team of five members consisting of two managers and three engineers is required.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortinet FortiGate helps improve my organization since it's quick and easy to install, and we don't have to call support frequently."

"Fortinet FortiGate has a very simple configuration, is easy to set up, and includes SD-WAN features at no additional cost."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are its SD-WAN capabilities, such as dynamic routing, and other features, including security options such as antivirus, IPS, and IDS—all integrated into one device."

"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."

"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."

"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."

"The features I find most useful in Fortinet FortiGate are its simplicity of utilization, which is very important, and its provision of interfaces to see the alerts and other things."

"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"A strong, reliable solution for small companies with little or no dedicated IT department."

"The simplicity of configuration is the most valuable feature of the solution."

"Deployment takes no more than one working day."

"It has very good features; it's easy to use, configure, set up, and deploy."

"It is very easy to use and manage. It is also very easy to scale."

"Site to Site VPN: The device can establish a VPN connection to multiple sites in a mesh environment in seconds, and without complex VPN knowledge."

"Simple to manage."

"Very easy to use and navigate."

More Cisco Meraki MX pros

"Includes advanced tech protection."

"Zscaler Cloud Firewall understands the applications in the current generation and adapts to the present generation cloud applications."

"Zscaler is still a very good product."

"Zscaler provides effective protection against various cyber threats ensuring a safe environment"

"The solution is scalable."

"The visibility and log availability offered are highly valued for troubleshooting purposes, and this is a key factor driving customer interest in the firewall module."

"If malicious traffic attacks our on-premises servers, then it gets blocked by Zscaler Cloud Firewall."

"The solution offers good sandboxing."

More Zscaler Cloud Firewall pros

Cons

"Fortinet FortiGate is a very good device overall, though it can be improved in certain areas regarding the licenses, particularly the big one called unified threat management, which has many capabilities."

"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."

"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."

"Improvements for Fortinet FortiGate could be made by making it easier to implement on networks and simpler to add users and accounts that utilize this solution. That's basically the only challenge that I see."

"The licensing could be improved as it is a little confusing and too granular for 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."

"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."

"Though the tool's GUI is user-friendly, it can be considered as an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The client-side VPN is weak. The product could be improved with deployment templates."

"Direct logging is something that can be introduced. In the absence of cloud management, the possibility of local configurations and on-premise logins becomes restricted. This limitation stands as a primary concern. When it comes to resolving issues, the inability to access login options hampers troubleshooting efforts. The stability is noteworthy; but when compared to alternative products, its stability is comparatively lower. Additionally, certain limitations are observed in terms of remote control. Price-wise, the solution stands out for its competitive and cost-effective nature compared to other alternatives. Operationally, it is user-friendly and requires minimal effort from administrators, making configuration hassle-free."

"When we do API integrations with Meraki, they have always been hard as well as tedious to build. The data that we want out of the API integrations has been only recently available. Six months ago, it was hard to get someone to build something correctly or useful with Meraki APIs. Recently, they have made more data available on the API, but it is just a start. They need to do more."

"You can only have one tunnel in the whole infrastructure — one tunnel with one device."

"FortiGate is cheaper than Meraki. Even the license renewal is less than Meraki."

"The IPS, the Intrusion Prevention System, can be improved."

"MX can only be managed via a web interface, but I'm accustomed to using a CLI or a graphical interface. I would also like to see more reporting features. It doesn't provide enough information for me to know precisely about some clients."

"An area for improvement in Meraki MX is that it needs some provision, as supplying the unit through Cisco can be tedious at times, but as far as the product itself and its offerings, Meraki MX is five-star all the way."

More Cisco Meraki MX cons

"Data Leak Prevention is only for web filtering and there is no protection for email."

"Pricing is a challenge."

"If I can get rid of Jetscaler, I will use Twingate for sure."

"Because it's on cloud, it doesn't allow application of extra settings."

"It would be better if they improved their policy, package visibility, and flexibility while we're creating rules for inspection. It could also be cheaper or more things could be included in the basic package. In the next release, I would like better coverage in the Asia Pacific region and better quality of service."

"It would be nice to have some sort of a form factor, a physical form factor perhaps, or virtual machine that you could install on devices or on a cloud, and have some cloud computing."

"The issue right now is probably that Zscaler is not providing web browser isolation. Another solution, Menlo, offers this. For one customer, we had to send traffic to Menlo to do the isolation for us. It was requested by the customer so that they could integrate any iframe. Zscaler needs to add this type of feature in their next release."

"We are having some issues with internet access being denied when organizational ID-based policies change. For example, a lower level employee ends up getting the same level of access as that of a higher level employee."

More Zscaler Cloud Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Setup costs and pricing depends on many variables, but it's mostly affordable."

"The pricing depends on the FortiGate model we are using, ranging from $3,000 to $20,000 US dollars."

"Currently, we are paying about $1,500 a month for three sites."

"Fortinet FortiGate is cost-efficient. Palo Alto is expensive, but Fortinet FortiGate is not."

"They need to be competitive with other solutions."

"It scales well if you know what to buy from a physical box standpoint. They seem to offer something for every level."

"Its pricing is good. The advantages of Fortinet FortiGate over its competitors include good pricing and meeting our requirements at a lower cost."

"No comment."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"I rate the tool's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive."

"Meraki is also expensive, but it's a little bit less expensive and it's easier to configure than Cisco ASA."

"It is an expensive solution. There is a five-year licensing requirement. We already renewed licenses for all our devices."

"The pricing could always be improved — especially with the shape the economy is in at the moment."

"The price could be lower, but compared to the TCO of other products, it's not really that expensive."

"The product's price depends on use cases."

"The product’s pricing depends on the discount Cisco gives to different people."

"The price is slightly increased, but reasonable."

More Cisco Meraki MX pricing and cost advice

"Zscaler is priced too high compared to the cost of Fortinet."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis. It is somewhere around 30 or 40 pounds per user for our organization."

"It comes at a significantly reduced cost while ensuring control and effectiveness."

"It is not the most budget-friendly solution, but it's important to consider its overall value."

"It is expensive for small businesses."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"There are licensing costs, and I would not say that it's a cheap vendor."

"There are different subscription models available."

More Zscaler Cloud Firewall pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

See all answers

What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

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What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?

As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...

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Fortigate 60d vs. Meraki MX67 for a small company without a dedicated IT Department

We have Meraki Mx devices now, we are looking to replace them. But that is because the Meraki MX platform lacks SSL I...

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Which is better - Meraki MX or Cisco ASA Firewall?

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the operating software for the Cisco ASA suite. It supports netw...

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What do you like most about Meraki MX?

I am happy with the technical support for the solution. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

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Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?

Netscope, Zscaler if they continue route they are on now. FIrewalls needs great deal of automation on each end, datac...

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What do you like most about Zscaler Cloud Firewall?

The product’s firewall and VPN package are fantastic compared to any other solution.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler Cloud Firewall?

Zscaler Cloud Firewall is quite expensive compared to competitors. However, it offered moderate value for money.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 12% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Cisco Meraki MX

Compared 12% of the time

Sophos XG vs Cisco Meraki MX

Compared 8% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Cisco Meraki MX

Compared 6% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Cisco Meraki MX

Compared 5% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Cisco Meraki MX

Compared 4% of the time

More Cisco Meraki MX Competitors

Azure Firewall vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 15% of the time

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

OPNsense vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Multicloud Defense vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

More Zscaler Cloud Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

August 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Meraki MX

August 2025

Download Cisco Meraki MX product report

Buyer's Guide

Zscaler Cloud Firewall

July 2025

Download Zscaler Cloud Firewall product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

MX64, MX64W, MX84, MX100, MX400, MX600

No data available

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Fortinet

Cisco Meraki MX offers cloud-managed security with user-friendly setup and efficient management, enhancing VPN and firewall functionalities for businesses.

Cisco Meraki MX is known for its robust cloud-based network management, featuring AutoVPN, SD-WAN, and advanced security. Its centralized control over firewall, traffic shaping, and monitoring ensures excellent connectivity and security. The interface allows easy management by non-technical staff, offering remote access and seamless network performance through real-time alerts and troubleshooting. It supports global connectivity with minimal effort, addressing needs across small to enterprise environments. Despite its strengths, users point out areas needing improvement like load balancing, VPN features, more flexible logging, and session capabilities. Pricing, integration limits, and licensing need enhancement.

What are the key features of Cisco Meraki MX?

AutoVPN: Enables automatic VPN configuration for secure, site-to-site connections.
SD-WAN: Optimizes traffic routes for increased performance and reliability.
Advanced Security: Offers unified threat management, intrusion prevention, and content filtering.
Centralized Management: Simplifies operations with remote monitoring and configuration.
Traffic Shaping: Prioritizes critical business applications to maximize performance.

What benefits should users consider?

Ease of Deployment: Simplified installation reduces setup time and cost.
Real-Time Alerts: Ensures proactive issue identification and resolution.
Scalability: Supports growth with seamless integration and management of multiple sites.
Global Connectivity: Maintains efficient connections across geographic locations with minimal effort.

In industries like retail, finance, and education, Cisco Meraki MX provides enhanced security and connectivity. Retail chains benefit from easy VPN setups for secure multi-site networking, while educational institutions find value in its ability to manage large campuses efficiently. Financial services leverage its robust security features to protect sensitive data, ensuring compliance and trust.

Cisco

Zscaler enables the world’s leading organizations to securely transform their networks and applications for a mobile and cloud first world. Its flagship services, Zscaler Internet Access and Zscaler Private Access, create fast, secure connections between users and applications, regardless of device, location, or network. Zscaler services are 100% cloud-delivered and offer the simplicity, enhanced security, and improved user experience that traditional appliances or hybrid solutions are unable to match. Used in more than 185 countries, Zscaler operates the world’s largest cloud security platform, protecting thousands of enterprises and government agencies from cyberattacks and data loss.

Check more details: https://www.zscaler.com/produc...

Zscaler

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

Hyatt, ONS

Zenith Live, Azure, Carlsberg Group

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Meraki MX vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall

July 2025

Free Report: Cisco Meraki MX vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall

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