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FatPipe SD-WAN vs Steelhead comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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

FatPipe SD-WAN
Ranking in WAN Edge
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (21st)
Steelhead
Ranking in WAN Edge
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the WAN Edge category, the mindshare of FatPipe SD-WAN is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Steelhead is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
WAN Edge Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Steelhead1.6%
FatPipe SD-WAN1.3%
Other97.1%
WAN Edge
 

Featured Reviews

Akshay Kharkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at Manschaft IT Pvt Ltd
Beneficial technology, reliable, and simple deployment
Our client has a data center and all the applications servers and servers are in their data center. We design a solution, for all their branches. If they wanted to access the internet or the applications, they route traffic to their data center and then can access these applications with FatPipe…
Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Reduces operational costs through bandwidth optimization but struggles with high traffic licensing and complex deployments
The logs in Steelhead are fantastic. There is a deep level of logs such as top 10 docker and top 50 docker. I can check from the top 50 docker which type of application is optimizing well and which type of traffic is not optimized. Steelhead provides logs and percentage levels, which is good. I can see any type of log report, report security, different types of report availability, but it is not customizable. Overall, this is a good feature. Steelhead provides real-time optimization with graphs and tables on real-time optimization, informing us packet by packet including port, source IP, destination IP, and destination port number. This reporting and real-time monitoring is fantastic, although I faced a problem in Oracle. Steelhead mainly saves the money that needs to be paid to ISPs. My actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB. All the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of FatPipe SD-WAN is it's based on SD-WAN technology."
"The compression of Riverbed is very powerful. It can also handle large quantities of traffic."
"Scalable data referencing is a great feature."
"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."
"It is very easy to install the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."
"The connectivity to speed is the valuable 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."
"Steelhead is stable, and it can even help you avoid service interruption in the event of a power outage. If your hardware fails, technical support will replace your device quickly."
 

Cons

"FatPipe SD-WAN can improve the price to scale the solution."
"There was a significant challenge when moving from an older version to a newer one due to changed quality of service policies."
"The product needs improvement in its integration with SDN."
"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."
"The traffic is passing, but Oracle DB traffic experiences lag and slowness due to Steelhead, while other applications perform fine."
"The product should offer more integration capabilities."
"Application response time and network performance could be improved."
"The application response time of the solution can be improved."
"The traffic is passing, but Oracle DB traffic experiences lag and slowness due to Steelhead, while other applications perform fine."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is expensive and the service contacts are costly too. The cost of the device makes the value proposition borderline acceptable for us. The service contract fees we pay is approximately $30,000 annually."
"Across our 12 data centers, we spend around $150k annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Media Company
17%
Computer Software Company
17%
Retailer
8%
Wholesaler/Distributor
7%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitoring solutions were ExtraHop first, Riverbed SteelCenter second. Their negotiated c...
What do you like most about Riverbed Steelhead?
One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users.
What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?
I am currently working with Riverbed for replication between PR to DR for synchronization purposes, and for WAN optimization between replication from one data center to another data center. The mai...
 

Also Known As

FatPipe Symphony, Symphony, FatPipe Symphony SD-WAN, Symphony SD-WAN
RIverbed Steelhead
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes
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