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Fortinet FortiGate vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2025

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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (7th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Fortinet FortiGate
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
574
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (2nd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Prisma Access by Palo Alto ...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (1st), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (6th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.2%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 6.3%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is 10.3%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate6.3%
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks10.3%
iboss2.2%
Other81.2%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Roberto Pastorino - PeerSpot reviewer
Have supported client adoption of security solutions but need more control over infrastructure
It's a working solution. It's not the easiest, but no DLP solution is easy. With Netskope, the whole infrastructure is proprietary. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is using a service in AWS, and it's not totally a proprietary infrastructure. Sometimes a third-party outage could impact the whole operability. I'm not certain if the vendor is moving towards sovereignty of infrastructure at this moment, but from what I saw in the past, there was this reliance on third parties for the infrastructure: AWS, GCP, Oracle, and others. This is one point of attention for me. I would prefer more proprietary infrastructure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a very good next-generation firewall."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is its SD-WAN."
"The solution’s interface is pretty user-friendly."
"We like FortiGate's website change feature."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"The solution’s initial setup is very easy."
"The GUI is very simple, and what is very good is that every product, regardless of size, has the same interface."
"The most valuable feature of Prisma Access is its ability to provide enterprise-class security for both Internet and internal application access."
"The Autonomous Digital Experience Management (ADEM) offered by Palo Alto is a good reporting tool. It gives insights into how things are going within the network. It takes all the data from the users' endpoints and does an analysis, and it suggests changes as well."
"The product's initial setup phase is simple."
"To quarantine and clean a malware file provides a lot of security."
"Security is absolutely spot-on, really top-notch. It's the result of all the components that come together, such as the HIP [Host Information Profile] and components like Forcepoint, providing end-user content inspection, and antivirus. It incorporates DLP features and that's fantastic because Prisma Access makes sure that all of the essential prerequisites are in place before a user can log in or can be tunneled into."
"We have an application called ADEM that helps us troubleshoot network-related issues. It helps us to isolate an issue whether it is on the ISP level, endpoint level, or system access level."
"Palo Alto Firewall is one of the best firewalls in the world."
"There is a system for monitoring the traffic. You can monitor the traffic of the connected people and point out any issues on the connection part."
 

Cons

"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"The pricing could always be better."
"In my opinion, Fortinet FortiGate could be improved by making the appliance smaller than what we have here, as it is pretty big."
"There are too many updates coming for VPN, and the VPN keeps disconnecting frequently, which I find problematic. It does what it's supposed to do, but I practically face reconnection issues with the VPN."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"The web process often has a memory leak."
"We can't identify which users are causing challenges when we have issues."
"I would like to see improvements in Fortinet FortiGate regarding the active-active scenario. The active-active scenario is supported but not recommended, whereas other vendors are implementing active-active without issues. Perhaps in the future, we could effectively use both firewalls to increase the throughput. If there are two boxes, they both should be able to work."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"It is a managed firewall. When you run into issues and have to troubleshoot, there is a fair amount of restriction. You run into a couple of restrictions where you don't have any visibility on what is happening on the Palo Alto managed infrastructure, and you need to get on a call to get technical assistance from Palo Alto's technical support. You have to get them to work with you to fix the problem. I would definitely like them to work on the visibility into what happens inside Palo Alto's infrastructure. It is not about getting our hands onto their infrastructure to do troubleshooting or fixing problems; it is just about getting more visibility. This will help us in guiding technical support folks to the area where they need to work."
"I would like to see better pricing and an easier logging process. Also, if there was a way to log a global log, everything could go onto the system. It would be better if there was a third log, otherwise one would have to do everything manually."
"The BGP filtering options on Prisma Access should be improved."
"Prisma's integration between operational technology and IT should be more seamless. Right now, it requires additional setup and maintenance."
"I would like the solution to support a different type of authentication. We can't configure a secondary method for our portal."
"Though the monitoring is fine, the solution should improve its application graphs and interface monitoring."
"When it comes to integration mechanisms, Prisma SaaS does not support reverse proxy type of integrations."
"The user interface could be better. They need to work a little bit on the console. It is similar to their firewalls but not exactly. They need to clean it up a bit."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"Fortinet FortiGate SWG is an affordable solution."
"The price of the license and warranty can be better because it is very expensive."
"For the performance that we get, the price is reasonable. There are cheaper options, but they may not deliver the same kind of performance that we want. For the performance they provide, the price is acceptable."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"We pay about $4,000 for a yearly license, and there aren't any additional fees."
"I think that the pricing is fair."
"The solution requires a license annually, it is not a user license, you can have as many users as your want. I must renew the license regularly per device."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"It is not cheap. It is expensive. The good thing is that you are able to pay for what you need, but overall, it is not cheap. The pricing is not based on packages. You pay based on the features. If you want DLP, you only pay for DLP. They are very flexible. It is not cheap, but the licensing is flexible. There are no additional costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"There's no reason not to buy the enterprise version that gives you unlimited PoPs, but you must understand the limitations you impose on yourself if you do that. If you go crazy, that allowlist will be too big for Kubernetes clusters."
"We have to pay additional costs for maintenance and support services."
"The licensing cost is about 18,000 euros."
"Palo Alto is the Cadillac solution, so their products are pretty expensive. That's just the way it is. Their solution surpasses anything else. Cisco AnyConnect, Zscaler, and all of the other products don't compare. Palo Alto is the market leader with the most features. It saves you work, and you don't have to worry about it."
"Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution, especially when compared to other solutions like Cisco. There are no additional charges apart from the standard licensing costs attached to the solution."
"The licensing model for this product is complicated and changes all the time, making it very hard for the user to comprehend the configuration."
"Compared to other products, the price is slightly high."
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Comparison Review

it_user216600 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 3, 2016
Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate
I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business350
Midsize Enterprise130
Large Enterprise187
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern. There are cheaper alte...
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...
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...
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 ...
What is the better solution - Prisma Access or Zscaler Private Access?
We looked into Prisma Access before choosing Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). Palo Alto’s Prisma Access is a secure ac...
What do you like most about Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks?
The most valuable features of the solution are in the areas of the secure remote access it provides while also being ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks?
From my experience, Palo Alto is more expensive compared to solutions like Netskope and Triscale.
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
No data available
Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access, Prisma Access, GlobalProtect, Palo Alto GlobalProtect Mobile Security Manager, Prisma SaaS by Palo Alto Networks, Prisma Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
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
Concord Hospital, State of Colorado, Essilor International, RheinLand Versicherungsgruppe, University of Westminster, Universidade Nove de Julho, SPAR Austria, CAME Group, ZipRealty, Greenhill & Co., IKT Agder, Aviva Stadium, Animal Logic, Management & Training Corporation, Brigham Young University Hawaii, School District of Chilliwack
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiGate vs. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: October 2025.
872,922 professionals have used our research since 2012.