Hillstone A-Series vs SonicWall NSSP comparison

Hillstone Networks and SonicWall are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Hillstone Networks is ranked #48, while SonicWall is ranked #34 with an average rating of 9.0. Hillstone Networks holds a 0.1% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to SonicWall’s 0.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Hillstone Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of SonicWall users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Hillstone A-Series and SonicWall NSSP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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To learn more, read our detailed Firewalls Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

August 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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.1%, up from 18.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hillstone A-Series is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall NSSP is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	20.1%
SonicWall NSSP	0.1%
Hillstone A-Series	0.1%
Other	79.69999999999999%

Firewalls

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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Albert-Wang

Technical Consultant at SiS Technologies

Good performance, responsive support, and an easy setup

We use the product for small and medium-sized businesses. Their scalability is good. They have a lot of choices based on their performance. Even on one unit, they have multiple ports to support customers so that they can connect to different devices. I'd rate the scalability nine out of ten.

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Winsley De Oliveira

Owner at ANOC

Long-term reliability and efficient customer support elevate user experience

The best features with the SonicWall NSSP firewall are safety and stability. The most defining aspect I can share is that if you try to find firmware, a pirate firmware for Fortinet on the internet, you're going to find it in Russia or elsewhere. However, try to find SonicWall NSSP firmware and you will never find it anywhere. Nobody shares it. I have my internal library for old and deactivated firewalls, but we don't share with anyone. This is very significant because anyone claiming to have hacked SonicWall NSSP firmware is incorrect. With Fortinet, it's different. It's a very nice product. For the customers and clients, it's transparent. We have rules, and they are very strict. Any bad sites or blocklist sites are blocked, and users don't complain. They are used to our controls. We have a standard package for our customers that's the same in every company. When customers buy it, they must accept it. If they don't accept the package we offer as a consulting company, we don't sell. It's a yes or no situation with no options. All our customers have the same scenario and configuration, with very minor exceptions.

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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

"The best feature of Fortinet FortiGate is SD-WAN; it ensures continuous connectivity by taking over during link failures, preventing any downtime for the company."

"I find that Fortinet FortiGate is pretty easy to use and integrated, offering many features in one box at a decent price compared to other enterprise vendors."

"FortiGate has led to a reduction in our security budget."

"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."

"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."

"Fortinet FortiGate has many functions, and it is one of the best next-generation firewalls with an affordable cost than other vendors."

"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."

"The wireless control is helpful."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The antivirus is very good."

"It has been delivering results efficiently. Its configurations and updates have been easy. It is also user-friendly."

"The product's most valuable features are simplicity and comprehensive protection capabilities, including load balancing, IPS, antivirus, and web filtering."

"SonicWall has helped us deliver security solutions effectively, particularly in threat prevention and content filtering."

"SonicWall NSSP is stable and scalable too."

"The VPN functionality is really good. Overall, the whole device is very easy to manage. The software that comes with it is also good."

"I like the filtering feature, which provides easy access. The SSL certification feature is also nice. The solution enhanced our security posture."

"The solution's pricing is good."

Cons

"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."

"Fortinet FortiGate is not a scalable solution, as they give you a number and each box comes with concurrent connections; if you need to expand, you have to change the box."

"The only challenge with Fortinet FortiGate is the pricing model."

"It needs more available central management."

"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."

"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."

"I could not configure sFlow from the FortiGate graphical user interface. I realized that the sFlow configuration is available only from the CLI, and discovered that sFlow is not supported on virtual interfaces, such as VDOM links, IPsec, or GRE."

"From my experience, I see that the datasheets of the Fortinet FortiGate portfolio need to be more accurate because correct sizing is essential. The datasheets should provide clear information when deploying features."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"It would be helpful if they could integrate more with third-party security systems."

"The platform could benefit from an improved marketing strategy."

"Its reporting functions can be improved. It has decent reporting, but you got to pay a lot more money for it. That's where it begins to fall apart. It comes with minimal zero reporting unless you buy some extra modules. With those extra modules, you can get all the data, but it takes a while to put together what you need for your customer. It is for technical people, but there is no executive summary of the reporting."

"The user interface, the GUI, could be improved."

"The product needs improvement for phishing emails."

"The solution's stability and scalability also need improvement."

"No security product is foolproof against hackers, intruders, and other such things. As a security product, they have to keep pace in terms of protection from new hackers and intruders."

"The EDR and XDR capabilities of SonicWall need to be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was worth the money overall. It's good value."

"Fortigate's pricing is competitive."

"When you look at these end security systems and firewalls, these firewalls even five years ago were $50,000 or perhaps $25,000 to implement in some types of customer sites. Now we're talking about tools that are $1,000. In this case, it might have been $500 or something like that."

"It is somewhat expensive compared to other solutions such as Sophos."

"It is more expensive than Sophos. Fortinet is overall more expensive than Sophos. The small range of Fortinet, such as 60F and 80F, is more expensive than the small range of Sophos. Sophos is cheaper. In addition, if you jump from 80F Series to 100F Series, the price doubles."

"It is an inexpensive solution."

"The price depends on the size of the company. From the beginning, you just want to know the internet bandwidths, speed, and the number of users to be able to offer the right product and model. They have a lot of products in FortiGate according to the size of the company, like 200D and 300D."

"Fortinet's pricing is more straightforward than other solutions. If Fortinet doesn't stick out when you're searching for a solution, you are a glutton for punishment. You only need to know two things when purchasing a Fortinet solution: your total bandwidth and bandwidth at the site. You need to estimate the future bandwidth with other solutions if your customer plans to upgrade."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"You got to buy some VPN licenses, and there might be a $40 to $50 one-time license fee per current user. There are different layers. They have several different levels of event security software and depending on the model, it seems to come out to be $1 to $2 a day. So, if you bought a three-year license, it is going to be anywhere from $900 to $1800 depending on the bundle and model that you buy."

"For SonicWall NSSP high availability, active/passive, you need to buy one license, and so you get much more value for money."

"The pricing is cheap, and that's where, you know, the some of the organization goes for the SonicWall."

"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."

"The setup costs and licensing are reasonable, and the solution provides good value for its features."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	261
Midsize Enterprise	99
Large Enterprise	143

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	2

Questions from the Community

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

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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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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hillstone A-Series?

The solution is cheaper than other Western brands. The pricing is reasonable. There are costs for the hardware as wel...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Hillstone A-Series?

It would be helpful if they could integrate more with third-party security systems. Often, a client will have deploye...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Hillstone A-Series?

We use these devices in the office or in the public cloud environment to protect networks.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall NSSP?

The pricing and licensing of the SonicWall NSSP firewall is not too expensive, being comparable to competitors. The c...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SonicWall NSSP?

They need to conduct more marketing campaigns because here in Brazil, when people mention firewalls, Fortinet has mas...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SonicWall NSSP?

I have experience with SonicWall NSSP Firewall, having dealt with NSA firewalls throughout the last 30 years. We're s...

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 19% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 12% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Hillstone E-Series vs Hillstone A-Series

Compared 58% of the time

FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) vs Hillstone A-Series

Compared 42% of the time

More Hillstone A-Series Competitors

SonicWall NSa vs SonicWall NSSP

Compared 32% of the time

OPNsense vs SonicWall NSSP

Compared 25% of the time

More SonicWall NSSP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

September 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

August 2025

Download Hillstone A-Series product report

Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

August 2025

Download SonicWall NSSP product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

SonicWall Network Security Services Platform

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

The Hillstone A-Series effectively enhances network security and protects against cyber threats. It is praised for its ability to prevent unauthorized access, detect and block malicious activities, and ensure the overall integrity of network infrastructure. Its stand-out features include advanced threat detection and seamless integration with existing networks.

Hillstone Networks

The SonicWall Network Security services platform (NSsp) 12000 series takes a modern approach to threat detection and prevention by combining cloud intelligence with appliance-based protection in a scalable, high-speed platform.

SonicWall

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

1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. Amazon 4. IBM 5. Cisco 6. Oracle 7. Intel 8. HP 9. Dell 10. Apple 11. Facebook 12. Twitter 13. LinkedIn 14. Netflix 15. Adobe 16. Salesforce 17. VMware 18. Samsung 19. Sony 20. Toshiba 21. Panasonic 22. LG 23. Nokia 24. Ericsson 25. Siemens 26. Philips 27. General Electric 28. Honeywell 29. BMW 30. Mercedes-Benz 31. Audi 32. Volkswagen

Comlogic, Depaul, Hutt City Council

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