Hillstone CloudEdge vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls comparison

Hillstone CloudEdge vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

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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 May 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 16.0%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hillstone CloudEdge is 0.3%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is 5.1%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	16.0%
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls	5.1%
Hillstone CloudEdge	0.3%
Other	78.6%

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav

Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd

Unified security and sd-wan have improved uptime and cut wan costs for multi-site branches

Users report stability issues in certain versions, which requires regular updates. Real-world attacks have also highlighted the need for urgent patching of vulnerabilities.Fortinet FortiGate, while a powerful and feature-rich web firewall, could improve in areas like firmware stability, documentation, and ease of use. The learning curve can be steep for some users. For beginners, support quality can vary, and frequent updates with occasional vulnerabilities call for careful patch management. However, once Fortinet FortiGate is configured, it remains highly reliable and efficient. Customer support needs improvement, as I find it very slow, with reports from other users reflecting that customer support is inadequate.

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Albert-Wang

Technical Consultant at SiS Technologies

Comprehensive cloud security with robust threat protection and VPN capabilities

Hillstone CloudEdge is compatible with all the mainstream public cloud providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba Cloud. This solution has a unified OS system for security products, ensuring that the virtual firewall has similar features to the on-premise solutions. Important features include a VPN, VTech VPN, SSL VPN, QoS, antivirus, threat protection, and sandbox capabilities.

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Abhinandan Yadav

Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd

Advanced visibility has transformed security policies and provides proactive threat prevention

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are powerful, but there are areas for improvement that could enhance their effectiveness, such as cost and licensing models. One of the main challenges we face is the high cost, especially for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs), with licensing for features such as threat prevention, URL filtering, and WildFire being quite expensive. Additionally, centralized management with Panorama is a dependency for managing multiple firewalls, leading to added costs and complexity, and the built-in centralized management features could be made more user-friendly. Moreover, the learning curve associated with the initial setup and advanced configuration including NAT, decryption, and routing can be complex for new users, and enhancements in logging and reporting could also improve the user experience. There are a few more areas where improvements could streamline operations, such as optimizing commit times. Sometimes committing changes takes a noticeable amount of time, particularly for larger configurations, so a faster commit option would significantly help during urgent troubleshooting. Easier policy troubleshooting is necessary as well. Even though logs are detailed, finding the exact rule match and issue can still be time-consuming in complex environments, so having automated policy simulation and a recommendation tool would expedite troubleshooting. Additionally, better default templates and best practices for SMB data centers and branch offices would speed up deployment and reduce errors. Enhancing integration visibility through a unified dashboard would simplify monitoring, and improving the firmware upgrade process to allow for a more seamless zero downtime upgrade would also enhance operations, as upgrades are stable but typically require careful planning and downtime.

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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

"FortiGate is a rapidly growing vendor with a wide range of ready-to-use products. Their delivery time is remarkably quick, usually between two to four weeks."

"It has improved our organization with control data."

"In almost every case, I've experienced (or had customers experience) an ROI within 12 months, based on better performance for the same price or increased functionality for the same (or less) price."

"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."

"Fortinet FortiGate is stable; I am told that Fortinet FortiGate is one of the best solutions available, and I believe it."

"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."

"We have heard that other companies are being attacked, but we are not since we installed FortiGate."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"I'd rate the solution nine out of ten."

"The solution is very easy to download and configure. The initial setup was very easy. The technical support is very good."

"I would recommend this product to any business that wants to protect its cloud environment, cloud server, or on-premises virtual servers."

"Hillstone CloudEdge is compatible with all the mainstream public cloud providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba Cloud."

"The solution provides more security."

"The best features of this solution are URL filtering and traffic visibility."

"It has a unique approach to packet processing. It has single-pass architecture. We can easily perform policy lookups, application decoding, and integration or merging. This can be all done with a single pass. It effectively reduces the amount of processing required to perform multiple actions. This is the main advantage of using Palo Alto."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the robust firewall, which we can also use as a UTM device."

"If you are looking for a great firewall that helps you stop attacks as well as giving you visibility with the administration, this firewall is the best choice."

"From my experience, comparing it to other products, the granularity you can have in the application is very good. The application detection is excellent. It's certainly one of the best."

"With our High availability pair, we have had no downtime for several years, since it was first put it in production."

"It has the typical features of a next-generation firewall. It can do application control, antivirus, content filtering, etc."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls pros

Cons

"The most important feature to have is zero trust, which is lacking in Fortinet FortiGate IPS."

"In an incident, after a restart, Fortinet FortiGate did not connect to FortiGuard servers. Due to that reason, on the customer end, all websites got blocked."

"Not all features are available in the web UI. Features such as enabling multiple MPLS circuits can only be accomplished through the command line, so these need to be made available in the web UI."

"I think there could be more QoS features"

"The customization is a little bit difficult because we have to customize everything."

"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."

"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."

"At the moment, if you don't integrate any third-party solution with a simple Fortinet FortiGate box, the box would not function as expected for superb protection."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The solution needs more granular level reporting on system usage."

"There is room for improvement in AI features, particularly for zero-day attacks and providing maintenance guidance."

"The solution needs more granular level reporting on system usage."

"There should be more comprehensive documentation, case histories, and technical training on new technologies available on their portal. It will help us with troubleshooting."

"The support could be improved."

"We have a lot of the older firewall models, i.e., the PA-220. It seems that with newer operating systems the PA-220 is becoming slower than when I first bought it."

"The pricing could be improved upon."

"Technical support can be faster at responding."

"Understanding the flow and application of securities can be complex, requiring navigation across different sections. Further integration into a unified system could improve usability."

"They can work on the price. They are a little bit expensive, and not all customers are able to afford this solution. Taking into consideration that there is huge competition in the market and there are multiple firewall companies that are much cheaper than them and offer almost the same features, it would be good to improve the price."

"The solution has normal authentication, but does not have two-factor or multi-factor authentication."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would say that all things considered, the pricing is pretty good."

"The setup cost was good. The Egyptian pound is declining, and upgrading Fortinet FortiGate yearly costs about $2000 USD, which equals one hundred Egyptian pounds. I maintain a business relationship with the vendor and receive support from them."

"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."

"Its price is normal. If I compare it with other vendors, such as Palo Alto, it's normal. Palo Alto is expensive."

"The license for Fortinet FortiGate is affordable in my country."

"It is an inexpensive solution."

"The price is really low. It's cheap in comparison to the cost of Cisco or CheckPoint, for example."

"Its pricing is fine. It is on a yearly basis. Other than the licensing fee, there is no extra fee."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"The price is based on that selected package, with the lowest starting at $3,000 annually."

"This solution is quite expensive because along with the license there is premium partner support that has to be purchased as a default addition. There is also a specific Threat Prevention License that has to be requested and purchased separately. However, licenses can be purchased for specific periods as opposed to just an annual offering."

"It's pretty good."

"This solution is quite expensive."

"Palo Alto is a more expensive firewall solution than others."

"The product is expensive compared to competing products but uses a similar type of pricing model based on hardware, software and maintenance."

"Licensing is a big issue for us because of the complexity and the lack of engagement from Palo Alto. It has been hard to talk with them as we don't get the best answers."

"The price of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is high, but it is worth it if you have the budget for it."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

No data available

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	367
Midsize Enterprise	135
Large Enterprise	193

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	76
Midsize Enterprise	56
Large Enterprise	85

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...

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 needs improvement with Hillstone CloudEdge?

There is room for improvement in AI features, particularly for zero-day attacks and providing maintenance guidance. M...

What is your primary use case for Hillstone CloudEdge?

Our primary use case is to provide cloud-based security solutions for customers using public cloud platforms. We dist...

What advice do you have for others considering Hillstone CloudEdge?

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?

Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...

Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls

In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it...

Which is better - Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls or Sophos XG?

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat si...

Sophos Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Comparisons

Compared 18% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Hillstone CloudEdge

Compared 23% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Hillstone CloudEdge

Compared 22% of the time

Sophos UTM vs Hillstone CloudEdge

Compared 13% of the time

KerioControl vs Hillstone CloudEdge

Compared 10% of the time

Sophos Firewall vs Hillstone CloudEdge

Compared 9% of the time

More Hillstone CloudEdge Competitors

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 16% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 13% of the time

Check Point Quantum Force (NGFW) vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 9% of the time

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 4% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Competitors

Product Reports

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Fortinet FortiGate

May 2026

Firewalls

Download Hillstone CloudEdge product report

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Download Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls product report

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

No data available

Palo Alto NGFW, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate is a versatile network security tool offering features like VPN, firewall, web filtering, intrusion prevention, and scalability. It is known for its performance and integration with other Fortinet products, making it a preferred choice for robust cybersecurity.

Fortinet FortiGate stands out as a comprehensive cybersecurity solution with strong performance and ease of configuration. It delivers unified threat management, integrating features such as dynamic routing, SD-WAN support, and centralized management. Despite its strengths, improvements in the web interface's stability, pricing structures, and reporting capabilities are needed. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and automation advancements to enhance the experience further. These enhancements, alongside improvements in bandwidth management and the reduction of licensing costs, are points of interest for users looking to capitalize on FortiGate's extensive capabilities.

What are Fortinet FortiGate's key features?

VPN: Ensures secure remote connections.
Firewall: Protects against unauthorized access.
Web Filtering: Blocks malicious sites and content.
Application Control: Manages and controls applications.
Intrusion Prevention: Detects and prevents vulnerabilities.
SSL Inspection: Enhances security by inspecting encrypted traffic.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Fortinet FortiGate?

Affordability: Offers cost-effective security solutions.
Reliability: Known for consistent and stable performance.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other Fortinet products.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides broad threat protection capabilities.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries as a primary firewall system for securing internet gateways and safeguarding data centers. It supports businesses in achieving SD-WAN integration and enhances cybersecurity by providing essential features like antivirus, web filtering, and application control. Enterprises utilize FortiGate for securing remote connections and ensuring compliance with security standards, making it adaptable for different network sizes and industries.

Fortinet

Hillstone CloudEdge is a robust network security platform designed for managing risks and safeguarding data in dynamic cloud environments. It offers scalable features to provide consistent protection against threats while optimizing cloud infrastructure.

Hillstone CloudEdge delivers superior security for cloud infrastructures, providing advanced threat prevention and management capabilities. It empowers businesses to efficiently control cloud resources while ensuring data protection. The platform supports seamless integration with existing IT infrastructure, enhancing cloud security strategies. With a focus on adaptability, Hillstone CloudEdge suits a broad range of enterprises, from mid-sized companies to larger corporations, facilitating secure cloud transitions.

What are the key features of Hillstone CloudEdge?

Scalable Architecture: Easily adapts to changing network demands, ensuring long-term compatibility.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Offers top-tier security against a wide range of cyber threats.
Flexible Managed Options: Supports both centralized and distributed management setups for optimal control.
Advanced Visibility: Provides deep insights into network traffic and potential vulnerabilities.

What benefits should you look for in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Analyzes the platform's ability to provide high-level security with a better cost structure.
Integration Ease: Highlights seamless collaboration with existing enterprise systems.
Performance Improvement: Details improvements in network performance and security posture.
Scalability Potential: Reviews how systems can expand with minimal disruption.

Hillstone CloudEdge is notably implemented across industries like finance and healthcare, where data security and compliance are critical. These sectors rely on its capabilities to streamline secure cloud operations while maintaining regulatory standards, offering a significant edge in safeguarding sensitive information.

Hillstone Networks

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls deliver advanced threat protection with machine learning, enhancing security through real-time attack prevention. Known for application visibility and a user-friendly interface, they offer robust network protection and flexibility in rule creation.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are designed to secure environments with features like GlobalProtect VPN, WildFire malware detection, and unified platform integration. Their strong firewall capabilities and high-performance throughput make them suitable for perimeter and data center protection, VPN configurations, application control, and network segmentation. Users consistently highlight the ease of managing network security policies and integrating third-party tools, ensuring a comprehensive protection strategy. While enhancements in support, training resources, and configuration simplicity are needed, these firewalls are integral for securing both on-prem and cloud environments, aligning with platforms like Azure and AWS.

What are the key features of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?

Application Visibility: Provides insight into network traffic for better control.
Threat Prevention: Uses machine learning for real-time attack prevention.
GlobalProtect VPN: Secures remote access efficiently.
WildFire Malware Detection: Detects and prevents advanced threats.
Unified Platform Integration: Enhances network security through seamless integration with other tools.

What benefits should be evaluated when considering Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?

Flexibility in Rule Creation: Allows customized security policies to meet specific needs.
High-Performance Throughput: Ensures efficient network operations under high load.
Comprehensive Policy Management: Simplifies overseeing and adjusting security policies.
Robust Endpoint Security: Protects endpoints against sophisticated threats.
Seamless Integration: Works well with third-party tools for a comprehensive solution.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are commonly implemented across industries for securing LAN environments, URL filtering, and ensuring Zero Trust security. They secure both on-premises and cloud infrastructures, often becoming integral parts of security frameworks within enterprises. Leveraging these firewalls in conjunction with Azure or AWS enhances the overall network protection strategies employed by organizations.

Palo Alto Networks

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

LinkTime

SkiStar AB, Ada County, Global IT Services PSF, Southern Cross Hospitals, Verge Health, University of Portsmouth, Austrian Airlines, The Heinz Endowments

Hillstone CloudEdge vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls