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

"In my opinion, the main benefits that end users receive from Fortinet FortiGate are that the return on investment is good, whatever money we invest in Fortinet FortiGate product, we get it back in two years' time, it is pretty secure, having very robust hardware and software, updates are pretty good, and in the event of an issue, updates are pretty quick."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."

"Initial setup is easy to configure."

"The solution’s initial setup is very easy."

"The web tutor and automatic rules by schedule are good features."

"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."

"The quick resolution of issues with Fortinet FortiGate is due to the support of the company and the fact that the equipment is easy to work with."

"The solution is stable; it doesn't have any issues with bugs and glitches, it doesn't crash or freeze, and it's very reliable."

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."

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

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

"The application layer to the hardware layer is good, as are all layers it offers, and it's a very comprehensive solution."

"The solution is very stable."

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is pre-sales and post-sales because of the support and relationship building."

"Other firewalls should actually copy Palo Alto so that they can provide better stability, performance, and protection - at levels that are at least at Palo-Alto's."

"With Palo Alto, there isn't any problem, you can open any feature - IPS feature, data encryption feature - there isn't an issue."

"The management options are good."

"You just need a web browser to manage it, unlike Cisco, which requires another management system."

"Innovative, advanced threat protection is the most valuable feature."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls pros

Cons

"Support could be improved."

"Fortinet FortiGate can improve performance. There was a huge challenge in terms of CPU and memory where the IPS engine would keep triggering. There were random spikes of overutilization in the CPU and memory resources. They have to work on CPU and memory stability considering these IPS engines. A few versions were very unstable."

"The sniffing packets or packet captures can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."

"The major problem with Fortinet is the support. We have often hardware malfunctions and software bugs and the support is slow."

"Need to Improvement in Reporting"

"There is room for improvement in pricing."

"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."

"At the moment, the main concern is the pricing and the type of licensing."

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."

"Palo Alto can do a little bit better when it comes to the User-ID part. I've been facing problems related to double authentication. You have a computer user, but you also have a VPN user, and when you do a single sign-on to another page, these logs can sometimes generate a problem notification. It doesn't happen a lot, but in some networks, it could be a problem. It would be very helpful to have the ability to restrict the connections that you can have in your VPN. For example, if you have the credentials, you can connect with the same user account from different computers or devices. If you have the domain information, you can connect from different devices. That's a problem that they need to address and resolve. They should ensure that at any moment, only one person is connected through a specific user account."

"The price of the solution is very high."

"Unfortunately, Palo Alto Networks products aren't cheap, but you have to pay the price for good security technology. I don't know the exact price, but it's about $10,000 to $15,000 without a subscription. Cisco is priced similarly. FortiGate is inexpensive in Poland, so a lot of customers prefer that."

"The areas that need to improve are network protection and user identification."

"The biggest thing that needs to be improved with them is their training. I took a training class for the 8.0 build, then I took it again for the 9.0 and 10 builds. They add new features every time that they do a new major release, but the training doesn't keep up. It is the same basic training that probably was with the 3.0 build, and they just change the screenshots. I would love to see them do some more work since they have all these bells and whistles, but we don't know how to use those features on a large scale."

"The configuration framework for Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation firewalls should be simplified, particularly for applications like ASG authentication. Technical support needs improvement, as issue resolution takes a significant amount of time."

"Overall it is good. It is reliable and easy to understand. However, the monitoring feature could be improved."

"Palo Alto could improve its machine-learning capabilities. That's all new. They integrate the telemetry data and analytics up to the cloud, where they can analyze for security policies and best practices like DNS Security. It uses AI tools to sort through all the massive logs and highlight where you can take action or be aware of what's happening. If you don't have many tools in your organization, it's nice to have one tool that does an excellent job across the board."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Although the solution's pricing is high, compared with other products, it may be cheap."

"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable for an SME."

"The licensing costs are very competitive."

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall costs our company around $12000 per year."

"If you compare the price of Fortinet FortiGate IPS to other firewalls, Check Point is priced very high followed by Palo Alto and Sophos. Fortinet FortiGate IPS price is more reasonable."

"Licensing is usually on a three-year period."

"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."

"A year or two years back, its price was competitive and reasonable. That was one of the reasons that people easily switched to Fortinet. Over the last two years, the prices have increased drastically. However, the prices of others have also increased. An advantage is there from the price point but not as much as it was previously."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is expensive, but it is worth its price."

"It is expensive."

"We always aim to reduce the pricing, as it is currently a bit high and needs to be lowered."

"Don't buy a device with more power than you really need, because licensing depends on the cost of the box you have."

"There are security licenses."

"The price of the solution is on the higher side compared to competitors."

"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."

"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."

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

Comms Service Provider

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	77
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 12% of the time

KerioControl vs Hillstone CloudEdge

Compared 10% of the time

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) 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 14% 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