No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Hillstone CloudEdge vs Palo Alto Networks VM-Series 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

Hillstone CloudEdge
Ranking in Firewalls
47th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Hillstone CloudEdge is 0.4%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 2.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series2.6%
Hillstone CloudEdge0.4%
Other97.0%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Albert-Wang - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MuhammadNadeem - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Has supported urgent deployments and enabled inline threat protection but pricing and features could be more flexible
I am not using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series mostly, but based on my experience, there are some deficiencies in Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Having those features missing, we are not proposing Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to all customers. However, for urgency and for some solutions that customers need for some of their other sites and subdivisions, we are providing the same.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Hillstone CloudEdge is compatible with all the mainstream public cloud providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba Cloud."
"The solution is very easy to download and configure. The initial setup was very easy. The technical support is very good."
"I'd rate the solution nine out of ten."
"I would recommend this product to any business that wants to protect its cloud environment, cloud server, or on-premises virtual servers."
"The most effective features of the solution for threat prevention are Layer 7 inspection, SSL decryption, IPS, and the web filtering profile."
"We use Palo Alto to provide remote access, and we've been able to provide access for hundreds of users with a very short build out time."
"You already can scale it if you put it in Auto Scaling groups. If you put it in a load balancer, it should already be able to scale."
"A valuable feature of the solution is that it is not dependent on the hypervisor so we can install it on Hyper-V Microsoft software and deploy it."
"Palo Alto offers excellent security, with features such as email scanning, malware protection, and efficient VPN and antivirus capabilities."
"Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view."
"It is reliable and the support is very good."
"With Palo Alto VM-Series, we are capable through a single point of management and visualization both in infrastructure and on premises and in the cloud, allowing us to improve the speed to create new rules and speed up the resolution of problems by having a holistic vision of our firewall infrastructure."
 

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 disadvantage with Palo Alto is that they don't have a cloud-based solution that includes a secure web gateway."
"All areas need improvement: manufacturing, education, financial, etc."
"The command-line interface is something that some people struggle with and I think that they should have an option to go straight to the GUI."
"Recently, they introduced their Prisma Cloud solution. Compared to the previous technologies, like Panorama, which is used for centralized firewall management, or even the individual firewalls, it's a bit challenging to integrate the traditional firewall policies into Prisma Cloud."
"It is not very easy to scale up the solution."
"The product's AIOps process needs improvement."
"An improvement could be the integration of security intelligence with Palo Alto cloud via APIs."
"They made only a halfhearted attempt to put in DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"​The licensing is pretty much like everyone else."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is notably cheaper than other firewall vendors, except Fortigate."
"It is not the cheapest on the market. The total cost for two firewall instances is $75,000. This includes licenses, deployment fees, and support for two years."
"The pricing and licensing of this product on AWS for a three-year commitment is a great deal, if you can plan that far ahead."
"The box, if you do not want to buy the threat prevention license in the box, you can buy it only with the support license. It is for the support of the hardware. It works like a simple firewall. It integrates what it calls user IDs and application IDs. If you do not buy any other license, only the firewall, Palo Alto will also help you improve a lot of your security."
"Because I work for a university and the URL is for the institution, it's a free license for us."
"Initially, pricing was high. Later on, we were able to negotiate the pricing and get something that fits our budget."
"Palo Alto is more expensive than other products."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Hillstone CloudEdge?
There is room for improvement in AI features, particularly for zero-day attacks and providing maintenance guidance. More AI features would be beneficial.
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 distribute Hillstone CloudEdge and work with its various solutions to ensure securit...
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 kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the overall cost is reasonable. Azure Firewall offers a solid threat awareness, can...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series?
The pricing is more on the expensive side, but it is justified due to its functionality, reliability, and throughput, even with all features enabled. In comparison to FortiGate ( /products/fortinet...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LinkTime
Warren Rogers Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Hillstone CloudEdge vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.