Hillstone CloudEdge vs ShieldX comparison

The compared Hillstone Networks and Fortinet solutions aren't in the same category. Hillstone Networks is ranked #57 in Firewalls , and holds a 0.0% mindshare in the category. Fortinet is ranked #13 in MS , and holds a 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Hillstone Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Hillstone CloudEdge and ShieldX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Hillstone CloudEdge vs. ShieldX Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Hillstone CloudEdge vs. ShieldX

December 2024

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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

Firewalls Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Hillstone CloudEdge	0.0%
Fortinet FortiGate	20.4%
OPNsense	11.0%
Other	68.6%

Firewalls

Microsegmentation Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ShieldX	0.5%
Illumio	29.4%
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation	26.7%
Other	43.400000000000006%

Microsegmentation Software

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

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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MichaelProcyshyn

IT Director at park holidays uk

Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance

The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

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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

"One of the most valuable features of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is the ease of usability it offers."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a very stable solution."

"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."

"The most significant aspect of IPS is self-explanatory as it primarily focuses on intrusion prevention, which is crucial for Fortinet's internal outbreak prevention efforts and ensuring compliance on endpoint devices."

"The solution is stable."

"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."

"The solution is superior to Cisco in terms of security."

"ROI is exceptionally good."

More Fortinet FortiGate 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."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

"The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."

"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."

"...It takes the exact same policies that you would apply to your on-premise environment and enables you to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."

Cons

"One area for improvement involves FortiAnalyzer, specifically regarding the SOC part and log interpretation. Sometimes interpretation is very difficult."

"The solution could be more secure and stable."

"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."

"They need faster serviceability and more security features."

"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."

"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."

"The inability to change passwords when using FortiGate firewall and relying on a local FortiGate database for account creation can be problematic, particularly in non-Active Directory setups."

"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

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

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."

"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."

"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's price is average."

"At the time we bought them, I was satisfied with their pricing; I don't know how the new pricing will be."

"I rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall a five out of ten for pricing."

"We are on an annual license to use Fortinet FortiGate."

"If the price of the license in Fortinet FortiGate was less expensive it would be better."

"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"

"Price-wise, it's at a good price point for our market."

"I had to pay for the license for the firewall, but it is guaranteed to have updates. I expect a good service for it. It was about €1000 for a year, and there was no additional cost."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."

"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."

"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."

"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."

"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."

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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	350
Midsize Enterprise	130
Large Enterprise	187

No data available

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...

See all answers

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...

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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 needs improvement with Hillstone CloudEdge?

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

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Hillstone CloudEdge?

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

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Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 18% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 8% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

No data available

Illumio vs ShieldX

Compared 100% of the time

More ShieldX Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

October 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

September 2025

Download Hillstone CloudEdge product report

Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

October 2025

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

No data available

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate excels in providing integrated VPN, firewalling, and Unified Threat Management (UTM) with centralized management and high availability. It supports remote access and comprehensive threat protection, making it a preferred choice for securing networks.

Fortinet FortiGate offers a robust security platform with features such as strong intrusion prevention, application control, and web filtering. Its integration with Active Directory and SD-WAN functionality provides scalable solutions for large networks. Users appreciate its ease of use through centralized management interfaces, ensuring robust security with flexible configurations. However, FortiGate could enhance its graphical interface and technical support responsiveness, address firmware bugs and costly licensing, improve logging, integrate better with third-party tools, and strengthen scalability and memory for log storage. Complexity in configuration and the need for intuitive features are noted challenges, and there's a demand for advanced security, zero-trust capabilities, and AI integration.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN: Secure remote access and connectivity.
Firewalling: Protects networks from unauthorized access and attacks.
UTM: Offers a comprehensive approach to threat management.
SD-WAN: Optimizes traffic routing for efficient network performance.
Web Filtering: Controls and monitors web access and ensures Internet security.

What benefits or ROI should be considered?

Centralized Management: Simplifies administration and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures consistent security and network availability.
Scalability: Adapts to the needs of growing networks.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Provides robust security measures.
Ease of Use: Minimizes the complexity of security management.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries like education, finance, and government. Companies use it for firewall protection, VPN, and SD-WAN capabilities, ensuring secure perimeter and data center security. It facilitates remote access management and traffic routing optimization, offering reliable security and connectivity solutions.

Fortinet

Hillstone Virtual Next-Generation Firewall, CloudEdge, embedded with the Hillstone Networks StoneOS operation system, is deployed as a virtual machine, and provides advanced security services for applications and users in any virtualized environment. It provides comprehensive security features including granular application identification and control, VPN, intrusion prevention, anti-virus, attack defense and cloud-sandbox to fully keep a business secure and operational. It provides price- performance solutions for both public and private cloud customers, and can be rapidly provisioned and deployed at scale.

Hillstone Networks

The ShieldX Elastic Security Platform dynamically scales to deliver comprehensive and consistent controls to protect data centers, cloud infrastructure, applications and data no matter where they are or where they go to make the cloud more secure than on-premise deployments. Our frictionless approach leverages agentless technology as well as the ShieldX Adaptive Intention Engine which autonomously translates and enforces intention into a set of comprehensive controls - microsegmentation, firewall, IPS and more - making security the easiest thing you do in the cloud.

Fortinet

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

Iowa State University

Buyer's Guide

Hillstone CloudEdge vs. ShieldX

December 2024

Free Report: Hillstone CloudEdge vs. ShieldX

Find out what your peers are saying about Hillstone CloudEdge vs. ShieldX and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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