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Hillstone CloudEdge vs SonicWall NSa comparison

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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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
592
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Hillstone CloudEdge
Ranking in Firewalls
49th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonicWall NSa
Ranking in Firewalls
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 15.1%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hillstone CloudEdge is 0.4%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall NSa is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate15.1%
SonicWall NSa1.5%
Hillstone CloudEdge0.4%
Other83.0%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

JK
IP Network Security Specialist at MTN Ghana
Process-Level CPU Visibility: Introduce detailed CPU-usage metrics per subsystem (e.g., IPS engine, logging) so administrators can quickly identify and address performance spikes.
Analytics with FortiAnalyzer. Being able to pull in logs not just from our FortiGates but from all our other firewalls and then get them in one view has been a game changer. Whether I’m building an executive dashboard or doing a deep dive forensics session, I get everything I need without navigating consoles.Straightforward Application Control. FortiGate spots and blocks unwanted apps (eq. like BitTorrent or streaming services) with accuracy. Segmentation with VDOMs. We’ve carved our data center into four logical ‘mini-firewalls’ enterprise, core, billing, and WAF—all on one box. Each has its own rules and logs, and any traffic between them still gets inspected. It’s like having multiple appliances without the extra hardware. Always-Up-to-Date Threat Feeds. Daily signature updates and AI-driven threat sensing mean we’re blocking the latest vulnerabilities almost as soon as they’re announced.
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.
Mahendra Basera - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr.Engineer at Akara Capital Advisor Pvt. Ltd.
Automated breach prevention has protected critical workloads and keeps external attacks blocked
I am familiar with SonicWall TZ. I have done a POC of TZ but I have not worked extensively with it. I have worked with the 2600 firewall and then the 3600. These are the models which we have worked with.SonicWall NSa was an on-premises solution. The two firewalls which were in production, in the data center and on the LAN side, were both on-premises solutions. We had a pre-decided budget under which we would purchase the firewall. All parameters including security, high availability, and budget concerns were covered with SonicWall NSa being implemented at that time. SonicWall NSa is a user-friendly product that is easy to configure, and it is easy for network personnel and firewall administrators to work with. Even the L1 team captured and learned this firewall effectively, helping us resolve all parameters related to high availability firewalls within budget-friendly costs. I rate this review a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"The impact of SD-WAN on the network performance has been significant."
"I have found the decryption of Fortinet FortiGate IPS very good. It's called SSL deep inspection, it's working very well. This is how you decrypt access and traffic, and it is through the IPS antivirus center. Additionally, the UI is user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"Buy FortiGate for a hassle free network management and excellent ROI."
"It is a UTM firewall with many features, helping me control users and public multi-servers easily while providing seamless, simple integration into a large network."
"The most valuable aspects of FortiGate NGFW are its top-notch reputation in peer reviews, user-friendly interface, and excellent support."
"Hillstone CloudEdge is compatible with all the mainstream public cloud providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba Cloud."
"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."
"One good point about the more expensive license for this product is that they provide a hardware guarantee, which means direct replacement, no matter how long you've been using it, whether you've used it for two, three, five, or seven years."
"We use SonicWall NSa for authenticating MAC (media access control) ID from the PC."
"We have had zero downtime since the deployment of NSA 4600 (HA)."
"The most valuable features to us are the security services which is a critical factor in our deployment. Today we need to have all the security services enabled because firewalls are not enough."
"If you looking for a simple site-to-site VPN, stable UTM feature, and easy SSL VPN setup, then this solution is OK."
"The solution was very stable; there were no bugs or glitches, it didn't crash or freeze, it was reliable, and there were no breaches."
"The antivirus and items of that nature were quite helpful to have."
"Our primary use case for SonicWall NSa is as a public firewall, as an interface between our private network and the public network."
 

Cons

"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"The price could be improved."
"From my point of view, I think Fortinet has to extend the solution into the cloud and provide all the security features from the cloud and not be dependent on the firewall appliances."
"Another issue is how deduplication services don't work reliably after enabling deduplication on Fortinet."
"The solution could maybe use more integration with artificial intelligence to be more proactive."
"I would evaluate customer support from Fortinet FortiGate as seven or eight out of ten. The reason I do not give 10 out of 10 for customer support is that while they follow the SLA and there is no issue with that, for them it might be P3, but for us, it might be P1 or P2 case."
"I would like to see improvements in some of the hard drive features on FortiGate so that we can generate reporting within a single box."
"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."
"Do not even consider NetExtender - probably one of the most horrific, nightmare grade Java-based VPN clients. We have but all given up trying to make it work reliably."
"It only has a single power interface, which has limitations in terms of high availability."
"It needs to be more monolithic, and more details in the analytical tools offered would be appreciated since it is not yet mature."
"SonicWall does not support DynDNS, yet this is an important feature for smaller companies that do not have a static IP address."
"I am not sure if SonicWall has finally addressed this issue but a major area for improvement would be being able to export the settings file in a non-binary readable and editable format."
"The solution can be a bit expensive."
"One area for improvement in SonicWall NSa is the GUI. It isn't easy to understand. The support for SonicWall NSa is mediocre, which is another area for improvement."
"The problem primarily with SonicWall is it's a Unix box. And it's all software, all the activities, blocking, censoring, everything has to happen in the software. If you start hitting the box with a lot of sessions it slows down and that's not what I expect from a firewall."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product pricing is reasonable."
"If you compare Fortinet FortiGate with Sophos and other firewall products available in the market, this solution is affordable."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"Licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is on a yearly basis. Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"It is around $50,000 per month."
"Price-wise, it's at a good price point for our market."
"Each feature costs money, so it is important to study your needs."
"At the time we bought them, I was satisfied with their pricing; I don't know how the new pricing will be."
Information not available
"SonicWall NSa has reasonable pricing. My company pays for it yearly, but I forgot how much the company pays. From what I remember, you only pay for the license fees."
"The pricing is lower and better than other products."
"We paid about 10,000 in our currency for one packet of SonicWall NSa."
"NSa is not expensive, not high. It's at a moderate or medium level."
"There is a license required for this solution and you can purchase a one, two, or three year term. Typically businesses choose the one year subscription and then later choose the three year licensing option if they are satisfied."
"A firewall doing anti-spam might be a low cost solution, but it is not your best strategy."
"In our evaluation, we found that the costs of deploying the solution, and also purchasing the hardware and licenses, were very attractive."
"The price is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
No data available
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business369
Midsize Enterprise139
Large Enterprise195
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business56
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise24
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall NSa?
I am overall satisfied with everything, including the price.
What needs improvement with SonicWall NSa?
The CPU configuration for SonicWall NSa, based on my experience, is average. It should be increased somewhat because ...
What is your primary use case for SonicWall NSa?
We have SonicWall NSa models including NSA 2600, NSA 3600, and 6600 firewalls in our environment.We have used the Dee...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
NSA 250M, NSA 2600, NSA 3600, NSA 4600, NSA 5600, Dell SonicWALL NSA
 

Overview

 

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
Orange County Rescue Mission, First Source, Michaels & Taylor, Green Clinic Health System, Aspire Chiltern Skills and Enterprise Centre, UnitedStack, Faith Lutheran College Redlands, Celtic Manor Resort, Star Kay White, Air Works, Unimat Life, NHS Yorkshire and Humber Commissioning Support (YHCS), Hutt City Council, Mato Grosso do Sul, Nspyre
Find out what your peers are saying about Hillstone CloudEdge vs. SonicWall NSa and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,495 professionals have used our research since 2012.