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

Hillstone CloudEdge vs WatchGuard Firebox comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

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
WatchGuard Firebox
Ranking in Firewalls
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
138
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (11th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (6th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (13th), Application Control (3rd), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (3rd)
 

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 WatchGuard Firebox is 2.1%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate15.1%
WatchGuard Firebox2.1%
Hillstone CloudEdge0.4%
Other82.4%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
Abhishek Saini - PeerSpot reviewer
Professional Services Engineer at Nex7 IT
Centralized security management has improved VPN reliability and simplified daily operations
WatchGuard Firebox is a strong and reliable platform overall, but there are a few areas where improvements could make the experience even better. One area is the user interface and navigation in some management tools. While the platform is powerful, certain configurations and troubleshooting workflows can feel less intuitive compared to some newer cloud-native firewall platforms. Another point is reporting and log analysis. Although the logging features are very useful, deeper analytics and more customizable reporting dashboards would make security monitoring much more effective. Firmware upgrades and policy synchronization can sometimes require careful planning to avoid security interruptions. Overall, the core security and VPN functionality are very solid, but improving usability, reporting, and automation would make the platform even stronger. One area that could be improved is the learning curve for new administrators. While experienced engineers can work with the platform effectively, some advanced networking and security configurations can be a bit complex for junior technicians. More guided configuration workflows, smarter recommendations, and simplified troubleshooting tools would make onboarding easier. Another improvement would be more flexible reporting customization for executive-level and client-facing reports.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The multi-threat protection feature helps us secure our organization."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate that I found are its next-generation firewall capabilities with stateful inspection and antivirus, along with features such as a reverse proxy that are missed by some other firewall products such as Palo Alto or Check Point."
"There has been no attack on our servers after we configured the FortiGate IPS."
"Our clients definitely get a return on investment; it is a really good product, and the stability of the product is a very important factor for our clients."
"Fortinet is one of the players who is having the full bucket of solutions for protecting applications across the deployment locations, being a branch or a head office or a data center or in the cloud as well."
"Valuable features include the performance, stability, and virtual domain ability as well as the management that it provides."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"I would recommend this product to any business that wants to protect its cloud environment, cloud server, or on-premises virtual servers."
"I'd rate the solution nine out of ten."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is the VPN. It's easy to connect to the VPN."
"It is the most effective on non-encrypted traffic and it is able to determine some threats through deep packet inspection."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ease of use."
"The most important feature of this solution is the SLAs."
"In terms of users within the campus, the policy-based usage helps us where we allow something during the daytime, something after school hours, and something during the night."
"We experienced that WatchGuard is easy to setup regarding VPN compared to other firewalls of other brands."
"My favorite aspect is that its security capabilities are very good, with all-in-one security service capabilities including Intrusion Prevention System, IPS, Gateway Antivirus, Application Control, and Web Filtering."
"I have far less (50-75%) less admin time trying to figure out why our system is so slow; that's gone."
 

Cons

"They should consider making some improvements regarding the pricing."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"IPs are not handled well and the process is unnecessarily complicated."
"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."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"There are some issues with the scalability of Fortinet FortiGate. Certain products and models need to be scalable, but they're not."
"The main thing they have to improve in Fortinet FortiGate is the technical support; the rest of the features are good enough. We can handle them, but sometimes you really need support, and in that case, we are not getting it at the proper time."
"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."
"The time they take to classify an application once they find that it is unknown can be better."
"This product needs to be fully integrated with the firewall. Currently, it only sends logs to the cloud and asks the firewall to correlate them."
"The CLI could be improved in WatchGuard Firebox, and I think integration with a cloud solution—such as Microsoft Enterprise and Google Cloud—has room for improvement."
"Some of the configuration options are somewhat confusing."
"The drawbacks are just sometimes not having the technical information that we need in order to easily make connections with all of our Internet-based clients, but we can put the work in and still get it done."
"Multi properties could be added to the solution in the future to make it better."
"Due to their lack of investment in marketing, channel development, and certifications, WatchGuard faces challenges in gaining visibility and market share, especially in regions like Pakistan."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is lower than Cisco."
"If the customer is looking for SD-WAN, it comes free with FortiGate."
"The Fortinet FortiGate security features cost approximately $1,500 a year. The firewall itself doesn't have a recurring cost. It's the security features on top of that that you pay for."
"Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable."
"The pricing is better compared to other solutions like Check Point, Arista, or Cisco."
"Its pricing is competitive with other solutions."
"The pricing is fair."
Information not available
"It has a very good price. It is not the most expensive one, and it is also not the cheapest one. It is just spot-on in terms of price."
"We license the WatchGuard Firebox annually. There are different types of subscriptions available. We are paying approximately $15,000 annually. The cost can increase if you purchase different subscriptions."
"It's an affordable tool"
"I think the tool is quite competitive compared to the other brands."
"We paid $4000 in AUD for WatchGuard Firebox per year. There were no additional costs."
"Their price point worked, which is the reason why we stayed with WatchGuard."
"The licensing contract we have is on a three-year basis. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees—usually, every three years, we just purchase or renew the same license and we are okay. Every six years, we completely change the firewall, but that's the usual schema. So after three years, we just renew the licenses for another three years, and then after that particular period of time, we just purchase another firewall equivalent to the ones that we currently use."
"I think the larger firewall packages are much better because a normal firewall is not enough for these times. You need IPS, APT, and all the security features of a firewall that you can buy."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.
900,051 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
No data available
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business370
Midsize Enterprise138
Large Enterprise195
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business101
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise16
 

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 primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We are providing our services to all WatchGuard customers in the region.
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We just use it as a secondary WiFi device. We're a small office and we needed to set up a WiFi device for a few of ou...
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We're a hospital and we use it for developing our incoming and outgoing policies, and we also use it for VPN.
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
WatchGuard Threat Detection and Response, WatchGuard Application Control, WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention, WatchGuard Gateway AntiVirus, WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service
 

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
Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence
Find out what your peers are saying about Hillstone CloudEdge vs. WatchGuard Firebox and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,051 professionals have used our research since 2012.