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Hillstone E-Series vs Palo Alto Networks VM-Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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 E-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
40th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
SSL VPN (10th), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (24th)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Hillstone E-Series is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 2.9%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series2.9%
Hillstone E-Series0.9%
Other96.2%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

TahirMahmood - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Zubair Feeds
Offers good features like URL filtering, IPS, and IDS to users
We received an update for the tool in July. The update was provided for the tool as there was a problem with the firewall, where too much memory was consumed, and the firewall was hanging a lot. When we updated the tool's features, everything became okay. The tool only had some memory-related problems. It took the tool a month to fix the issues.
AV
Cyber security consultant at L&T Technology Services
Enhance cybersecurity for large enterprises using advanced threat management
An improvement could be the integration of security intelligence with Palo Alto cloud via APIs. This would allow IOCs, domains, and hash values to be automatically entered, reducing manual entry. Integration with CSIRT across all use levels would make it easier for administrators to stay updated on the blocked entities without manual intervention.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of the Hillstone E-Series are its hardware capacity, innovation, and the throughput that the hardware can take."
"Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients secure connectivity from a remote location to their offices or their servers."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"This solution has two main features that we find very valuable; a threat-intelligence option, and a web/application filtering option. The technical support team are very good and very quick."
"With Hillstone, TCO and ROI are very good, it's an easy sale."
"The installation is easy, we have not had any complaints from our customers."
"I am impressed with the application filtering feature."
"The product provides more visibility into our traffic."
"With the improved visibility we now have, the traffic is being properly monitored, which means that we are better able to manage it. These are improvements that we saw very quickly."
"It helps in offering advanced protection against malware and anti-spyware, which is based on customer feedback stating the product has very good threat prevention capabilities."
"The most valuable feature is the Posture Assessment."
"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."
"AWS has improved our agility to apply firewall rules."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature."
"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
"The room for improvement would be the SSL VPN license cost."
"The tool only had some memory-related problems."
"The current usage reporting is very basic. I would like to be able to access more granular data."
"Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"Its web interface is a bit outdated, and it needs to be updated. They can also improve the NAT functionality. We have had issues with the NAT setup."
"There is a need for two-factor authentication, particularly for VPN and CloudProtect."
"The one issue that I didn't like is that the SNMP integration with interfaces didn't record the interface counters."
"The web interface is very slow, and it needs to be faster."
"The user interface could use some improvement."
"Perfection is unlikely as the dynamic nature of traffic and constant changes can result in occasional bugs despite regular updates."
"The implementation should be simplified."
"There could be dynamic DNS features similar to Fortinet in the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is reasonable. It depends on the model. The product's pricing is around 600 USD. You need to buy a software license to activate the features. You need to pay around 150 USD for that."
"The cost per year for licensing, and hardware, is approximately $850 for the basic plan."
"The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand."
"Hillstone's pricing is economical and neither very high nor very low."
"The pricing and licensing of this product on AWS should be from $1.28/hr or $4,500.00/yr. Then, it would be a good price for the performance that it delivers."
"The license fee is slightly high."
"Regarding pricing, I initially downloaded the product for feature comparison purposes, not specifically due to pricing concerns. However, the current licensing model can be a sore point as we're paying for features we're not fully utilizing. Simplifying the pricing structure would be beneficial, especially given the duplication of services in some cases, leading to increased costs."
"It is an expensive product."
"Sometimes, it's cheaper to buy a new firewall with licensing instead of renewing the licenses of an old firewall."
"One of the factors for selecting Palo Alto was they had flexible pricing. They had a pay-as-you-go model. Comparable to other products, such as Check Point, the price point was definitely a plus."
"When you have a client compare box against box, a lot of times Palo Alto is a bit more expensive, but its network firewalls have a very rich ratio."
"The pricing was expensive but it was comparable to the competition."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

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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 filteri...
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

Bank of China Macao, Instituto Tecnológico Bolivariano, Ministry of Labor in San Salvador, FEDCO
Warren Rogers Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Hillstone E-Series vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.