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Hillstone E-Series vs Zscaler Internet Access 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

Hillstone E-Series
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (41st), SSL VPN (10th), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (24th)
Zscaler Internet Access
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (3rd), Internet Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Hillstone E-Series and Zscaler Internet Access aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Hillstone E-Series is designed for Firewalls and holds a mindshare of 0.9%, up 0.3% compared to last year.
Zscaler Internet Access, on the other hand, focuses on Secure Web Gateways (SWG), holds 9.7% mindshare, down 14.3% since last year.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Hillstone E-Series0.9%
Fortinet FortiGate13.0%
Cisco Secure Firewall8.0%
Other78.1%
Firewalls
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zscaler Internet Access9.7%
Cisco Umbrella9.4%
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks6.7%
Other74.2%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

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.
VikasTiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at Anthology
Cloud security has transformed remote access and now supports zero trust for all users
The best features Zscaler Internet Access offers are Secure Web Gateway, URL filtering, SSL inspections, and policy-based access control. I find myself relying on Secure Web Gateway, URL filtering, SSL inspection, and policy-based access control the most because these are the main and top-most features I use regularly. Zscaler Internet Access has all of these types of features for securing all internet access and web inspections, allowing me to control all traffic through these features. Zscaler Internet Access features include a Secure Web Gateway for URL filtering, file type control, and inline SSL inspections. The second feature is a cloud firewall with Layer 3 to Layer 7 filtering control and stateful inspections. No hardware inspection or hardware firewall is required. I can also perform segmentations by users, location, and application. There is a cloud CASB solution available as well. Additionally, there is an advanced threat protection feature with signature-based behavioral detections, inline IPS, and zero-day threat protections. The cloud sandboxing solution scans unknown files and provides machine learning-based verdicts to prevent zero-day malware delivery in my environment. There is also a DNS security feature that provides DNS tunneling detections, malicious domain controls, and faster threat containment at the DNS layer. The data protection feature includes inline DLP and CASB-style cloud app control, data sovereignty enforcement, and browser isolation, which executes risky sites in isolated cloud browsers and prevents endpoint compromises. Zscaler Internet Access has positively impacted my organization by reducing the dependency on on-premises hardware and improving security posture, enabling faster user onboarding, and providing better performance for remote users. It has resulted in a drop in security incidents related to web threats and improved visibility into user activity. An area for improvement includes fine-grained troubleshooting tools, better policy simulations, and optimizations around initial configuration complexity.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Five out of five ROI."
"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."
"I am impressed with the application filtering feature."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ransomware protection that the tool offers."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy."
"If an organization is not looking for a web proxy, it's a very, very good product."
"The most valuable features of the Hillstone E-Series are its hardware capacity, innovation, and the throughput that the hardware can take."
"The most valuable features of Zscaler Internet Access include its capacity to scale, the security implementation capabilities, the ability to integrate public IPs related to clients so traffic presents on the internet as a client, and the facility to interoperate with SSEs while maintaining the same security mechanisms from on-premises to cloud environments."
"Zscaler, however, leads the local market in value versus functionality."
"For our needs, the cloud-native proxy architecture is a very good solution. We are moving away from on-prem appliances and moving more toward cloud-based solutions. Zscaler is a good fit for our strategy. This architecture helps with cyber threats because we inspect most of the traffic and we can see that a lot of threats are stopped directly in the secure web gateway."
"SSL inspection is a valuable feature."
"We use ZIA for outbound internet connectivity. The internet traffic of on-prem users will be directed to the ZIA cloud for security checks and web filtering."
"The best thing about Zscaler Internet Access is the website filtering. In the UAE it's quite an important feature because most of the malware comes through the SQL injection and through downloads from websites. Zscaler helps protect against that."
"Overall, we're very happy with our product."
"The solution replaces multiple vendor technologies with one which makes it worth the cost."
 

Cons

"Having frequent live webinars on a monthly basis would really help."
"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."
"The current usage reporting is very basic. I would like to be able to access more granular data."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
"The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"The tool only had some memory-related problems."
"Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"Another thing that I would like to see is if Zscaler could have a separate product for direct access. I looked at a private access solution, but I understand there's a separate product that isn't integrated with this."
"The solution is quite expensive. It's around double what others are offering."
"The current reports can, therefore, be somewhat improved and simplified."
"The scalability of Zscaler Internet Access rates at 7-8 in the majority of cases. However, I am currently working with a client that requires very high internet throughput, which has been challenging."
"Zscaler should provide adjacent services, which would be complementary to their current offering that could to be more pragmatic for a customer. For example, if you take Akamai, you get multiple sets of services, all depending on the customer and the strategy and the complexity and the problems. In some areas, they are more varied in terms of coverage."
"Zscaler needs to add client-to-client communication. It's always client-to-server communication. The cloud and branch connectors could be improved because we're still dependent on traditional firewalls. They should eliminate this. They should also provide WAN devices should to compete with the SD-WAN solutions also."
"The solution can be improved by advancing some of the newer technologies such as the DLP feature, and adding email security."
"The admin console needs improvement as it loads slowly and sometimes takes two to five minutes to open."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost per year for licensing, and hardware, is approximately $850 for the basic plan."
"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."
"Hillstone's pricing is economical and neither very high nor very low."
"The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand."
"Price-wise, the tool is reasonable compared to the other products in the market but it is not a very low-priced tool. The solution does provide value for money."
"Because it's a cloud solution, we pay on a yearly basis. It is affordable and includes tech support and all features."
"We pay around 6,500 INR per user per year, which is very expensive. I would rate Zscaler's pricing one out of five."
"The pricing for Zscaler Internet Access could be made cheaper."
"The tool is moderately priced."
"The solution is a little bit expensive. On a scale of one to five, I would rate it as a three."
"The price of Zscaler Internet Access should improve, it is expensive."
"The pricing is fair based on its competitive market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

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Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
Which is better, Zscaler internet access or Netsckope CASB?
We researched Netskope but ultimately chose Zscaler. Netskope is a cloud access security broker that helps identify and manage cloud applications, protecting your sensitive data from exfiltration....
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler Internet Access?
We have not purchased Zscaler Internet Access through the AWS Marketplace; the licensing process was handled separately by our financial and management team.
 

Also Known As

No data available
ZIA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bank of China Macao, Instituto Tecnológico Bolivariano, Ministry of Labor in San Salvador, FEDCO
Ulster-Greene ARC, BanRegio, HDFC, Ralcorp Holdings Inc., British American Tobacco, Med America Billing Services Inc., Lanco Group, Aquafil, Telefonica, Swisscom, Brigade Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Cisco, Netgate and others in Firewalls. Updated: October 2026.
919,003 professionals have used our research since 2012.