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Hillstone Networks Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall vs VNS3 comparison

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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 Networks Hillston...
Ranking in AWS Marketplace
460th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VNS3
Ranking in AWS Marketplace
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Centralized security has protected hybrid workloads and provides deep visibility into cloud traffic
Cloud-native automation and IaC: Terraform support, auto-scaling templates, and API maturity lag behind Palo Alto VM-Series and FortiGate-VM. Dynamically scaling in public cloud requires more manual effort. Third-party integrations and ecosystem: fewer native connectors with SIEM/SOAR platforms, CSPM, and third-party tools compared to market leaders. Documentation and training material: technical documentation and community resources (forums, tutorials, KB) are more limited, which lengthens the learning curve for new teams. SASE/SSE capabilities: the integrated SASE/ZTNA offering is less mature compared to the convergence already provided by Fortinet or Palo Alto. Centralized multi-instance management: managing large fleets of virtual appliances could be smoother; centralized management (HSM) works, but some users would like more granularity and automation.
FA
Analytics Engineer at acquisition.ai
Centralized networking has secured multi-cloud data pipelines and improves analytics reliability
VNS3 could improve in terms of ease of setup, as while it is powerful, initial configuration for complex multi-cloud topologies can still feel quite technical and requires strong networking knowledge. Another potential improvement would be to tighten native integration with modern data stack tools; Airflow, dbt, and cloud data warehouses can benefit from more out-of-the-box connectivity templates. Additionally, the user interface and observability experience could be more modern and intuitive, especially for quickly diagnosing network flows without diving deep into logs. A pain point regarding needed improvements is that troubleshooting can still feel quite network engineering heavy. For data teams in my organization, we often want more pipeline-level visibility, such as directly seeing which ETL jobs or data flows are impacted when a tunnel or route changes. I would also appreciate more automation around policy setup, such as having auto-generated secure network templates for common data architectures such as AWS to Snowflake or on-premises to BigQuery, which would significantly reduce setup time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CloudEdge has helped us apply consistent security controls to our AWS workloads with our on-premises workloads."
"On balance, Hillstone CloudEdge is a solid and highly competitive solution within the virtual NGFW firewall segment."
"The most valuable aspect is the combination of traditional firewall functionality with cloud deployment flexibility."
"Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual Firewall provides advanced security for cloud and virtualized environments through next-generation firewall (NGFW) capabilities, including application visibility and control, intrusion prevention (IPS), antivirus protection, VPN services, threat intelligence, and advanced attack defense mechanisms."
"People should try VNS3 as we have not faced any issues with this product and I recommend it to others."
"VNS3 has positively impacted my organization by centralizing management and reducing operations overhead in terms of manpower and cost."
 

Cons

"The setup cost is more expensive with similar features."
"Additional automation resources for AWS would also be helpful."
"Cloud-native automation and IaC: Terraform support, auto-scaling templates, and API maturity lag behind Palo Alto VM-Series and FortiGate-VM."
"VNS3 could benefit from additional features such as the ability to share files through a pre-signed URL, which would be useful for team members to collaborate."
"VNS3 could improve in terms of ease of setup, as while it is powerful, initial configuration for complex multi-cloud topologies can still feel quite technical and requires strong networking knowledge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
27%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Hillstone Networks Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall?
Additional automation resources for AWS would also be helpful. More comprehensive CloudFormation or Terraform examples, deployment templates, and guidance for high-availability architectures could ...
What is your primary use case for Hillstone Networks Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall?
We deploy Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall in AWS to protect workloads hosted inside our VPC. We use it to inspect north-south traffic, enforce access-control policies, secure communication bet...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VNS3?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for VNS3 are reasonable at the current price.
What needs improvement with VNS3?
VNS3 could benefit from additional features such as the ability to share files through a pre-signed URL, which would be useful for team members to collaborate. Implementing pre-signed URL functiona...
What is your primary use case for VNS3?
VNS3 is primarily used for backup and storage purposes, allowing us to maintain our daily logs and store them there. For compliance requirements, we archive files and other storage on VNS3. When we...
 

Comparisons

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Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Hillstone Networks Hillstone CloudEdge Virtual-Firewall vs. VNS3 and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.