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Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention comparison

 

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 S-Series Network ...
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
24th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Palo Alto Networks Advanced...
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is 5.6%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention5.6%
Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System1.0%
Other93.4%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1080873 - PeerSpot reviewer
Complements any firewall
The core processors are there and it's able to generate reports for that. It also complements any kind of firewall. For example, if an end user is using Palo Alto as a firewall, they'd need another layer of firewall like the S-Series that will protect internal servers. It's something that complements any firewall in the market.
Partha Dash - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced protection enables us to confidently secure against evolving threats
Palo Alto Networks can improve Advanced Threat Prevention by catering to the growing adoption of AI and agentic tooling. The Threat Protection modules should have the necessary intelligence to protect against those types of threats, as AI will be there to do a human job; this is an evolving area. From an Advanced Threat Protection perspective, the technology associated with Palo Alto Networks, such as their sandboxing environment, is quite good. However, Palo Alto needs to focus on how to bring that technology to end users and how easy it is to use, especially in a hybrid environment where users work from various locations. While Palo Alto excels in certain setups, they need to improve the user experience in distributed working conditions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Setup is straightforward with the same reliability and scalability as the firewall series."
"The user interface is a bit more professional than some free products."
"Edge protection is a valuable feature."
"The application control and vulnerability protection are the most valuable features."
"The sandboxing tools offer great prevention for cloud feeds."
"For those who want a next-gen firewall that's easy to configure and easy to operate, I think you should go for Palo Alto."
"It's very easy to use and configure. What is nice about Palo Alto is that even if you don't understand how to use it, you can just click on upload and upload everything that needs to be blocked."
"I find the malware protection very handy."
"It effectively prevents malware, ransomware, and other attacks."
 

Cons

"Lack of tools to help educate end users"
"The initial setup is complex."
"The installation was complicated."
"Palo Alto's maintenance needs to be improved."
"The documentation needs to be improved. I need better information about how to configure it and what the best practices are."
"The technology firewall anomaly network could stand improvement."
"Sometimes when you want to group a set of ports, and communicate with Palo Alto, you cannot group TCP and UDP ports together. This needs to be adjusted."
"The price of licenses should be lowered to make it less costly to scale our solution."
"Right now we are focusing on email. If Palo Alto can increase the features related to email filtering and the new malware, it would help us protect our systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The product’s pricing is expensive for small companies."
"There is an initial, expensive investment but the return is good."
"It's not too expensive."
"The price of the solution is higher than others on the market. A price reduction would be beneficial if it does not impact their database quality."
"The pricing and the licensing are pretty competitive at this stage. As a reseller, I would like to see the price come down a little bit so I can compete better against other firewalls because we do that all the time."
"The pricing has improved with the newer generation of their Firewalls, but the price could always be lower."
"It is an expensive solution and I would like to see a drop in price."
"If you want to have all of the good features then you have to pay extra for licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would prefer Arbor.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention?
Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention requires an add-on license and is considered expensive compared to competitors like Cisco AMP and FortiGate ( /products/fortinet-fortigate-reviews ) fi...
 

Also Known As

Hillstone S-Series NIPS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
University of Arkansas, JBG SMITH, SkiStar AB, TRI-AD, Temple University, Telkom Indonesia
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Darktrace, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS). Updated: August 2025.
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