Hillstone T-Series vs ShieldX comparison

The compared Hillstone Networks and Fortinet solutions aren't in the same category. Hillstone Networks is ranked #40 in Firewalls , and holds a 0.1% mindshare in the category. Fortinet is ranked #14 in MS , and holds a 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of Hillstone Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Hillstone T-Series and ShieldX are both strong contenders in the cybersecurity market. ShieldX appears to have the upper hand due to its robust features and comprehensive security solutions.

Features: Hillstone T-Series offers network visibility, threat detection, and competitive pricing. ShieldX provides advanced micro-segmentation, cloud security features, and superior threat detection focused on cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Hillstone T-Series needs better reporting tools, improved integration capabilities, and more intuitive user interfaces. ShieldX could benefit from enhanced documentation, a more intuitive configuration process, and streamlined updates. Hillstone T-Series users face more integration challenges compared to ShieldX.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Hillstone T-Series has a straightforward deployment process but occasionally slow customer service. ShieldX has a steeper learning curve during deployment but receives high marks for responsive and effective customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Hillstone T-Series is recognized for its competitive setup costs and satisfactory ROI. ShieldX, though more expensive upfront, is considered worth the investment due to its extensive features and long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Hillstone T-Series vs. ShieldX Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Hillstone T-Series vs. ShieldX

December 2024

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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

Mindshare comparison

Firewalls

Microsegmentation Software

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

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.

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TahirMahmood

IT Manager at Zubair Feeds

Is stable and has a user-friendly dashboard and a good interface

We installed Hillstone T-Series after a ransomware attack. The dashboard and user interface are very good We cannot secure a specific IP class with this firewall. Another loophole with Hillstone T-Series is that when we connect through WiFi and turn our hot spot on, all who connect through the…

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MichaelProcyshyn

IT Director at park holidays uk

Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance

The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the IPS or IDS implementation. I appreciate most the agility or the flexibility to create hashes to block incoming threats, and I can integrate with third-party threat intelligence with our FortiGate."

"The technical support in our region is excellent."

"With Fortinet FortiGate, we improved security significantly."

"Fortinet FortiGate has many valuable features, such as IDS, and intrusion detection. It has security features that are in part with the technologies that are available in the market."

"The most important features with FortiGate are the web filter and application controls. We can control our internet usage and use the web filter for application purposes."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate are its simplicity, ease of installation, and ease of functionality."

"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"We installed Hillstone T-Series after a ransomware attack. The dashboard and user interface are very good."

"The only firewall able to monitor traffic from a CCTV network. Can detect unauthorized devices plugged into the network, which standard firewalls can't do."

"It has been stable so far."

"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."

"...It takes the exact same policies that you would apply to your on-premise environment and enables you to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

"The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."

"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."

Cons

"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."

"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."

"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."

"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."

"The solution could be improved by addressing limited local reporting. It requires obtaining the FortiAnalyzer for proper visibility because you can't do much from a reporting perspective with just the firewall alone."

"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."

"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."

"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"Licensing is not cheap."

"Another loophole with Hillstone T-Series is that when we connect through WiFi and turn our hot spot on, all who connect through the hotspot get all the functions, and the security does not work."

"They have a very good technical support team, but I think there are some communication issues due to language differences."

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."

"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."

"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs are very low."

"Fortinet FortiGate is cost-efficient. Palo Alto is expensive, but Fortinet FortiGate is not."

"We purchased a five-year bundle package, which worked out cheaper than competing solutions."

"Fortinet FortiGate gives you most of the features in one license."

"The price is really low. It's cheap in comparison to the cost of Cisco or CheckPoint, for example."

"The price of Fortinet FortiGate when compared to other solutions is high. However, my knowledge of the price is from third parties and I am not sure how accurate it is. I typically work in the technical area of my organization."

"Price-wise, it's at a good price point for our market."

"The setup cost was good. The Egyptian pound is declining, and upgrading Fortinet FortiGate yearly costs about $2000 USD, which equals one hundred Egyptian pounds. I maintain a business relationship with the vendor and receive support from them."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"On a scale from one to ten, with one being low and ten being high price, I would rate the price of Hillstone T-Series at three. There are no additional costs other than renewal costs."

"We got a much cheaper price than that provided by Fortinet right now."

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."

"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."

"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."

"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."

"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

17%

Real Estate/Law Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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Compared 29% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

June 2025

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

Hillstone T-Series Intelligent Next-Generation Firewalls, Hillstone iNGFW

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Fortinet

Hillstone’s T-Series intelligent Next-Generation Firewall (iNGFW) uses three key technologies to detect advanced attacks and provide continuous threat defense for today’s networks. First, it uses statistical clustering to detect unknown malware, leveraging the patented Hillstone Advanced Threat Detection engine (ATD). Second, it uses behavioral analytics to detect anomalous network behavior, which is based on the Hillstone Abnormal Behavior Detection engine (ABD). Finally, it leverages the Hillstone threat correlation analysis engine to correlate threat events detected by disparate engines – including ATD, ABD, Sandbox and other traditional signature-based threat detection technologies – along with context information to identify advanced threats.

Hillstone Networks

The ShieldX Elastic Security Platform dynamically scales to deliver comprehensive and consistent controls to protect data centers, cloud infrastructure, applications and data no matter where they are or where they go to make the cloud more secure than on-premise deployments. Our frictionless approach leverages agentless technology as well as the ShieldX Adaptive Intention Engine which autonomously translates and enforces intention into a set of comprehensive controls - microsegmentation, firewall, IPS and more - making security the easiest thing you do in the cloud.

Fortinet

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

University of Córdoba

Iowa State University

Buyer's Guide

Hillstone T-Series vs. ShieldX

December 2024

Free Report: Hillstone T-Series vs. ShieldX

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