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Huawei NGFW vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall 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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
330
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Huawei NGFW
Ranking in Firewalls
31st
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (13th)
Zscaler Cloud Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
24th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.4%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huawei NGFW is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zscaler Cloud Firewall is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable
In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.
Muhammad-Nadeem - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable and easy-to-setup product that can be used to configure different policies for specific users
In other next-generation firewalls, if you are creating virtual systems, they will create separate hardware resources for different virtual systems. Other products will create a different routing table when we create a routing protocol. In Huawei, the routing table, control plan, and data plan will share the resources. Every virtual system should have separate resources, routing tables, and hardware resources. We have created multiple segments and virtual systems, and we don't want one segment to communicate with another. The product must divide the virtual firewalls with different utilization systems. The hardware, routing switch, and security bundle should be separate and different. The solution does not have sandboxing features. It should provide a sandboxing solution. It should also work on zero-day attacks. The solution should be comparable with the products provided by Palo Alto, Check Point, and Cisco.
Bhaskar Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Though it helps deal with web traffic or any malicious traffic, it needs to work on its DC performance issues
The product's initial setup phase is moderate in level, so it is neither very complex nor very easy. For the deployment, my company first needs to gather all the requirements of the users and the domain names and consider how many users there are in the company. In the implementation and planning part, my company needs to consider what kind of policies we will create while ensuring that the policies are created based on the requirements of the users. There is a need to segregate the users' requirements since there are separate departments in the company, like the HR department, sales department, IT department, and manufacturing department, so that our company can create policies depending on their requirements. On-site, if you want a GRE tunnel, our company can handle GRE tunnel traffic routing and Zscaler Cloud Firewall, after which Zscaler will take action based on the policies created by our organization. For the deployments and maintenance, a team of five members consisting of two managers and three engineers is required.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"It blocks the vulnerabilities that can negatively impact us."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."
"The stability is fine. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten."
"The most useful feature is the performance of the firewalls and networking operations."
"The mapping features and traffic logging are good."
"The solution's performance is good with IPSec."
"I am impressed with the product's antivirus features, strong encryption, policy implementation and easier installation."
"The operational management dashboard is easy to use for the customers."
"The tool helps us to integrate with other brands."
"The solution's implementation is pretty easy."
"Since it is really customizable, I can use it and avoid enabling access to the full network."
"Zscaler is still a very good product."
"It is a stable solution."
"Most of the features that Zscaler has to offer, we will deploy."
"If malicious traffic attacks our on-premises servers, then it gets blocked by Zscaler Cloud Firewall."
"Includes advanced tech protection."
"The visibility and log availability offered are highly valued for troubleshooting purposes, and this is a key factor driving customer interest in the firewall module."
"The scalability is okay. We have around 2200 people using this solution."
 

Cons

"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"At this moment, we believe that Fortinet FortiGate should be improved by injecting more AI because the kind of threats we are seeing are more ransomware threats. Fortinet FortiGate is able to ensure these threats do not enter, but we would prefer to see more proactive alerting mechanisms come out."
"​It needs to improve its ISP load balancing.​"
"The tool lacks features."
"There needs to be more security equipment for the solution."
"The WAF capability in the Huawei Firewall is missing."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"The IPS feature must be improved."
"One issue is integration. Huawei can't detect Indicators of Compromise (IoC). I can get a lot of information about security, but can't automatically input the EP, domain URL, and file hashes I get from Hackersworld into my blocklist."
"I would like to see an antivirus solution included with the product."
"With the Huawei firewall, none of the features comes at the top. We found out later that customer support is really not good. For this firewall, because of our customers' routine, for example, every six months they'll do a penetration test to find weaknesses. So whenever they came up with VAPT reports, they are looking to Huawei for help. I think that's basically because it's a different culture. Chinese culture and our culture is different. They have always tried to help find some excuses or say some other things that cannot help you solve the problem immediately."
"Instead of the standard license, they should certainly provide customers with the visibility to access and view the logs."
"The issue right now is probably that Zscaler is not providing web browser isolation. Another solution, Menlo, offers this. For one customer, we had to send traffic to Menlo to do the isolation for us. It was requested by the customer so that they could integrate any iframe. Zscaler needs to add this type of feature in their next release."
"Data Leak Prevention is only for web filtering and there is no protection for email."
"The product could improve its integration with some legacy systems."
"When it comes to customer support, there is room for improvement in Zscaler's service."
"Certain criteria need to be met if you want to scale this solution."
"There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, the GUI is outdated, with noticeable lags and delays, especially when generating reports for past transactions."
"There are some areas it could improve when it comes to blocking, we have to block some things manually. For example, if we block a top-level domain we have seen that the new IPs come through, the IPs are not blocked. There should be some more granular way of doing it. My only request is if you're blocking something at a top level, the sub-level sub-domains and all those other IPs should be blocked too automatically."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Easy to understand licensing requirements."
"When I look around at other products, such as Sophos, Fortinet FortiGate is 20% to 30% more expensive with our current cost."
"The price for the device and software is high. However, the solution is of good quality and has a lot of features."
"It's a very full-featured and it's priced well solution."
"Setup cost may be not so low, as you expect, because it depends on different factors, but TCO for 5 years may pleasantly surprise you."
"The pricing is justified. It's a little pricey, but what you pay for is what you get."
"The pricing is fair."
"The pricing is cheap."
"The solution is inexpensive."
"Huawei is 30% cheaper than Arista."
"Huawei is priced lower than most competitors."
"I believe that we are entitled to a one-year extension on our licensing."
"When you compare the price with other products, it's quite cost-effective. But the problem is always after, let's say, two years or three years later because they are not able to provide updates or patches very quickly."
"The solution isn't cheap. It's market price."
"The price of the license of this solution is high."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis. It is somewhere around 30 or 40 pounds per user for our organization."
"It comes at a significantly reduced cost while ensuring control and effectiveness."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product is a bit expensive compared to the solutions offered by its competitors, like Palo Alto. There is a need to make yearly payments towards the license in charges associated with the product."
"It is expensive for small businesses."
"There are different subscription models available."
"Zscaler is priced too high compared to the cost of Fortinet."
"It is not the most budget-friendly solution, but it's important to consider its overall value."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What do you like most about Huawei NGFW?
The solution's implementation is pretty easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Huawei NGFW?
The pricing is quite cheap compared to other NGFWs like Palo Alto or Cisco.
What needs improvement with Huawei NGFW?
Huawei should improve their threat intelligence. They need to have a more diversified platform and continuously updat...
Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?
Netscope, Zscaler if they continue route they are on now. FIrewalls needs great deal of automation on each end, datac...
What do you like most about Zscaler Cloud Firewall?
The product’s firewall and VPN package are fantastic compared to any other solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler Cloud Firewall?
Zscaler Cloud Firewall is quite expensive compared to competitors. However, it offered moderate value for money.
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
Huawei USG Firewalls, USG9500 Series, USG6600 Series, USG6300 Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
KMITL, Peking University
Zenith Live, Azure, Carlsberg Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Huawei NGFW vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.