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Juniper Contrail SD-WAN vs Steelhead comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.9
Juniper Contrail SD-WAN offers enhanced performance, faster deployments, cost efficiencies, robust security, and improved visibility, simplifying management and reducing errors.
Sentiment score
8.5
Steelhead enhanced bandwidth efficiency, resulting in substantial cost savings and improved user experience without additional tools or upgrades.
Without Steelhead, we would have spent much more on bandwidth costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
1.0
Juniper Contrail SD-WAN support is rated highly, with responsive service and effective assistance from Juniper and local partners.
Sentiment score
6.4
Steelhead's customer service and technical support are efficient, knowledgeable, and responsive, though complex issues may face slower resolution.
Steelhead's support is generally good for typical issues yet can be time-consuming during complex problem-solving across teams, particularly for Active Directory integration.
Riverbed's customer service and technical support would be rated an eight.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Juniper Contrail SD-WAN excels in scalability for large enterprises, despite security challenges and evolving competition from companies like Fortinet.
Sentiment score
8.4
Steelhead efficiently scales for SMBs and enterprises, managing up to 20,000 users with effective traffic handling and deployment support.
It allows us to maximize use from our MPLS providers by handling traffic efficiently across phased deployments.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Juniper Contrail SD-WAN is praised for stability and reliability, with users favoring it over Cisco and reporting no performance issues.
Sentiment score
8.5
Steelhead offers stable, efficient network operations with minimal downtime, robust performance, and reliable support, ensuring continuous traffic flow.
It's quite stable and provides all necessary alerts if something is wrong.
Steelhead helps significantly with large data transfers.
 

Room For Improvement

Juniper Contrail SD-WAN needs better training, user-friendly demo, improved support, integration, marketing, and optimized cost and UI/UX design.
Steelhead needs improved traffic handling, encryption optimization, enhanced response times, better integration, and user support with fewer scaling limitations.
It could still be useful in places with satellite communications, such as the south of Chile, or in the mining industry.
It would help if Riverbed could prevent such drastic impacts during updates.
 

Setup Cost

Juniper Contrail SD-WAN offers cost-effective, flexible licensing with competitive pricing, ensuring excellent ROI for large enterprises.
Enterprise users find Steelhead costly yet valuable for TCP optimization, with complex licensing and comparable alternatives like SolarWinds.
Buying the hardware initially is costly, but yearly maintenance and licenses are not as expensive.
Steelhead is considered an expensive solution in our country.
 

Valuable Features

Juniper Contrail SD-WAN boosts security, visibility, and performance, excels in cloud integration, and simplifies operations through automation and acquisitions.
Steelhead optimizes WAN with compression and caching, enhancing network efficiency and reducing costs in bandwidth-limited environments.
Functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP, and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency.
Steelhead's most valuable feature is its ability to hash and send only the important parts of the information, avoiding the resending of data.
 

Categories and Ranking

Juniper Contrail SD-WAN
Ranking in WAN Edge
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (15th)
Steelhead
Ranking in WAN Edge
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the WAN Edge category, the mindshare of Juniper Contrail SD-WAN is 1.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Steelhead is 1.3%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
WAN Edge
 

Featured Reviews

Luis Corrochano - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and scalable solution that helps to cut cost by reducing MPLs
My customers use the solution to have better control and knowledge about the applications inside ONE Access. It also helps them cut costs by reducing MPLs and using better internet access from FTTH.  The solution is expensive. Its support can be better.  The tool is stable.  The solution is more…
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency & bandwidth saving, best layer 7 QoS shaping policy can be achieved with ease
There are several features specific to branches, like keeping data hot and active on Steelhead devices. These features prevent unnecessary data travel across the international MPLS. Additionally, functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP for branches and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency along with really good QoS for bandwidth shaping.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Government
11%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Juniper Contrail SD-WAN?
I've worked with several SD-WAN solutions over the past few years, and the product felt more like an automated provisioning tool. Unlike solutions from Palo Alto or other SD-WANs orchestrated by a ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Juniper Contrail SD-WAN?
My advice regarding setup costs, pricing, and licensing for Juniper Contrail SD-WAN would be to carefully evaluate and position the solution in line with competitive offerings, especially consideri...
What needs improvement with Juniper Contrail SD-WAN?
There might be additional features that would be beneficial to have in the Juniper Contrail SD-WAN solution, including potential design improvements and UI/UX issues that have been observed.
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitoring solutions were ExtraHop first, Riverbed SteelCenter second. Their negotiated c...
What do you like most about Riverbed Steelhead?
One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users.
What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?
In the past, we have sold a lot of Steelhead ( /products/steelhead-reviews ) for retail companies, insurance companies, some finance companies, and some engineering companies. Steelhead ( /products...
 

Also Known As

Contrail SD-WAN
RIverbed Steelhead
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Allied Pinnacle
ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes
Find out what your peers are saying about Juniper Contrail SD-WAN vs. Steelhead and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.