Menlo Secure vs Palo Alto Networks PA-Series comparison

Menlo Security and Palo Alto Networks are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Menlo Security is ranked #54, while Palo Alto Networks is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.6. Menlo Security holds a 0.1% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to Palo Alto Networks’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Menlo Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Menlo Secure and Palo Alto Networks PA-Series compete in network security. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series has the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and perceived value.

Features: Menlo Secure users value its robust web isolation technology and ease of integration. They also highlight its ability to prevent phishing attacks. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is praised for its advanced threat protection, seamless network integration, and customizable security policies.

Room for Improvement: Menlo Secure needs to improve its reporting capabilities, expand API support, and enhance user interface design. Palo Alto Networks could improve its setup process, provide better documentation resources, and optimize system performance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Menlo Secure users find the deployment straightforward and appreciate responsive customer service. Palo Alto Networks users note a more complex deployment process but commend the strong customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Menlo Secure offers competitive pricing and positive ROI. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series, although more expensive, delivers strong ROI through enhanced features.

To learn more, read our detailed Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series

September 2025

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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

As of October 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.4%, up from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Secure is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	20.4%
Palo Alto Networks PA-Series	0.8%
Menlo Secure	0.1%
Other	78.7%

Firewalls

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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Olivier DALOY

Group Information Systems Security Director - CISO at Faurecia

Secures users wherever they are and enable us to inspect SSL traffic, but we encountered too many issues

The solution should have no impact but it does have a bit of impact on end-users. For example, we encountered some issues in the downloads that took longer than they did without using Menlo. That is clearly not transparent for users. We expected not to have any latency when downloading anything from the internet with Menlo compared to without Menlo. We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution. In other words, we hope to get the same level of protection, while reducing the number of visible bugs, issues, latencies, impacts on performance, et cetera, that we have today with Menlo. We already solved most of them, but we still have too many such instances of issues with Menlo, even though it is protecting us for sure. The weak point of the solution is that it has consumed far too much of my team's time, taking them away from operations and projects and design. It took far too much time to implement it and get rid of all of the live issues that we encountered when our users started using the solution. The good point is that I'm sure it is protecting us and it's probably protecting us more than any other solution, which is something I appreciate a lot as a CISO. But on the other hand, the number of issues reported by the users, and the amount of time that has been necessary for either my team or the infrastructure team to spend diagnosing, troubleshooting, and fixing the issues that we had with the solution was too much. And that doesn't include the need to still use our previous solution, Blue Coat, that we have kept active so that whatever is not compatible or doesn't work with Menlo, can be handled by that other solution. It is far too demanding in terms of effort and workload and even cost, at the end of the day. That is why we decided to transition to another solution. If we had known in the beginning that we would not be able to get rid of Blue Coat, we probably would not have chosen Menlo because we were planning to replace Blue Coat with something that was at least able to do the same and more. We discovered that it was able to do more but it was not able to replace it, which is an issue. It is not only a matter of cost but is also a matter of not being able to reduce the number of partners that you have to deal with. In addition, they could enhance the ability to troubleshoot. Whenever a connection going through Menlo fails for any reason, being able to troubleshoot what the configuration of Menlo should be to allow it through would help, as would knowing what level of additional risk we would be taking with that configuration.

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Bilal Mustafa

Operations Specialist - MX Operations at Bank Alfalah Limited

Manage security with leading firewall features while navigating AWS cloud challenges

The most effective features of the solution are its Magic Quadrant positioning, making it a leading firewall on perimeter areas and internet edges. It functions very well in data centers. Its effectiveness is highly dependent on budget and approach. Moreover, the return on investment is calculated according to my organization’s sizing and has never been an issue.

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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

"You have access to CLI in case you have no web access."

"The user interface is intuitive. Anyone can configure the firewall with little knowledge of the product. The back-end is robust with good security."

"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."

"The VPN is the most valuable feature."

"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."

"I prefer FortiGate because it has a lot of other solutions embedded within it and is the easiest for our technicians to operate."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."

"It's very fast and easy to configure."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."

"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."

"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."

"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."

"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."

"It is a scalable solution."

"I like the tool's security and web filtering features."

"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is that it is highly customizable."

"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"A valuable feature that we can consider is the deployment time, which is significantly reduced. It is almost 90% faster compared to other solutions."

"The reporting feature and application ID functionality within Palo Alto Networks PA-Series are incredibly valuable to us."

"The solution provides good customer support."

"The best features of the Palo Alto Networks PA-Series firewall include Global protector VPN workings, and content filtering is easy to manage and operate."

More Palo Alto Networks PA-Series pros

Cons

"There are some issues with security features and aspects like logs not being up to the mark."

"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."

"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."

"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."

"The price could be improved."

"FortiGate IPS is somewhat pricey compared to other solutions. There is also room for improvement in terms of the radio signals. The FortiGate WiFi has a relatively short range. I've found there is a lag in its zero-day malware response that could be better, and FortiGate could integrate better with other brands of equipment or identity management solutions."

"The main thing they have to improve in Fortinet FortiGate is the technical support; the rest of the features are good enough. We can handle them, but sometimes you really need support, and in that case, we are not getting it at the proper time."

"I would like to see improvements in Fortinet FortiGate regarding the active-active scenario. The active-active scenario is supported but not recommended, whereas other vendors are implementing active-active without issues."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."

"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."

"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."

"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is expensive. We would like to see additional threat hunting features."

"The SD-WAN feature of Palo Alto Networks is not good compared to FortiGate."

"As we migrate fully into the cloud, additional features like capacity upgrading and improvements to hardware resources will be necessary, especially since our equipment consists of older-generation switches and routers."

"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is complicated to configure compared to one of its competitors."

"I had opened a case before with the tool because I could not create a wildcard for the security address. We can create wildcards for security addresses in Fortinet, but this feature doesn't exist in the product."

"Compared to other vendors, the solution's community should be strong enough to solve the problems engineers face."

"In future releases, maybe Palo Alto can enhance and enlarge their portfolio with SIEM solutions. They already have an endpoint protection solution, SOAR solution, that's fine. But when it comes to standalone IDS/IPS solution or email security solution, for example, we don't have any product in that category for Palo Alto."

"Utilizing these features as a unified solution can require additional setup, particularly when incorporating Panorama for centralized management, which may involve extra costs."

More Palo Alto Networks PA-Series cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs are very low."

"FortiGate SWG is a cost-effective solution well-suited for organisations of all sizes."

"In my opinion, the pricing of the product is reasonable."

"The solution requires a license annually, it is not a user license, you can have as many users as your want. I must renew the license regularly per device."

"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."

"There is a license to use Fortinet FortiGate."

"Its price could be better."

"When comparing this solution to others, I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of pricing. However, the issue of requiring a separate license for redundancy is a drawback, and I would rate it a nine out of ten."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."

"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."

"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."

"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series's price is much higher than other firewall brands."

"Price-wise, Palo Alto offers high-price products."

"The pricing is fair."

"Compared to other vendors, Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is expensive."

"From my perspective, managing the price is important, especially because we're a small business. For larger organizations like Barclays, we provide our requirements to the client, and they place the order on BigFix. It's their responsibility to consider their budget and make decisions accordingly. We appreciate the features we get, but the cost-sharing still depends on the client."

"We have to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution."

"The pricing is a bit on the higher side."

"The product is expensive."

More Palo Alto Networks PA-Series pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	351
Midsize Enterprise	130
Large Enterprise	187

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

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...

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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...

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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 ...

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What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto....

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What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic ...

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What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Palo Alto Networks PA-Series?

The reporting feature and application ID functionality within Palo Alto Networks PA-Series are incredibly valuable to...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks PA-Series?

Regarding value for money, we brought this Palo Alto Networks PA-Series firewall last month, and we have taken up to ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks PA-Series?

I do not have any challenges or areas for improvement with Palo Alto Networks PA-Series. There are no AI integrations...

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 18% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 9% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 23% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Menlo Secure

Compared 16% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure

Compared 15% of the time

Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) vs Menlo Secure

Compared 11% of the time

Silo by Authentic8 vs Menlo Secure

Compared 6% of the time

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OPNsense vs Palo Alto Networks PA-Series

Compared 16% of the time

Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks PA-Series

Compared 13% of the time

Sophos XG vs Palo Alto Networks PA-Series

Compared 10% of the time

Sophos XGS vs Palo Alto Networks PA-Series

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs Palo Alto Networks PA-Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks PA-Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

October 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

October 2025

Download Menlo Secure product report

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks PA-Series

October 2025

Download Palo Alto Networks PA-Series product report

Also Known As

No data available

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

No data available

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate excels in providing integrated VPN, firewalling, and Unified Threat Management (UTM) with centralized management and high availability. It supports remote access and comprehensive threat protection, making it a preferred choice for securing networks.

Fortinet FortiGate offers a robust security platform with features such as strong intrusion prevention, application control, and web filtering. Its integration with Active Directory and SD-WAN functionality provides scalable solutions for large networks. Users appreciate its ease of use through centralized management interfaces, ensuring robust security with flexible configurations. However, FortiGate could enhance its graphical interface and technical support responsiveness, address firmware bugs and costly licensing, improve logging, integrate better with third-party tools, and strengthen scalability and memory for log storage. Complexity in configuration and the need for intuitive features are noted challenges, and there's a demand for advanced security, zero-trust capabilities, and AI integration.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN: Secure remote access and connectivity.
Firewalling: Protects networks from unauthorized access and attacks.
UTM: Offers a comprehensive approach to threat management.
SD-WAN: Optimizes traffic routing for efficient network performance.
Web Filtering: Controls and monitors web access and ensures Internet security.

What benefits or ROI should be considered?

Centralized Management: Simplifies administration and monitoring.
High Availability: Ensures consistent security and network availability.
Scalability: Adapts to the needs of growing networks.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Provides robust security measures.
Ease of Use: Minimizes the complexity of security management.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries like education, finance, and government. Companies use it for firewall protection, VPN, and SD-WAN capabilities, ensuring secure perimeter and data center security. It facilitates remote access management and traffic routing optimization, offering reliable security and connectivity solutions.

Fortinet

Menlo Security Secure Application Access

Menlo Security Secure Application Access makes zero trust access easy, giving users secure connectivity to private applications, including web and legacy applications. At the core of Secure Application Access is the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser, which fetches, secures and delivers the content for users.

In addition to providing simple-to-deploy, clientless ZTA, Secure Application Access and the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser protect applications from attacks such as session hijacking, cookie manipulation, and other tactics that employ protocol manipulation.

Secure Application Access protects applications from Internet threats and provides granular controls for added protection of the application and associated data. These security controls include Read-only/Read-write, Upload/download, Copy/paste, AV scanning, Sandboxing, and Data Loss Prevention.

Last Mile Data Protection

Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection identifies and prevents sensitive data from leaving your company by meticulously inspecting all file uploads and user input across browsing sessions. Leveraging the Secure Cloud Browser, users are protected from the internet and you can protect your organization from data loss with comprehensive traffic monitoring and controls. This approach addresses the growing concerns surrounding data leakage in the age of AI tools like ChatGPT.

By identifying sensitive data through file types, regular expressions, or predefined libraries, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection empowers security teams to regulate data input into AI platforms and prevent unauthorized uploads. This capability provides crucial protection for intellectual property, PII, and other confidential information.

The solution leverages the Menlo Cloud Security Platform's visibility and control over traffic to reliably detect and prevent data leaks originating from both browser submission forms and non-browser traffic. With the ability to inspect encrypted web traffic, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection enforces DLP policies consistently across all users and devices, ensuring comprehensive data protection.

Menlo Security

Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is essential for firewall implementation, perimeter defense, securing infrastructure boundaries, web filtering, VPN, and threat prevention. Organizations deploy it for secure cloud connections, internet security, and managing network devices.

Companies trust Palo Alto Networks PA-Series to protect corporate networks from external threats, control traffic between networks, and meet regulatory compliance. Integrating well with applications, it offers centralized management and advanced security features such as IDS, IPS, and GlobalProtect. It ensures stable performance, application-based policy enforcement, and decryption of SSL traffic while providing efficient resource usage and comprehensive logging.

What are the key features?

Stability: Reliable performance for continuous protection.
App-ID: Application-based policy enforcement.
URL Filtering: Prevents access to malicious websites.
Security Controls: Comprehensive threat prevention mechanisms.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies management and operations.
Efficient Resource Usage: Optimized for minimal resource consumption.
Reporting: Detailed logs and analytics for better insights.
Antivirus: Protects against malware and viruses.
WildFire: Advanced threat prevention with machine learning AI.
Protocol Anomaly Detection: Identifies unusual network behavior.
SSL Decryption: Ensures secure traffic inspection.
Encryption: Safeguards sensitive data.
VPN Capabilities: Secure remote access for users.
Active Directory Integration: Streamlines user authentication.
Quality of Service (QoS): Manages network traffic efficiently.

What benefits should be evaluated?

Enhanced Security: Superior threat prevention and detection.
Centralized Management: Streamlined control of network devices.
Regulatory Compliance: Assists in meeting legal requirements.
Operational Efficiency: Reduced resource usage and downtime.
Comprehensive Reporting: Complete visibility into network activities.
Scalability: Adapts to growing network demands.
User Accessibility: Simplifies secure access for remote employees.

Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is implemented across industries like healthcare, finance, retail, and manufacturing. In healthcare, it ensures patient data protection and compliance with HIPAA. Financial institutions utilize it to secure transactions and meet regulatory standards. Retailers benefit from protecting customer information and securing online payments. Manufacturing companies deploy it to safeguard intellectual property and control plant floor operations.

Palo Alto Networks

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series

September 2025

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