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Menlo Secure vs Palo Alto Networks PA-Series 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Menlo Secure
Ranking in Firewalls
52nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (25th), ZTNA (26th), Cloud Security Remediation (9th)
Palo Alto Networks PA-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Menlo Secure is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks PA-Series1.1%
Menlo Secure0.4%
Other98.5%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2701794 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. 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. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.
Rohit Ghorpade - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Network Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Identity-based perimeter control has improved security and supports reliable remote access
Currently, we are working with vendors such as Palo Alto Networks PA-Series, Cisco, Check Point, and Citrix. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is a better firewall. Deep packet inspection and threat prevention basically comply with whatever traffic is incoming and outgoing through the firewall. I do not think anything improvement is required. The thing is that Palo Alto Networks PA-Series works mostly on a license-based model. If you want to utilize any feature, you have to purchase the license. For example, URL filtering requires a license purchase. It simplifies the implementation because LDAP server profile can be integrated. Basically, that simplifies the implementation of access rule or security policy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because 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 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."
"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."
"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."
"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."
"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."
"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."
"The product's initial setup process was simple."
"Palo Alto Networks firewalls offer single-mode panel processing with live scanning."
"A valuable feature that we can consider is the deployment time, which is significantly reduced. It is almost 90% faster compared to other solutions."
"I like the tool's security and web filtering features."
"It has its own logging system. You can go to monitoring and check the logs to see if a connection is getting blocked. You can use multiple types of logs to check if a file or a port is getting blocked or if there are any TCP resets from the source or destination. It's easy to troubleshoot with the monitoring and logging it provides."
"The documentation is great."
"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is basically integrated with LDAP to fetch the identity of the users and we provide access based on the identity."
"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is that it is highly customizable."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."
"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."
"There seem to be some issues with TAC (Technical Assistance Center) or Palo Alto support. Anytime you open a case, a level one engineer joins, and then you have to escalate it to level two or three. The support system has changed in the past few years, and that's something they need to look into."
"The support has been shaky. Initially, it took one or two hours to get a Palo Alto engineer, which is quite slow. I expect faster response times."
"The technical support offered by Palo Alto is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Licenses are too costly. As I compare with Check Point or other OEM, the licenses are too much more costly and they should work on bundled licenses."
"I encountered a slight issue with the application portal, which was not functioning correctly."
"With Palo Alto Networks PA-Series, I find that the support team takes a long time to resolve the issues that a user may face during the use of the product."
"Compared to other vendors, the solution's community should be strong enough to solve the problems engineers face."
"Palo Alto can improve the web application firewall (WAF) feature at layer 7."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
"Price-wise, Palo Alto offers high-price products."
"The solution's pricing is high compared to that of Cisco and Fortinet."
"It is a very expensive solution."
"The cost varies depending on the device model, with entry-level firewalls priced around $1,300 to $1,500, while higher-end models can reach prices of several hundred thousand dollars."
"The product is expensive."
"The prices are pretty high, definitely on the upper end."
"The product is offered to users at high prices compared to the pricing model of the other vendors in the market."
"The pricing is fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

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. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which mak...
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 access, and by doing it that way, it has multiple use cases. For example, it man...
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 of these functions, people typically choose another technology for those specifi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks PA-Series?
If we look at the features, then the price is good, but they do charge for the GlobalProtect VPNs. Overall, the pricing is good, but if they included GlobalProtect, it would be more valuable.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks PA-Series?
There is room for improvement in Palo Alto Networks PA-Series in the areas where they can minimize applications and implement features that can be useful for us.
What is your primary use case for Palo Alto Networks PA-Series?
I am using Palo Alto Networks PA-Series to ensure protection and cybersecurity by preventing and implementing network security features to safeguard networks against threats and malware. I have to ...
 

Also Known As

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Menlo Secure vs. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.