Menlo Secure vs SonicWall NSv comparison

Menlo Security and SonicWall are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Menlo Security is ranked #52, while SonicWall is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.4. Menlo Security holds a 0.1% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to SonicWall’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Menlo Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of SonicWall users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Menlo Secure and SonicWall NSv compete in cybersecurity. SonicWall NSv appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced features despite higher pricing.

Features: Menlo Secure offers an isolation-based security model, seamless integration, and robust web protection. SonicWall NSv provides deep packet inspection, comprehensive threat prevention, and advanced threat detection.

Room for Improvement: Menlo Secure could have more customizable threat alerts, better analytics reporting, and enhanced user interface design. SonicWall NSv needs better reporting tools, a streamlined management console, and more intuitive user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Menlo Secure has a straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. SonicWall NSv has a steeper learning curve but commendable support after setup.

Pricing and ROI: Menlo Secure has a reasonable setup cost and satisfactory ROI. SonicWall NSv, though more expensive, offers valuable ROI due to extensive features.

To learn more, read our detailed Menlo Secure vs. SonicWall NSv Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. SonicWall NSv

December 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 January 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 18.8%, down from 20.7% 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 SonicWall NSv is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	18.8%
SonicWall NSv	0.3%
Menlo Secure	0.1%
Other	80.8%

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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reviewer2701794

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.

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Samodthemiya Gamage

Senior Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

Secures east-west cloud traffic and improves threat visibility through deep inspection

SonicWall NSv offers great features. I cannot pinpoint a single best feature, but the best feature is the ability to deliver the full, high-efficiency inspection power of a physical SonicWall, including zero-day defense using Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection to the cloud, efficiently removing the performance versus cloud trade-off typically associated with virtual firewalls. Regarding deep memory inspection and real-time zero-day defense in SonicWall NSv, deep memory inspection is distinct from traditional sandboxing methods because it is focused on what is happening in the memory during file execution time, rather than just observing file system behavior. The deep memory inspection process addresses all challenges by employing a proprietary technique within the secure analysis environment, focusing on CPU-level analysis and real-time verdict. Those are the key points. SonicWall NSv's user interface is quite clear and easy to navigate. If someone has not worked with SonicWall and this is their first experience with the platform, I would highly recommend it. It is very easy to navigate and very user-friendly. SonicWall NSv has positively impacted our organization because we gained clear visibility into our network, and it helps to identify potential security issues that we had. We were able to remediate those issues, and so far, we have had a great experience with SonicWall NSv. We were able to manage approximately 99% of network-based attacks through this platform.

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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

"We've found the solution to be pretty stable."

"The solution provides an easy way to filter information and Fortinet lab is a great place to discover new things."

"The most valuable feature is the deep inspection for traffic, which is capable of identifying zero-day attacks."

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate SWG is its stability."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a very light product. It's easy to understand."

"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."

"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."

"We have a redundant setup for failover, however, it has not had to fail over ever and we have not had a capacity issue."

More Fortinet FortiGate 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"SonicWall NSv helped our organization maintain and send traffic consistently through our secure VPN channels between the SonicWalls, serving around 300 employees in our organization."

"SonicWall NSv has positively impacted my organization by regenerating the network infrastructure, making it more efficient and useful for all of the company's site-to-site VPNs."

"SonicWall NSv positively impacts my organization by providing firewall capabilities as a virtual firewall while offering the capabilities of a physical firewall with great performance and reliability."

"SonicWall NSv has positively impacted my organization by allowing our customers to access data 24 hours, seven days a week, making it a wonderful feature for business continuity for our customers."

"SonicWall NSv has reduced the risk of attack, which is very impactful for any organization, especially larger organizations."

"SonicWall NSv has positively impacted my organization, as we have not seen any threat or any successful cyberattack; the positive aspect is that we also use SonicWall physical devices for our on-premise infrastructure, so the integration is excellent."

"SonicWall excelled in threat management, evident in how users handled it effectively."

More SonicWall NSv pros

Cons

"The stability could be a bit better."

"Their support can be better, and there should be better policies for immediate replacement in critical situations."

"Performance on the box and technical support are areas where Fortinet FortiGate can be improved."

"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."

"For Fortinet FortiGate, their code development would definitely be something they need to improve on to reduce vulnerabilities that need to be patched."

"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."

"From a pricing perspective, I would rate them a six."

"I wish Fortinet FortiGate's UI updates would be done in a more simplified way to improve it."

More Fortinet FortiGate 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"SonicWall NSV's initial setup is complicated and requires good knowledge."

"I believe SonicWall NSv is performing well overall, but I think it would be beneficial to have physical versions, such as the hardware of SonicWall NSv, for some environments that may not necessarily need to be connected to the cloud."

"I faced a problem when migrating from an old Generation 6 firewall to a Generation 7 firewall, where I could not simply copy the configuration from one appliance to the other; I had to rebuild the entire policies, IP addressing, the rules, the NAT rules, the tunnels, and the VPN policies."

"I would like to see the reporting opened up and have several more opportunities for automatic reports."

"Regarding improvements, I find that logs are required. I chose 8 out of 10 because logs are unable to restore in the same system, requiring a separate analyzer or analytics."

"There are limitations to bandwidth management."

"SonicWall NSv's performance is reliable but can be limited by single-stream CPU usage when DPI-SSL is enabled, but in most cases, it is a great experience."

"I would prefer to see improvements in the quality of the OS running on it, particularly if there are some bugs. The improvement needed is about the user interface."

More SonicWall NSv cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While slightly more affordable than competitors, it remains relatively expensive due to its inclusive subscription."

"We find the most valuable aspect of this solution is the price. It is affordable, and cheaper than other firewalls."

"The price is okay."

"Fortinet prices are around $600 for the small 40F model, and for licenses, the simplest option is about $300 for a year. They sell licenses that can last for 1, 2, 3, or 5 years."

"It's expensive, but compared to the competition it's okay."

"The price of FortiGate is comparable to that of most other firewall solutions and is more affordable than Cisco."

"The pricing is better compared to other solutions like Check Point, Arista, or Cisco."

"I give the pricing of the solution a six out of ten."

More Fortinet FortiGate 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."

"Our initial purchase, which included a three-year term of support, was about $25,000 USD."

"We are currently using the trial version."

"SonicWall NSV is not very costly."

"The tool is moderately priced."

"The solution’s pricing is less compared to other products."

"The solution's pricing is good for the technology it offers."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

14%

Retailer

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Security Firm

12%

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	357
Midsize Enterprise	133
Large Enterprise	188

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

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When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

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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....

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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 SonicWall NSV?

The product helps improve our security.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall NSV?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it's okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SonicWall NSV?

While I have not encountered significant challenges, during the configuration part, I noticed that some features, suc...

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 6% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 32% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Menlo Secure

Compared 11% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure

Compared 10% of the time

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

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudflare One vs Menlo Secure

Compared 6% of the time

More Menlo Secure Competitors

Azure Firewall vs SonicWall NSv

Compared 25% of the time

SonicWall NSa vs SonicWall NSv

Compared 21% of the time

Stormshield Network Security vs SonicWall NSv

Compared 16% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs SonicWall NSv

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs SonicWall NSv

Compared 6% of the time

More SonicWall NSv Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

January 2026

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

January 2026

Download Menlo Secure product report

Buyer's Guide

SonicWall NSv

January 2026

Download SonicWall NSv product report

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

SonicWall Network Security Virtual

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate is a versatile network security tool offering features like VPN, firewall, web filtering, intrusion prevention, and scalability. It is known for its performance and integration with other Fortinet products, making it a preferred choice for robust cybersecurity.

Fortinet FortiGate stands out as a comprehensive cybersecurity solution with strong performance and ease of configuration. It delivers unified threat management, integrating features such as dynamic routing, SD-WAN support, and centralized management. Despite its strengths, improvements in the web interface's stability, pricing structures, and reporting capabilities are needed. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and automation advancements to enhance the experience further. These enhancements, alongside improvements in bandwidth management and the reduction of licensing costs, are points of interest for users looking to capitalize on FortiGate's extensive capabilities.

What are Fortinet FortiGate's key features?

VPN: Ensures secure remote connections.
Firewall: Protects against unauthorized access.
Web Filtering: Blocks malicious sites and content.
Application Control: Manages and controls applications.
Intrusion Prevention: Detects and prevents vulnerabilities.
SSL Inspection: Enhances security by inspecting encrypted traffic.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Fortinet FortiGate?

Affordability: Offers cost-effective security solutions.
Reliability: Known for consistent and stable performance.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other Fortinet products.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides broad threat protection capabilities.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries as a primary firewall system for securing internet gateways and safeguarding data centers. It supports businesses in achieving SD-WAN integration and enhances cybersecurity by providing essential features like antivirus, web filtering, and application control. Enterprises utilize FortiGate for securing remote connections and ensuring compliance with security standards, making it adaptable for different network sizes and industries.

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

SonicWall NSV is a software-based virtual firewall that provides additional security for customers with public-facing servers or services on Microsoft Azure. The AGSS Bundle is considered the most valuable feature, providing security services such as antivirus, intrusion prevention system, and anti-spyware botnet GUI.

Additionally, customization of firewall rules provides great value to customers, allowing them to lock things up in the way they desire. SonicWall NSV offers extensive security control options to protect customers' valuable information and assets.

SonicWall

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

Comlogic, Depaul, Hutt City Council

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. SonicWall NSv

December 2025

Free Report: Menlo Secure vs. SonicWall NSv

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