Menlo Secure vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall comparison

Menlo Security and Zscaler are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Menlo Security is ranked #52, while Zscaler is ranked #26 with an average rating of 8.3. Menlo Security holds a 0.1% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to Zscaler’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Menlo Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Zscaler users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Menlo Secure and Zscaler Cloud Firewall are leading options in the cloud firewall market. While Menlo Secure offers favorable pricing and customer support, Zscaler Cloud Firewall has a clear upper hand in features, making it preferred for comprehensive protection.

Features: Menlo Secure users highlight efficient threat isolation, user-centric security policies, and competitive pricing. Zscaler Cloud Firewall is notable for deep packet inspection, zero-trust architecture, and strong integration capabilities. Zscaler's advanced features make it stand out.

Room for Improvement: Menlo Secure needs better threat detection accuracy, simpler user configuration, and improvements in reporting analytics. Zscaler Cloud Firewall could benefit from better reporting analytics, more straightforward policy management, and enhanced support for complex configurations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Menlo Secure is known for straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. Zscaler Cloud Firewall also offers easy deployment with guided configurations and robust support. Zscaler's comprehensive setup process is slightly more favorable.

Pricing and ROI: Menlo Secure is valued for its competitive pricing, contributing positively to ROI. Zscaler Cloud Firewall, though more expensive, is perceived as worth the investment due to its extensive features and positive ROI. Menlo Secure is budget-friendly, but Zscaler provides substantial value for its cost.

To learn more, read our detailed Menlo Secure vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall

April 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 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 Menlo Secure is 0.1%, up from 0.0% 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

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

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.

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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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Bhaskar Rao

Network manager admin at Yamaha

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.

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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

"It's an easy solution to set up."

"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."

"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."

"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."

"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."

"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."

"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."

"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."

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."

"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."

"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 technical support from Zscaler was excellent."

"Once you have Zscaler running you have access to configure it however you want."

"Zscaler is still a very good product."

"Zscaler Cloud Firewall understands the applications in the current generation and adapts to the present generation cloud applications."

"The solution offers good sandboxing."

"If malicious traffic attacks our on-premises servers, then it gets blocked by Zscaler Cloud Firewall."

"It is a stable solution."

"It provides in-depth visibility into your network, ensuring that traffic flowing into your organization, be it from offices or individual users, is effectively filtered and secured through multiple layers of protection."

More Zscaler Cloud Firewall pros

Cons

"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."

"The initial setup is complex."

"The solution could be improved by addressing limited local reporting. It requires obtaining the FortiAnalyzer for proper visibility because you can't do much from a reporting perspective with just the firewall alone."

"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."

"Backup can be improved."

"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."

"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."

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."

"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."

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"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."

"Data Leak Prevention is only for web filtering and there is no protection for email."

"There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, the GUI is outdated, with noticeable lags and delays, especially when generating reports for past transactions."

"We are having some issues with internet access being denied when organizational ID-based policies change. For example, a lower level employee ends up getting the same level of access as that of a higher level employee."

"Instead of the standard license, they should certainly provide customers with the visibility to access and view the logs."

"I don't have the visibility of a control dashboard or a network management system."

"They do not provide a few components that are fundamental to differentiate the products"

"Certain criteria need to be met if you want to scale this solution."

"Zscaler Cloud Firewall should have a better understanding of all dynamic cloud applications."

More Zscaler Cloud Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license is too expensive to renew. The license renewal process is also complex."

"The license is yearly. We pay for the top end. It's called 360."

"Licensing is usually on a three-year period."

"They are very competitive, but we like to have the factory warranty taken care of."

"Before choosing a piece of equipment you have to take into account the cost-benefit offered by each one. Sometimes it is not worth paying a very cheap price to have a minimum level of security."

"Price-wise, it's at a good price point for our market."

"Its price is affordable and lesser than Cisco. Cisco is expensive. In terms of licensing, there is only one issue. If a customer's license has expired a month ago and they do the renewal after one month, Fortinet renews the license from the start of the previous month. The activation of the product is done from the previous month, not from the date of renewal. The customers usually shout and complain that because they are paying today, the renewal should start from today. The support contract renewals or licensing should be renewed from the date of renewal, but Fortinet starts from the day it had expired. It is a loss for customers. They might have had some problems because of which they did not take the license one month before. Fortinet should work on this. Cisco doesn't do this. Cisco always starts from the day they apply for the license."

"Fortinet is competitive price-wise."

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."

"There is an annual license required for the use of the Zscaler Cloud Firewall."

"Zscaler is priced too high compared to the cost of Fortinet."

"The licensing is on a yearly basis. It is somewhere around 30 or 40 pounds per user for our organization."

"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."

"It comes at a significantly reduced cost while ensuring control and effectiveness."

"There are different subscription models available."

More Zscaler Cloud Firewall pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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Earn 20 points

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Netscope, Zscaler if they continue route they are on now. FIrewalls needs great deal of automation on each end, datac...

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What do you like most about Zscaler Cloud Firewall?

The product’s firewall and VPN package are fantastic compared to any other solution.

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Zscaler Cloud Firewall is quite expensive compared to competitors. However, it offered moderate value for money.

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Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 22% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure

Compared 22% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Menlo Secure

Compared 16% of the time

Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 14% of the time

Symantec Endpoint Security vs Menlo Secure

Compared 13% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs Menlo Secure

Compared 11% of the time

More Menlo Secure Competitors

Azure Firewall vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

OPNsense vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

Check Point NGFW vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 9% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Cisco Multicloud Defense vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

More Zscaler Cloud Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

May 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

April 2025

Download Menlo Secure product report

Buyer's Guide

Zscaler Cloud Firewall

April 2025

Download Zscaler Cloud Firewall product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

No data available

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

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

Zscaler enables the world’s leading organizations to securely transform their networks and applications for a mobile and cloud first world. Its flagship services, Zscaler Internet Access and Zscaler Private Access, create fast, secure connections between users and applications, regardless of device, location, or network. Zscaler services are 100% cloud-delivered and offer the simplicity, enhanced security, and improved user experience that traditional appliances or hybrid solutions are unable to match. Used in more than 185 countries, Zscaler operates the world’s largest cloud security platform, protecting thousands of enterprises and government agencies from cyberattacks and data loss.

Check more details: https://www.zscaler.com/produc...

Zscaler

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

Zenith Live, Azure, Carlsberg Group

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall

April 2025

Free Report: Menlo Secure vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about Menlo Secure vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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