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NordLayer vs Portnox comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

NordLayer
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
19th
Ranking in ZTNA
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (36th), Internet Security (15th), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (23rd), ZTNA as a Service (25th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (31st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (24th)
Portnox
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
5th
Ranking in ZTNA
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Passwordless Authentication (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Access Control (NAC) category, the mindshare of NordLayer is 1.0%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Portnox is 7.6%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Access Control (NAC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Portnox7.6%
NordLayer1.0%
Other91.4%
Network Access Control (NAC)
 

Featured Reviews

Christophe Derdeyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner delaware Singapore at delaware Singapore
A convenient and easy tool with an incredibly high number of dialing points
The solution is convenient and easy. It has an incredibly high number of dialing points for pretty much every single country in the world. It has a few additional security features. It has a function that prevents unsecured access if my connection were to drop for any reason. It’s something I like. It has threat protection features. It can protect my web connection and files against malicious downloads and trackers.
Maurice Mwaura - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Applied Principles Limited
Unified access control has improved compliance visibility and simplified passwordless access
There is work to be done when it comes to making the solution more seamless. For example, when a user is denied access, they would need a way to maybe self-resolve themselves, perhaps a way to generate a ticket on their own, something around resolutions. When it comes to users using the product, that is where good products are differentiated from products that are a bit of a challenge. Portnox has much to do in terms of their reporting. The generated reports need improvement. Things that other tools would say are normal are usually not present. For example, there is a page called NAS devices or NAS network that is able to show the switches that have been managed. Currently, there is no way of generating an easy report or an easy way of just generating something to tell the customer what they have been able to achieve so far. This is not done yet and is still very manual. I think there is work to be done there. More integrations around the various products being used would be beneficial. So far I have not encountered any major challenge. Where there was a challenge, I think support came in and helped us resolve. In fact, most of the challenges are not with the product; they are with the customer environment. I think that is just to update their documentation where they have come across a new vendor for easier integrations in the future.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is convenient and easy."
"It's agentless, and it's scalable."
"Portnox has positively impacted my organization by improving visibility into connected devices, strengthening access control through zero trust policies, and automating compliance enforcement."
"The technical support is top-notch and great."
"Portnox is a highly effective tool that will significantly lower your incident resolution times, so be prepared to push through a slight learning curve at the beginning."
"The visibility of the product is excellent."
"The cloud-based feature of Portnox is excellent."
"The cloud-based feature is very nice."
"If your team is burnt out on managing legacy on-prem network access control or wants to move to a pure cloud model, Portnox should definitely be on your shortlist."
 

Cons

"The tool is not perfectly stable."
"It would be good to integrate Portnox CORE with CLEAR."
"Now, the way security is viewed, maybe including something like AI, to automate some of the things that are required to be done would be great."
"However, problems arise when the same MAC address is requested for a different project. Our current system only finds authenticated MAC addresses, making it difficult to troubleshoot when the same device is used for multiple purposes."
"Portnox has design considerations that limit its applicability."
"The licensing is based on a per-port price, even when you are not using all of the ports, and this is something that could be improved."
"While Portnox is solid, there is definitely room for improvement, particularly with the user interface."
"I believe there are some difficulties with the removal of devices that could be improved."
"While Portnox has been very effective overall, there are a few areas where it could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The tool is more expensive than Fortinet."
"The licensing module should be reviewed to count the number of devices instead of port numbers of total switches. There is a case for this where not all ports for a switch are used by devices. Unused ports are calculated in the license, then the customer pays for license for those unused ports."
"The pricing is a bit high, possibly due to the cloud features and running instances across regions like the US, Asia, and Europe."
"It's not cheap. It's not expensive. It's in the middle."
"The solution is very expensive and I would rate it 10 out of 10."
"Portnox CORE's pricing is adequate and cheaper compared to other complex solutions. Its licensing costs are yearly and include support. Cost is calculated per device."
"It is not bad. It is a bit on the high side, but considering the cloud features and how much it costs to run the instance in the cloud, it is not unreasonable. We do have RADIUS servers for the US, Asia, and Europe."
"The cost of Portnox Clear is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portnox Clear?
We did not purchase it directly. We gained access through our higher authorities, so I do not have substantial knowledge about where they obtained it. As I understand it, they acquired it from Port...
What needs improvement with Portnox Clear?
During my daily use, I noticed that if you have many devices being managed by a particular server, any device being managed by that server takes quite a bit of time to respond. If you log into Port...
What is your primary use case for Portnox Clear?
Portnox was primarily used for network access control, which granted access to enterprise devices based on specific parameters that we set. A specific example of how I used Portnox for network acce...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Access Layers Portnox, Portnox CLEAR
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hostinger, Shutterstock, USMobile, Soundcloud, Calendly, whatagraph.
Sallie Mae, Roku, Vuori, Legal Zoom, Anaplan, Aecon, H.I.G. Capital, McLaren Construction Group, PFCU, UK Mortgage Lending Limited, CCC Intelligent Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: July 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.