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Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs ShieldX comparison

The compared Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet solutions aren't in the same category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #7 in Firewalls , with an average rating of 8.8, and holds a 3.7% mindshare in the category. Fortinet is ranked #14 in MS , and holds a 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Palo Alto Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and ShieldX both offer advanced network security solutions in the network security category. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls hold the upper hand due to customer satisfaction in pricing and support.

Features: Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide granular control and deep visibility, next-generation firewall capabilities with antivirus and content filtering, and excellent threat prevention and policy-based routing. ShieldX offers flexibility with micro-segmentation, cloud-native capabilities, and automatic scaling with efficient resource usage.

Room for Improvement: Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls could improve ease of deployment, although the system is intuitive, it can be complex. More flexibility in management interfaces and increased cloud integration could also enhance the product. ShieldX may benefit from enhanced feature sets to compete better with traditional firewalls. Improved integration with third-party services and more user customizations could also elevate their product.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ShieldX offers a cloud-native deployment model, simplifying setup for agile environments. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, while comprehensive, might be more complex initially. Both companies provide substantial customer service, yet Palo Alto is known for having more extensive options, catering to complex setups and environments.

Pricing and ROI: Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls generally require a higher initial investment but justify it with a robust ROI due to comprehensive security capabilities. ShieldX provides a more budget-friendly option for cloud environments with a simpler cost structure, offering significant ROI through effective cloud security measures.

To learn more, read our detailed Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. ShieldX Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. ShieldX

December 2024

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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

Firewalls

Microsegmentation Software

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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AmjadKhan1

Head of data centers at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees

Provides inline protection with a unified view and anti-spyware capabilities

I would rate Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls ten out of ten because it is the best. Our disaster recovery site utilizes Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls. We are also in the process of upgrading the firewalls at our 365 sites in Pakistan to Palo Alto Networks firewalls. While budget firewalls may advertise comparable features, they often fall short of effectively detecting viruses, threats, and ransomware. In contrast, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, combined with Cortex XDR, provide comprehensive threat intelligence and detection capabilities, ensuring superior security coverage. I recommend conducting a proof of concept before selecting a firewall. This will allow you to evaluate different options and determine which best suits your needs. While Palo Alto offers robust firewall solutions, it's essential to compare them with other vendors to ensure you make an informed decision.

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MichaelProcyshyn

IT Director at park holidays uk

Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance

The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the best features of Fortinet FortiGate is that it's a very powerful equipment that gives many security features in a single box with good performance, and the user interface is friendly to use and configure."

"The solution is stable."

"There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth."

"SD-WAN has had a positive impact by reducing the operational costs in terms of headcount and management."

"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use."

"Fortinet FortiGate has SD-WAN, FortiView, antivirus, sandbox, and IPS, which are generally well-known features."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."

"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The first time I came across these firewalls, what surprised me the most was their web user interface. It is complete and gives you a lot of information. You can do 80% of the things related to your network and firewall through the web UI. In some of the other devices, the UI is not as complete. App-ID is also very valuable in customer networks. When you're seeing a lot of traffic in your network, you can see in your web UI which users have the applications that are consuming the most bandwidth. You have a broad context, which is very good."

"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls offer a comprehensive suite of security features, with Intrusion Prevention System and certificate inspection being among the most valuable."

"I found Palo Alto NG firewalls more intuitive compared to other products. I value the capability to identify a cloud solution."

"The strengths of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are application visibility and application awareness. Their strong point is identifying applications for traffic. So all of the policies that are configured are related to the application and not to a port."

"Mechanically, all firewalls work in a similar fashion, but what makes Palo Alto different is that it also has some of the threat hunt capabilities. It is a little bit better than other vendors."

"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is Cortex Data Lake."

"It worked fine normally."

"I like the sandbox feature, and it's very good. It kills each malware deployment in the sense of signatures within five minutes. So, we can secure our network and infrastructure very well within the stipulated time. The WildFire functionality is very good because a few files are also getting blocked. It's critical as malware attacks are also getting ignored, and the logging is very well maintained in this firewall. The most valuable solutions in this field are application-based firewalls. That is the main criteria of the firewall and functionality. We can get all the logs related to this and each and every packet. I like that the firewall is working as an application. The application-based entity we have deployed is well maintained and working very well. We were able to find lots of vulnerabilities when we deployed it, but we could not disclose all. But there were vulnerabilities we could block by updating the firewall and taking actions on clientside machines. So, we got to know that we have lots of vulnerabilities inside the organization too, and we took lots of steps and resolved the number of vulnerabilities. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is an all-in-one solution. It provides every entity log, which is a very good functionality of this firewall. It gives every packet and aspect that the firewall is performing through its logs, and it does it very well. This firewall's unified platform helped eliminate multiple network security tools. If anyone uses P2P sites, cryptocurrency websites, or any illegal sites, we can block it easily. It gives us a proper alert for these kinds of sites, and it properly secures our network. Monitoring is the best thing we are doing here, and we can block this kind of vulnerability as soon as it comes to us."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls pros

"We were able to see what devices are talking to each other, giving us more visibility."

"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."

"...It takes the exact same policies that you would apply to your on-premise environment and enables you to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput."

"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."

"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."

"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."

Cons

"In the past six months, they took quite a long time to respond to the support tickets. I don't know if they are overwhelmed with too much activity, but for the last six months, the support has not been very good."

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

"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."

"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."

"The only issue that I have is with FortiNAC. The firewall is fine, but the FortiNAC interface is a little bit too jumbled or too complicated, not as straightforward as it is on the Fortinet FortiGate firewall and FortiAnalyzer."

"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."

"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."

"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"We have a lot of the older firewall models, i.e., the PA-220. It seems that with newer operating systems the PA-220 is becoming slower than when I first bought it. It is not really an issue for users who are passing traffic through the firewall, but more from the management access of it."

"The pricing could be improved. They need to work on the setup over the firewall, VLAN, and PPPoE."

"There is a tradeoff between security and network performance, as security is always top-notch, but performance can sometimes lag and has room for improvement."

"I believe it would be beneficial if the solution could integrate with Google Chrome, especially for students who use Chromebooks. However, as far as I know, the solution currently does not support Google Chrome."

"It is a complete product, but the SSL inspection feature requires some improvements. We need to deploy certificates at each end point to completely work out the UTM solutions. If you enable SSL encryption, it is a tedious process. It takes a lot of time to deploy the certificates to all endpoints. Without SSL inspection, UTM features will not work properly. So, we are forced to enable this SSL inspection feature."

"A major concern is making the licensing more accessible to enable small municipalities to afford and manage their own systems independently."

"There is room for improvement in the area of customer service."

"It is a good product, but they can add some functions for port scanning and network scanning."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls cons

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."

"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."

"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."

"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."

"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is not a cheap solution but it isn't expensive, either. It's a good solution for the right price."

"Its price is reasonable. They have a clear pricing policy. It is not complicated by the number of VPN users at a time. We know what the price is. The yearly subscription for the security license is rather high, but it is all included for whatever number of users you have and the kind of functions you need."

"Its pricing is fine. It is on a yearly basis. Other than the licensing fee, there is no extra fee."

"The price is fine."

"Fortinet FortiGate is cheaper than Palo Alto. It is about 20% cheaper."

"Its pricing is good. The advantages of Fortinet FortiGate over its competitors include good pricing and meeting our requirements at a lower cost."

"It is more expensive than Sophos. Fortinet is overall more expensive than Sophos. The small range of Fortinet, such as 60F and 80F, is more expensive than the small range of Sophos. Sophos is cheaper. In addition, if you jump from 80F Series to 100F Series, the price doubles."

"The cost is too high... They have to focus on more features with less cost for the customer. If you see the market, where it's going, there are a lot of players offering more features for less cost."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"Palo Alto is not a cheap solution but it is competitive when it comes to subscriptions."

"Active/Passive mode is very redundant, but they require you to buy all the associated licensing for both firewalls, which is kind of a waste of money because you are really only using the services on one firewall at a time."

"The price could be better. Pricing is very different compared to WatchGuard, which costs around 60 lakhs, and FortiGate, which costs approximately 40 lakhs. Palo Alto Networks costs about a crore which is very high pricing. We bought this firewall, and our organization did not want to pay so much. We spent around one crore rupees which is not within our budget at all, and we are unhappy with them."

"While Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls may be considered expensive, their quality justifies the cost."

"You get what you pay for."

"On the lower end, it's likely to cost $15,000 for renovation and support."

"If the cost is your main priority, Palo Alto would be a bit high. However, if you are ready to hear about return of investment, then I would convince you to go for Palo Alto."

"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are expensive."

More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls pricing and cost advice

"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."

"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."

"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."

"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."

"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."

"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."

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Top Industries

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Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

No data available

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By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiOS vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 2% of the time

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Cisco Secure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 11% of the time

Sophos XG vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 10% of the time

Meraki MX vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 9% of the time

Check Point NGFW vs Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

July 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls

July 2025

Download Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls product report

Buyer's Guide

ShieldX

June 2025

Download ShieldX product report

Also Known As

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

Palo Alto NGFW, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO

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

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls offer comprehensive security, including application control, traffic shaping, threat prevention, and load balancing, designed to secure internal networks, perimeter protection, VPN services, and cloud environments.

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are a key choice for managing and protecting data centers, securing remote access, network segmentation, malware prevention, and ensuring high availability and performance for business-critical applications. Known for stability and strong security, these firewalls use application-aware identifiers and IPS/IDS subscriptions to offer advanced threat protection. The unified platform facilitates seamless integration, while GlobalProtect and centralized management via Panorama enhance ease of use. However, there are areas for improvement, including pricing strategies, training, user support, and integration with third-party applications.

What are the essential features?

Stability: Reliable performance in different environments.
Application Control: Identifies applications to manage traffic.
Advanced Threat Protection: Includes DNS security, WildFire, and machine learning.
GlobalProtect: Secure remote access for users.
Centralized Management: Managed via the Panorama platform.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Security: Protects against threats with robust features.
User-Friendly: Simplified interface and easy configuration.
High Availability: Ensures performance for critical applications.
Integration: Seamless with existing systems and applications.
Support: Reliable technical support and resources.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls secure sensitive data and meet regulatory requirements. These firewalls help manage large-scale networks in these sectors, providing essential security features and maintaining high-performance standards. They are implemented to ensure compliance, protect patient information, secure financial transactions, and safeguard customer data.

Palo Alto Networks

The ShieldX Elastic Security Platform dynamically scales to deliver comprehensive and consistent controls to protect data centers, cloud infrastructure, applications and data no matter where they are or where they go to make the cloud more secure than on-premise deployments. Our frictionless approach leverages agentless technology as well as the ShieldX Adaptive Intention Engine which autonomously translates and enforces intention into a set of comprehensive controls - microsegmentation, firewall, IPS and more - making security the easiest thing you do in the cloud.

Fortinet

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

SkiStar AB, Ada County, Global IT Services PSF, Southern Cross Hospitals, Verge Health, University of Portsmouth, Austrian Airlines, The Heinz Endowments

Iowa State University

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. ShieldX

December 2024

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