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Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (15th)
SonicWall Capture Advanced ...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
27th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 2.6%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection is 2.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series2.6%
SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection2.1%
Other95.3%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadNadeem - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Has supported urgent deployments and enabled inline threat protection but pricing and features could be more flexible
I am not using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series mostly, but based on my experience, there are some deficiencies in Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Having those features missing, we are not proposing Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to all customers. However, for urgency and for some solutions that customers need for some of their other sites and subdivisions, we are providing the same.
MA
Technical Manager, NOC at TEXUM JORDAN
Has a good configuration but the price should be more competitive
Our primary use case of this solution is for security.  It's a good solution but the price is high. It also has an easy configuration. The feedback that we get from our customers is that it's a good product. Our customers are mostly smaller enterprises.  The price should be more competitive.  I…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It scales linearly with load and no issues."
"It is very stable. It is fairly easy to use."
"The Palo Alto VM-Series is nice because I can move the firewalls easily."
"We now know a lot more detail about what our users are doing on the network."
"The solution strengthens our IT posture."
"Using Palo Alto Networks Panorama, we were able to deploy a single point of management and visualization of the firewall infrastructure in cloud, on-premise and integrated with Azure to automate scale up. Its security features, i.e. anti-malware, threat prevention, URL Filtering, VPN, and antivirus are the most valuable. The ID-User integrated with AD and 2FA features are also very useful to provide secure access to servers and some users in the company. "
"The most valuable features are the DNS security and threat prevention capabilities."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has everything centralized. You have the VPN solution, firewall, routing, UDR, flexibility, updates, and full visibility of your traffic."
"I enjoy SonicWall as a package, with a robust firewall solution that protects against zero-day threats, optimizes network traffic for critical applications, and offers easy setup and automation for enterprises as well as small businesses."
"We use it for protection against viruses and ransomware attacks."
"This is a solid solution that fills the requirements."
"The ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) on scanning is the most valuable feature."
"SonicWall came out with a new add-on; it was inexpensive to add on to the existing product that we already owned, so we added it."
"For the past four and a half years, we haven't had any breaches or issues of any kind."
"I like this setup for a firewall. You can set things up very easily and you can automate items as well. It's a very robust firewall solution for enterprise as well as small businesses."
"Provides good protection and security."
 

Cons

"There are some delays that I have observed when my company communicates with Palo Alto's support engineers."
"There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution."
"We feel that the setup was complex."
"Just sometimes it can be a bit sluggish navigating through pages. That is just purely because of Java.​"
"The interface is all Java-based. I would prefer an HTML5 interface."
"With Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, it is hard for me to manage its network configuration part."
"There are various reports that come with the box or with the VMware, but you can only run them daily."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration of multi-factor authentication vendors."
"Having an on-premise solution as well would be an option for some people, but they'll want to use a cloud solution for their sandboxing. Certain sites would want to keep all the checks done on an on-premise appliance. All the checking, rather than sending that up into a cloud engine."
"Sometimes customers are not aware of which protection is best for their business and SonicWall doesn't provide them with information on security features."
"We would like to get immediate alerts from the alerting system without using third-parties."
"Could provide online training to allow customers to learn more about the product."
"The setup needs improvement. It needs to be made more user-friendly."
"I would say the solution needs a much simpler user interface, but the functionality of the firewall is quite extensive. You need the user interface to be that way. However, if there was a way to make the user interface a little easier, that would be great."
"I would like to have better documentation before starting with deployment because the deployment is a bit complex."
"SonicWall had a recent layoff. This is a concern for us, because now we are missing the local presence from both the engineering and sales side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Palo Alto definitely needs to be more competitive compared to other products. The problem that I have faced is that the price of licensing is very high and not very competitive."
"The product is costly but provides all essential security features. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is an expensive product but the best one in the market."
"It is a little bit of crazy if you compare it to Vanguard, Sophos, or even Cisco. The newest version of Cisco, the Next-Generation Firewall of Cisco, is less expensive than Palo Alto. It is more comparable to Check Point."
"This is not the cheapest firewall but it's not the most expensive of the options on the market."
"Sometimes, it's cheaper to buy a new firewall with licensing instead of renewing the licenses of an old firewall."
"There is a need to make payments toward a yearly subscription-based model in which you need to add modules that you want to use in your company."
"We used BYOL, because of the cost to own."
"The best deal from SonicWall is to buy the HA pair. When you buy the initial one, you receive the second one at a significant discount. If there is an event and something happens to one firewall, then you have the second firewall to roll into. For the price, it's pretty to tough to beat and not a lot of other firewall vendors offer it. You battle for a discount on both. Where with SonicWall, if you buy one, the second one is at half price. It's pretty straightforward."
"It's thirty dollars per user and we have 30 users."
"We get our value for our money."
"When you compare it with other solutions, they are cheaper and more economical."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Construction Company
14%
Media Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the overall cost is reasonable. Azure Firewall offers a solid threat awareness, can...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series?
The pricing is more on the expensive side, but it is justified due to its functionality, reliability, and throughput, even with all features enabled. In comparison to FortiGate ( /products/fortinet...
What needs improvement with SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection?
SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection needs to reconsider the pricing, especially in the cloud environment. The product is good overall, but the GUI needs to be more stable. I chose nine out...
What is your primary use case for SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection?
My main use case for SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection is that it helps us with sandboxing for analyzing and inspecting unknown files and URLs. A quick specific example of how I've used ...
What advice do you have for others considering SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection?
I advise others looking into using SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection to consider that it is truly helpful and very important to have great sandboxing with advanced threat protection to s...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Warren Rogers Associates
Wonder Cement, Foster Clark Products
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.