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

 

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)
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (17th)
SonicWall Capture Advanced ...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
28th
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 August 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 2.5%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection is 2.0%, up from 0.9% 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-Series2.5%
SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection2.0%
Other95.5%
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

"Palo Alto's robust threat intelligence supports new updates, and I can open cases directly with their Threat Intelligence team."
"Overall, I give Palo Alto Networks VM-Series a rating of nine out of ten."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has everything centralized. You have the VPN solution, firewall, routing, UDR, flexibility, updates, and full visibility of your traffic."
"A solid operating system with all the necessary data center security features."
"Embedding it into my application development lifecycle prevents data loss and business disruption, allowing the adoption to operate at the speed of my AWS Cloud."
"I recommend going with the VM series, as it integrates advanced technological standards on a single platform and supports Kubernetes and Docker, which other vendors often don't offer."
"App-ID and User-ID have repeatedly shown value in securing business critical systems."
"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. "
"Provides good protection and security."
"The most valuable features of the product are the application filters, application policies, that block certain websites and allow bandwidth for others, those kinds of things."
"The reporting that you get from it is the most valuable feature. You can see it via the appliance itself, and also via the MySonicWall account for the registered device. You are able to select the file if it's malicious, and you can select it in the reporting and see what triggered it, and things like that. I found that to be quite useful."
"It also has an easy configuration. The feedback that we get from our customers is that it's a good product."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"We get alert messages whenever there is a new threat. We are notified at the firewall level that things are blocked, which keeps us in our comfort zone."
"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."
 

Cons

"The product could be better in terms of performance than one of its competitors."
"It can definitely improve on the performance."
"The utilization monitoring and GUI have room for improvement."
"Perfection is unlikely as the dynamic nature of traffic and constant changes can result in occasional bugs despite regular updates."
"The product needs improvement in their Secure Access Service Edge."
"I would like to have automatic daily reporting, such as how many users have connected via SSL VPN."
"Technical support is good for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, but sometimes for new feature requests, we are facing challenges."
"The DLP functionality or data classification can be improved in the solution's basic firewalling."
"I would like to have better documentation before starting with deployment because the deployment is a bit complex."
"We would like to get immediate alerts from the alerting system without using third-parties."
"SonicWall should promote their roadmap and improve their marketing to customers."
"It does fare well against enterprise products."
"Could provide online training to allow customers to learn more about the product."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Based on the customer budget, they can choose from 12-month, 36-month, or 60-month licensing models."
"One of the factors for selecting Palo Alto was they had flexible pricing. They had a pay-as-you-go model. Comparable to other products, such as Check Point, the price point was definitely a plus."
"The solution is a little bit expensive compared to other vendors."
"I rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series pricing an eight out of ten."
"It is an expensive product."
"The pricing and licensing of this product on AWS should be from $1.28/hr or $4,500.00/yr. Then, it would be a good price for the performance that it delivers."
"Because I work for a university and the URL is for the institution, it's a free license for us."
"It is not the cheapest on the market. The total cost for two firewall instances is $75,000. This includes licenses, deployment fees, and support for two years."
"We get our value for our money."
"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."
"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
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Construction Company
14%
Marketing Services Firm
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: August 2026.
910,409 professionals have used our research since 2012.