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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)
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 is easy to use. The UI is very easy to understand and does not require any certification or highly skilled technician to handle the firewall. It is very user-friendly and straightforward out of the box."
"It is an easy-to-scale product."
"Compared to the previous devices that we have used from other vendors, Palo Alto is very user-friendly, and we are comfortable with the features and capabilities that it offers."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is very easy to use because, after installation, its intuitive web interface makes all the traffic very well filtered and gives me all I need."
"It is a great product, it is a great company, and I am very glad to work with them."
"The solution enables organizations to enforce policies."
"App-ID and User-ID have repeatedly shown value in securing business critical systems."
"I have not actually called their support line, because we have a direct contact to a senior engineer in the company for any issues that we handle with them. I will say they are very responsive, and they do give you the information you need when you need it.​"
"Provides good protection and security."
"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."
"They have a large database of commonly known things that they can catch automatically, then they have anything which is questionable go to the sandbox and be examined there before going into our network."
"For the past four and a half years, we haven't had any breaches or issues of any kind."
"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't had any breaches or crashes. It's been very stable for us."
"We use it for protection against viruses and ransomware attacks."
"I would recommend this solution, as a firewall product solution that has a similar sandboxing type of thing has become quite an essential part of a security footprint."
"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."
 

Cons

"We have ran into issues with Palo Alto’s limitations for resolving large IP lists from DNS lookups, as well as the antivirus interfering with App-ID."
"The tool is very costly."
"Enhancing the ease of accessing technical support would be useful."
"Palo Alto is that it is really bad when it comes to technical support."
"At the beginning of the implementation, we had some difficulties with the scripts, but Palo Alto Networks support together with a local partner finally fixed it."
"Recently, they introduced their Prisma Cloud solution. Compared to the previous technologies, like Panorama, which is used for centralized firewall management, or even the individual firewalls, it's a bit challenging to integrate the traditional firewall policies into Prisma Cloud."
"From time to time, maybe twice a year, they have released content updates which have some issues; when they release content updates, the applications with these updates give us false positives."
"The interface is all Java-based. I would prefer an HTML5 interface."
"SonicWall should promote their roadmap and improve their marketing to customers."
"If anything at all, it would be some very minor updates that need to be done, but in terms of changes, nothing comes to mind."
"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."
"Could provide online training to allow customers to learn more about the product."
"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."
"Sometimes customers are not aware of which protection is best for their business and SonicWall doesn't provide them with information on security features."
"The setup needs improvement. It needs to be made more user-friendly."
"We would like to get immediate alerts from the alerting system without using third-parties."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is notably cheaper than other firewall vendors, except Fortigate."
"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."
"The product is costly but provides all essential security features. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"Initially, pricing was high. Later on, we were able to negotiate the pricing and get something that fits our budget."
"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."
"The price of this solution is very high for some parts of Africa, which makes it a challenge."
"The VM series is licensed annually."
"I know Palo Alto is not cheap. They have been telling me, the members of the finance team, it is not a cheap solution. It is a solution whose target is that no matter how big your organization is, small, medium, or large, it is about the maturity of your security team or infrastructure team whom you want to work with."
"When you compare it with other solutions, they are cheaper and more economical."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
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.
911,493 professionals have used our research since 2012.