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Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs SonicWall NSv comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
330
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (9th)
SonicWall NSv
Ranking in Firewalls
30th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.4%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall NSv is 0.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable
In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.
AshwaniTyagi - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced protection and good integration capabilities with good reliability
We use Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to offer services to our customers as a managed security service provider. We provide solutions and services to our customers across the globe. For example, if I want to host a firewall in the cloud or somewhere where the physical appliance is not a possibility…
Sumesh Panikkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides effective threat prevention and helps improve security
We face some challenges when we upgrade the solution. If I use NSv 400, I can't upgrade to the next generation. We cannot upgrade the VM to the next generation. We have to rebuild a new VM and copy the configurations. We cannot upgrade straightaway. The solution must allow us to upgrade the same machine to a newer version without many changes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The technical support is great."
"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."
"The product offers very good security."
"It has improved our organization with control data."
"It scales linearly with load and no issues."
"Scalability is a strength of Palo Alto VM-Series."
"It gives us the ease that we are secure. We have set up the proper things that help make our data safe."
"It is very stable. It is fairly easy to use."
"I like the UI. Most things are accessible from the user interface and it is quite user-friendly. With respect to both VM-based firewalls and physical firewalls, it's easy to create updates."
"App-ID and User-ID have repeatedly shown value in securing business critical systems."
"The filtering feature is good."
"The most valuable feature is the CLI."
"SonicWall excelled in threat management, evident in how users handled it effectively."
"For my small NFB banking services, when they are expanding their branches, I could incorporate a little bit easier."
"One of the standout features of SonicWall is its simplicity in creating and managing rules."
"I would rate the overall product a nine out of ten."
"Out of ten, I would rate the solution at an eight."
"SonicWall NSV is easy to use, and you can use it to manage the logs easily."
"The product helps improve our security."
"The solution has no additional charges and no restrictions on the number of users."
 

Cons

"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."
"The platform's compatibility with Wi-Fi equipment needs improvement."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"Lacks training for new features."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"There's always something new that can be added or fixed."
"It'll help if Palo Alto Networks provided better documentation."
"Enhancing the ease of accessing technical support would be useful."
"There are various reports that come with the box or with the VMware, but you can only run them daily."
"There is a need for two-factor authentication, particularly for VPN and CloudProtect."
"The product's AIOps process needs improvement."
"The command-line interface is something that some people struggle with and I think that they should have an option to go straight to the GUI."
"The performance of VM instances has some limitations in terms of threshold and throughput compared to appliances."
"It would be good if the common features work consistently in physical and virtual environments. There was an integration issue in the virtual deployment where it didn't report the interface counters, and we had to upgrade to the latest version, whereas the same thing has been working in the physical deployment for ages now. It seems that it was because of Azure. We were using VMware before, and we didn't have any such issues. We do see such small issues where we expect things to work, but they don't because of some incompatibilities. There also seems to be a limitation on how to do high availability in a virtualized environment. All features should be consistently available in physical and virtual environments. It is not always easy to integrate Palo Alto in the network management system. We would like to be able to compare two network management systems. They can maybe allow monitoring an interface through the GUI to create a reference or do a baseline check about whether your network monitoring system is actually giving you the correct traffic figures. You need traffic figures to be able to recognize the trends and plan the capacity."
"SonicWall NSV's SSL VPN could increase its number of users to 100-plus users."
"The price is a significant factor."
"I would like to see the reporting opened up and have several more opportunities for automatic reports."
"There are limitations to bandwidth management."
"SonicWall NSV's initial setup is complicated and requires good knowledge."
"We face some challenges when we upgrade the solution."
"The engine provided initially was quite heavy, creating a trade-off between software and hardware-based threat management."
"It has been brought to our attention by a few customers that they are dissatisfied with the fact that our virtualized service is only offered as a subscription option on the cloud. However, it is worth noting that many other similar services are also offered through a subscription model on the cloud and not through perpetual licensing. It is unclear why these customers would have an issue with this subscription service when so many others are utilizing similar methods."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For our organization, the licensing costs are approximately $7,000 per year."
"It is an inexpensive solution."
"The price of the license and warranty can be better because it is very expensive."
"Easy to understand licensing requirements."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable."
"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."
"The price of FortiGate is comparable to that of most other firewall solutions and is more affordable than Cisco."
"Fortinet bundles FortiGate with other products and because of this, the price is a little expensive to some SMB enterprises."
"AWS is available as a AMI that you can purchase from the AWS Marketplace. Therefore, you need to purchase the licensing, since it is per AMI. Then, you deploy it on a regular EC2. Then, for on-premise, you can use both Palo Alto's software and hardware."
"The product is cheaper than the on-premise version."
"The pricing for Palo Alto is quite high compared to FortiGate, which is more affordable. I don't have the exact figures as my manager handles that, but from my research, Palo Alto's licensing costs are significantly higher."
"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."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is notably cheaper than other firewall vendors, except Fortigate."
"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."
"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."
"The pricing was expensive but it was comparable to the competition."
"Our initial purchase, which included a three-year term of support, was about $25,000 USD."
"The tool is moderately priced."
"SonicWall NSV is not very costly."
"The solution’s pricing is less compared to other products."
"We are currently using the trial version."
"The solution's pricing is good for the technology it offers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
24%
Government
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Legal Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
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...
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...
What do you like most about SonicWall NSV?
The product helps improve our security.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall NSV?
The tool is moderately priced. We need to purchase an additional license for NSM. We can manage all the firewalls thr...
What needs improvement with SonicWall NSV?
The price is a significant factor. Mostly in India, the customer service has many hurdles to get real support. If I w...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
No data available
SonicWall Network Security Virtual
 

Overview

 

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
Warren Rogers Associates
Comlogic, Depaul, Hutt City Council
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. SonicWall NSv and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.