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Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs VMRay comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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)
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (13th)
VMRay
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
32nd
Average Rating
5.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 2.4%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMRay is 1.3%, 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-Series2.4%
VMRay1.3%
Other96.3%
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.
GC
Pre-Sales at Frux
Has a valuable IP tracing feature, but is an expensive solution
We use this solution for authorization and more on the false positive verification IP tracing is the most valuable feature. The technical support needs improvement.  I have been using VMRay for two and a half years. The technical support team is not good.  Negative The initial setup is…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most effective features of the solution for threat prevention are Layer 7 inspection, SSL decryption, IPS, and the web filtering profile."
"The most valuable feature is that you can launch it in a very short time; you don't have to wait for the hardware to arrive and get it staged and installed, and from that perspective, it is easy to launch and also scalable."
"It helps in offering advanced protection against malware and anti-spyware, which is based on customer feedback stating the product has very good threat prevention capabilities."
"We haven't had any security issues since deploying it."
"They are the leading next-generation firewall."
"Palo Alto offers excellent security, with features such as email scanning, malware protection, and efficient VPN and antivirus capabilities."
"The product provides more visibility into our traffic."
"The main advantage of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series stems from the fact that you can access it with the help of cloud services."
"IP tracing is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"It is not very easy to scale up the solution."
"The solution needs to have more easily searchable details or documentation about it online, so it's easier to Google if you have queries."
"The current licensing model can be a sore point as we're paying for features we're not fully utilizing."
"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."
"I would like to have automatic daily reporting, such as how many users have connected via SSL VPN."
"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."
"The performance of VM instances has some limitations in terms of threshold and throughput compared to appliances."
"With Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, it is hard for me to manage its network configuration part."
"The technical support needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution is very high for some parts of Africa, which makes it a challenge."
"The box, if you do not want to buy the threat prevention license in the box, you can buy it only with the support license. It is for the support of the hardware. It works like a simple firewall. It integrates what it calls user IDs and application IDs. If you do not buy any other license, only the firewall, Palo Alto will also help you improve a lot of your security."
"This is not the cheapest firewall but it's not the most expensive of the options on the market."
"The price is not bad. They have a yearly renewal fee, and the pricing is exactly where we expect it to be."
"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."
"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."
"Do not buy larges box if you do not need them. Rightsizing is a great task to do before​hand."
"The product is costly but provides all essential security features. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is overly priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise24
No data available
 

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...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Warren Rogers Associates
National Bank of Canada, Carbon Black, Cloudmark, Cyberint, Expel, G Data Advanced Analytics, Jisc
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Proofpoint and others in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.