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ShieldX vs VMware NSX comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

ShieldX
Ranking in Microsegmentation Software
11th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware NSX
Ranking in Microsegmentation Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (5th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (7th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (8th), Network Automation (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Microsegmentation Software category, the mindshare of ShieldX is 2.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware NSX is 14.1%, down from 15.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsegmentation Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware NSX14.1%
ShieldX2.7%
Other83.2%
Microsegmentation Software
 

Featured Reviews

MP
IT Director at park holidays uk
Proactively monitors, blocks, and reports what it has blocked; and self-updates meaning there is zero maintenance
The most valuable feature is the automatic scaling. With its microservices, it scales both up and down, depending on traffic and throughput. The traffic through our website depends on holiday bookings. It's very quiet in November through January, and then our traffic picks up quite rapidly and, at our peak, we will take in excess of a million pounds of business a day through our website. The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides. Uptime on the system has been 648 days and we do very little to it because it self-updates and alerts. It does everything that we need it to do, so the administration side of it is zero. One of the beauties about ShieldX is that it's such a good "fire-and-forget" product.
Mahesh Bhadoriya - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Manager at Allianz Cloud Private Limited
Micro segmentation has strengthened zero trust security and isolates production from test environments
The advantages of VMware NSX include its micro-segmentation for internal security at the firewall and VM levels, which is very powerful and helps us comply with complete Zero Trust security models. We are able to achieve this and configure network level virtualization with no dependency on VLANs. Micro-segmentation helps improve our security significantly. We are not totally dependent upon our physical upfront firewall, and it makes sense to configure everything using VMware NSX, leading to multiple improvements in our organization. We moved from traditional networking such as VLANs from the firewall and switches to VMware NSX segmentation. We achieve one firewall per VLAN and can stop lateral movement such as ransomware control. The Zero Trust model is the main functionality and architecture it offers, allowing application isolation, such as having a separate production and test environment. Consistent networking and security policies across different environments have a major and very positive impact on our business operations, allowing us to achieve the security posture we want with compliance and regulations.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ShieldX makes it a lot easier and a lot simpler to define your policies and define your rules, and that greatly reduces the opportunity for user error."
"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX."
"The UI was also one of the huge selling points. My web development manager was blown away with the detail and the granularity that you can get out of the UI. It is a very strong and informative UI, with the amount of data it provides."
"ShieldX has been designed from the very beginning to work well in cloud environments. It understands autoscaling, automation, and auto-configuration. These are the things which are important in today's operating environment."
"...It takes the exact same policies that you would apply to your on-premise environment and enables you to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."
"It has helped us tighten our security posture. Now, staff can only access things that they should be accessing."
"The Adaptive Intention Engine is fantastic. It allows us to develop security policies using the language of our internal customers. It's machine-learning applied to security workflows. That allows us to much more easily construct the policies that will protect those workflows."
"Very often, when new challengers come in, what they do is they end up coming in at a lower cost with more functionality."
"You can easily integrate this with other VMware products. It is a robust solution."
"The most valuable features are the micro-segmentation and integrated security options."
"I value the ability to dynamically configure our network on the fly using VMware NSX."
"Overall, I would say the solution has been quite stable."
"The initial setup is easy and takes between one and five days."
"It's a beneficial tool."
"The most valuable feature of VMware NSX is the high bandwidth."
"Though I haven't been working a lot on VMware NSX, it's good to have. What I like the most about it is that its console is good, and it doesn't take a lot of effort in terms of doing my daily tasks on it or what it's meant for. VMware NSX is still a preferred product in the market."
 

Cons

"With any kind of tool like ShieldX, where you're in the cloud instead of a traditional firewall, you're using CPU resources in those environments to provide the protection. So there's a cost associated with CPU resources. I'm pressing upon them to make the product much more efficient and use less CPUs to do the same thing."
"I would like better reports and in-depth reporting."
"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so. As the vendor continues to evolve and add future functionality, we want to make sure that we are still keeping up with the integrations, etc. Time will be the key factor here. The proper support for some of the latest technologies, Docker containers, etc. They need to keep up with threat landscape, so we will see how the security get layered. This is what we are going to be keeping an eye on."
"There should be a bit more customer care, with regular review meetings on it or regular reports. It would be nice to have a quarterly or biannual review of what ShieldX has blocked."
"We are having some issues with their LDAP and integrating it with the Active Directory. We can't seem to set it up."
"They need to be consistent in performance and capabilities over time, given the fact that this is new and I want to see where this goes in the next year or so."
"Its licensing model could be VM based."
"The solution is only sold as part of a bundle and not as an individual product."
"There were some issues with finance and other accounting."
"Tech support is nice. It could be a little bit better."
"The reporting functionality could be better, and there could be an easier way of forwarding events. There's room for improvement in the product."
"The solution is quite complex."
"However, they should provide better documentation."
"This solution is really unusable from my perspective at this point. Overall, I would rate the solution a one of ten."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For a three-year deal we paid £55,000 plus tax... But, and this is a big "but," this was over two years ago. ShieldX had only just hit the market. We were the first company in Europe to buy ShieldX."
"ShieldX also enables us to migrate to cloud environments faster. That is an important part of it for sure because it takes the exact same policies that we would apply to our on-premise environment and enables us to simply apply them to the cloud. It becomes one policy for both on-prem and for the cloud."
"We are actually expecting our costs to drop in the coming year, but it is just a matter of the licensing expiring. That is going to happen in the next six months or so. Then, we will start to see a decrease in overall spend."
"We are very happy with the pricing and licensing. It's about getting a site-wide license. One of the challenges that we've had with our previous vendor had been the cost of licensing."
"Security policies are now applied as applications are going up. Because it's automated, we don't have the three to four week delay. The insertion of applications in the cloud for us dropped from an average of three to four weeks to a couple of days."
"ShieldX ensures that we can have the separation needed for our environment to avoid drastically increasing the cost on the licensing side. From this perspective, it's been very positive and helpful."
"For other security professions who are looking for something which is low in cost that does microsegmentation, they should look at ShieldX. It might not be the big name out there, but it does everything that you are looking for in microsegmentation at a very low price."
"I'm unable to give information on the pricing or licensing cost of VMware NSX because I've never been someone who looks into the economic part of any security or virtualization solutions. That's handled by an entirely different team, and I don't even have the slightest idea about the costs associated with the solution, though I've heard pricing for VMware NSX is on the higher side."
"The price is based on the virtual desktop infrastructure(VDI) side and also is dependant on the size of the environment. The price is expensive and it could attract more purchasers in smaller organisations if it was reduced."
"The price could be better. We pay for the license every three years. The last time I checked, it cost around three million pesos in the Philipines. Most of the expense will go towards implementation and renovation."
"It is an expensive product, but cheaper than some competing solutions."
"VMware has a subscription and perpetual license. In the New Year, they're changing many things about the licensing model. Previously, NSX was licensed according to the number of sockets inside the appliance, so we bought VMware licenses based on that. However, that may have changed this year. We are still contacting the vendors to understand the new licensing strategy."
"The subscription is on a yearly basis."
"The licensing fees are expensive and we pay on a yearly basis."
"We are using the free version of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
21%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Insurance Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

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What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware NSX?
When measuring complexity and costs for our organization, we consider some parameters for effectiveness. In terms of effectiveness in reducing operational complexity, I measure it to be high on the...
 

Also Known As

APEIRO, ShieldX APEIRO
VMware Nicira, Lastline Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Iowa State University
City of Avondale, Lumeta, Kroll Ontrack, Heartland Payment Systems, Baystate Heallth, Exostar, Tribune Media, iGATE, NTT Communications, Synergent, California Natural Resources Agency, Bloomington Public Schools, Columbia Sportswear, Join Experience S.A, Schuberg Philis
Find out what your peers are saying about ShieldX vs. VMware NSX and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.