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Appgate SDP vs Portnox 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

iboss
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Appgate SDP
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA as a Service (15th), ZTNA (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (17th), Microsegmentation Software (7th)
Portnox
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (5th), ZTNA (7th), Passwordless Authentication (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
Sachin Mohanty - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Operations Engineer at PowerSchool India Pvt.Ltd
Zero trust access has strengthened security and now streamlines remote work across all sites
The reporting can be improved, as Appgate SDP is strong but could benefit from enhanced reporting features. This would improve visibility and simplify operational monitoring, along with simpler initial deployment. The initial setup and configuration require a good understanding of Zero Trust principles. The user interface can also be improved, as the administrative interface and policy workflows would make day-to-day operations easier for security teams. Additionally, more AI-driven insights such as anomaly detection and automated policy recommendations would further enhance security operations, along with richer reporting and dashboard capabilities. Regarding scalability, we can improve it for larger-scale deployments, making the platform more effective for growing enterprises and benefiting organizations with large and distributed user populations. Many users starting with Appgate SDP would see improvements from better centralized policy management for large environments and more efficient handling for large-scale deployments while improving monitoring and reporting across multiple regions. Additional automation capabilities would also support expanding infrastructures.
Maurice Mwaura - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Applied Principles Limited
Unified access control has improved compliance visibility and simplified passwordless access
There is work to be done when it comes to making the solution more seamless. For example, when a user is denied access, they would need a way to maybe self-resolve themselves, perhaps a way to generate a ticket on their own, something around resolutions. When it comes to users using the product, that is where good products are differentiated from products that are a bit of a challenge. Portnox has much to do in terms of their reporting. The generated reports need improvement. Things that other tools would say are normal are usually not present. For example, there is a page called NAS devices or NAS network that is able to show the switches that have been managed. Currently, there is no way of generating an easy report or an easy way of just generating something to tell the customer what they have been able to achieve so far. This is not done yet and is still very manual. I think there is work to be done there. More integrations around the various products being used would be beneficial. So far I have not encountered any major challenge. Where there was a challenge, I think support came in and helped us resolve. In fact, most of the challenges are not with the product; they are with the customer environment. I think that is just to update their documentation where they have come across a new vendor for easier integrations in the future.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"iboss is definitely very good in terms of service."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"As I mentioned, the return on investment is significant, as it saved our office locations' bandwidth because when you are working remotely at home, your internet traffic routes directly to iboss and will not go to your office building, saving bandwidth bottlenecks and ensuring that issues with our building internet circuits will not impact your internet connectivity because you are directly going to the iboss data center."
"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"The flexibility of the tool is valuable; it is very robust, has a very robust configuration capability, is pretty well documented, and is also good interface-wise."
"It is a scalable solution...The support answers your questions very fast."
"One of the most important features is stopping lateral movement across our network."
"Appgate SDP has positively impacted my organization by strengthening our security posture and providing more granular control over access to internal resources we handle daily."
"Appgate SDP is the best solution for micro-segmentation and supplying VPN solutions."
"The interface is really friendly. It's simple to understand."
"The simplicity of the SDP platform is a standout feature; instead of navigating through intricate details, users can seamlessly connect to the company's network or switch to the internet with minimal effort."
"Appgate SDP has positively impacted my organization, as we are using it to securely access the internet after the cyber attack."
"We are very satisfied with this solution; we like it because it is agentless."
"It's easy to manage and troubleshoot thanks to the lightweight components."
"I surely recommend Portnox to other users because of the price, ease of use, and fast setup."
"The visibility of the product is excellent."
"I am impressed with the solution's voucher capability and authentication. The tool is integrated with Active Direct storage."
"Portnox ensures system compliance through policy enforcement, including antivirus updates, Windows operating system updates, and system patches, helping network administrators maintain system health and security across the network."
"CLEAR is one of the best of its kind on the market with respect to compatibility."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the agent features; I like the fact that you can take your device anywhere and still have that visibility from anywhere because it's agent-based."
 

Cons

"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc. It is easy to gain access if, for example, hackers obtain my username and password."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"One thing that kind of sticks out to me is the ability to do a proper non-split tunnel. VPN tunnel-wise, it is not really a true unsplit tunnel, but I think that's just because of the way it's designed. A split VPN basically allows your system to talk to other systems without being forced down the tunnel. A VPN running in a non-split tunnel mode forces all the traffic down the tunnel to wherever you're VPNing to. It forces the traffic down so that the traffic is subject to the firewall and rules that you have in your corporate environment and such. It helps to prevent remote malicious folks that may be talking directly to that box from piggybacking into the corporate environment through it. They do it partially, but it would be nice to see more of an enterprise-level solution there."
"It would be better to connect to an application portal from any device. Documentation and support could be better."
"One thing that kind of sticks out to me is the ability to do a proper non-split tunnel."
"If I could change or improve anything about Appgate SDP, it would be to enhance the user experience by improving the UI so that it is more explanatory."
"The user interface should be improved as it is not very easy to work with the updates."
"The reporting can be improved, as Appgate SDP is strong but could benefit from enhanced reporting features."
"On the cloud, when you make some changes, it may be difficult."
"One limitation is that it's harder to provide access to multiple applications in the company with Appgate, but that's probably because of poor management."
"Allowing for a search of MAC addresses in the interface, whether they are authenticated on the network or not, would be beneficial. Currently, it only finds authenticated MAC addresses, which complicates troubleshooting when the same MAC address is used for different requests."
"I think while Portnox provides wonderful technology, the support and maintenance agreements are problematic."
"However, problems arise when the same MAC address is requested for a different project. Our current system only finds authenticated MAC addresses, making it difficult to troubleshoot when the same device is used for multiple purposes."
"In terms of operational efficiency, things are more complicated now. It takes more time to get devices on the network, but we increased security quite a bit."
"The price could be better."
"I believe there are some difficulties with the removal of devices that could be improved."
"We have seen instances where the older version stops working properly, and we have to update each system individually."
"Now, the way security is viewed, maybe including something like AI, to automate some of the things that are required to be done would be great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is a pretty expensive tool. It is maybe about $20,000 per year for a hundred users or so."
"We pay $100 per user per month. One license for the site is around $17."
"The pricing is according to the market price. It is not a very cheap solution. They have some very aggressive promotions to sell the product in the market."
"It's not cheap. It's not expensive. It's in the middle."
"The cost of Portnox Clear is reasonable."
"The vendor price is fair."
"The solution is very expensive and I would rate it 10 out of 10."
"The licensing module should be reviewed to count the number of devices instead of port numbers of total switches. There is a case for this where not all ports for a switch are used by devices. Unused ports are calculated in the license, then the customer pays for license for those unused ports."
"Pricing is quite reasonable."
"We pay for port licensing and support on a yearly basis, and it's not cheap."
"Pricing is not cheap. It is based on licenses per port. After licensing is purchased, you only pay for support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Healthcare Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Appgate SDP?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that this whole thing is managed by the security team, and t...
What needs improvement with Appgate SDP?
If I could change or improve anything about Appgate SDP, it would be to enhance the user experience by improving the ...
What is your primary use case for Appgate SDP?
My main use case for Appgate SDP is for security purposes. We are trying to use it to connect with our VPNs and the n...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portnox Clear?
My thoughts on the pricing are that they are usually very flexible. They work with the customer's budget. In terms of...
What needs improvement with Portnox Clear?
The area that has room for improvement that I had is actually the one that they fixed about two or three days ago reg...
What is your primary use case for Portnox Clear?
Some of the best features that I have experienced with Portnox is the integration with identity providers and the fac...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
No data available
Access Layers Portnox, Portnox CLEAR
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
United States Air Force  FINRA Weight Watchers Rackspace  DataDog SageNet  Verdant Norwegian Cruise Line  VoiceBase  The Third Floor 
Data Realty, Royal London, Wales Millennium Centre, McLaren Construction Group, EL AL Israeli Airlines, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Appgate SDP vs. Portnox and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.