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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 12, 2025

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
587
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (4th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (2nd), WAN Edge (2nd)
Citrix SD-WAN [EOL]
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Q&A Highlights

OT
Assistant Vice President - IT at Au small finance bank
May 08, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch
A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service
I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.
ND
Network Manager at HPCL
Faced complex visibility and policy challenges but have improved basic traffic routing control
I have found some other solutions more insightful and user-friendly as compared to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, but the basic SD-WAN functionality is good enough. I am using it only because it was done as a pilot project, specifically for my 60 to 70 sites. For the majority of the sites, I am using Fortinet's Secure SD-WAN solution and I found that more viable and more in alignment with my requirements. For example, there is not any Internet Service Database available in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN intrinsically. If I want to write a policy based on applications, I am not able to write it, at least in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Viptela deployment that we have done, and that is fairly easy to do in Fortinet. The second issue is the logging capability. I think the visibility that Fortinet Secure SD-WAN has is not even comparable. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN does not provide that sort of insight or control as far as traffic steering is concerned. With respect to the SLAs, I barely know which sort of SLAs are violated in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, so I do not have clear visibility on where the traffic is moving from at my spoke or hub locations. I believe Fortinet gives me a very clear picture of where the traffic is going. Overall visibility, whether it is data traffic or logs, is much better in Fortinet compared to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. The complexity of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Viptela is noticeable and quite complicated to configure. If something breaks, you have to involve TAC and others to fix it. On the contrary, you can work with underlays. Even if your IPsec overlay tunnel is down, it does not impact your production. Thus, we find Fortinet's solution significantly better than Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN solution. I have used Application-aware Routing in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. However, I found it to be very complicated, especially regarding policy writing. For my breakout of VC traffic, we had to write a bunch of IP addresses for Zoom, Webex, and others. Presently, it can only identify Webex as an application, and I highly doubt whether there is any application identification for Zoom and other platforms, as we were not able to find it during our implementation. It is done through static whitelisting of the IPs, which is not a scalable solution since IPs can change at any time. Overall, the application-aware routing policies are not as flexible and scalable as the Internet Service Database feature of Fortinet provides. The struggles encompass policy writing, logging capabilities, traffic visibility, and complex configuration. There is also the issue of load balancing. We have faced considerable challenges with traffic load balancing between the links. Although the SLA targets are configurable, understanding how traffic flows is challenging, making troubleshooting exceedingly difficult. Overall, I find it a quite complicated solution with not that much operational usability.
Rohit Ghorpade - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Network Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
A scalable solution for MCN controller but lacks technical supports, upgrades
There are a few things that can be improved, are domain-based routing and the slowness of virtual parts, and it may be due to the wrong configuration, which we have been unable to find out. Previously, we faced some issues with the slowness part. Apart from that, feature like end gateway level antivirus. We are currently using a NetFlow proxy to establish a virtual position for the NetFlow. Our current environment has many use cases, but we are not using them on the Citrix SD-WAN. When I navigate the NCL part, it involves configuration. I want to highlight this disadvantage. Sometimes, when we push the configuration, it tries to push it to all branch locations. This process takes a lot of time, nearly 30 minutes, to push a single change from the NCL. Overall, I don't think Citrix meets our use cases what we have. This is based on my feedback after using it for the past year and working on this Citrix SD-WAN. However, from my experience, it is the worst solution I have seen. There's no domain-based routing, which is horrible. That's why we are moving to other products. We have checked our use case requirements with Fortinet, Palo Alto, and they meet them. I will consider the PoC or another OEM. There are many things in the area you need to be prompt, like the automation part. If any link or device goes down, alerting notification, etc. We need to perform and highlight so many things to your management. This should be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use it to avoid unwanted traffic."
"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall has a very high ROI"
"I'm looking forward to FortiGate's dashboard features, insights, application oversight, and monitoring, which could help us significantly."
"In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"The initial setup is quite simple."
"The most valuable features in Cisco SD-WAN are the QoS, AI, and simple interface for users to access."
"The solution provides good consolidation, centralization, and manageability for edge routers."
"The primary advantage we've observed is the simplification of deployment, leading to decreased IT costs and enhanced operational efficiency."
"So far, the feature that I like best is the policy configuration manager."
"Initial setup is easy."
"It is very simple and easy to manage, compared to other methods."
"The availability of services and combining different connections is most valuable."
"Downtime for branch offices is now almost zero. We have 100% real-time visibility into all of our lines. MPLS links have been replaced with lower-cost links, saving a larger percentage of line costs. Overall, I see SD-WAN as a must. And the Citrix SD-WAN product has delivered on expectations and exceeded them. (With later firmware updates we now have good firewall capabilities in the product too)."
"We are using it widely for the local record for SaaS-based applications. Another valuable feature is a local breakout."
"The most valuable feature of Citrix SD-WAN is customization. You are able to customize the solution to your needs."
"The stability is the main feature of Citrix SD-WAN. You can also upgrade the data packages or have less transmission."
"The best feature is the backup capability, where all of the users' computers are tied into a central data repository."
"It allows us to use additional VPNs, offering more options compared to other VPN solutions."
"The solution's most valuable feature is load balancing."
"It allows you to combine two asymmetrical connections."
 

Cons

"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"I'd like to see an improvement in the Bandwidth Management and Traffic limit control. Also, the licenses are expensive, turning off some users."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"It is complicated to manage different kinds of on-premise boxes."
"The solution is not scalable."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"The IPS monitoring can be improved."
"I would rate Fortinet support a six out of ten. The immediate response is not that good, particularly when raising a critical or P1 ticket; they lag in the immediate response."
"In the next release, Cisco should focus on simplifying the configuration of SD-WAN. SD-WAN has a lot of room to grow."
"It would be better if it provided more visibility. At present, we can't troubleshoot in real time."
"Integration with other OEMs and the API part needs improvement to be more user-friendly, especially in terms of GUI."
"Some configurations or procedures could be more user-friendly. Adding a bandwidth management feature would make Cisco SD-WAN more scalable and less resource-intensive."
"Cyber security should also be implemented in the solution, along with maybe implementation of AI/ML."
"Cisco SD-WAN doesn't have automation capabilities, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and isn't IOT-based."
"The negative, or the downside of Cisco is the knowledge base; you need to be a little bit more tech-savvy and network-savvy to work with Cisco, while Juniper is a lot more user-friendly from what I can see, especially in terms of configuration and any kind of roll back."
"The initial setup was not very straightforward, but it gets easier the more deployments you complete."
"I would like to see support for additional reporting."
"The communication around the life cycle would have been really helpful. The main issue we have had is related to the life cycle because some of the things that we are using were discontinued. They were discontinued within a year after we had purchased it, which is a bit painful. If we had known that, we would've made some other decisions."
"Citrix SD-WAN does not have the SD-WAN with one optimization in a single license. Other competitors have this option and it should be added to this solution."
"Even though the monitoring is pretty good, there is some room for improvement there."
"I would like to see more customization to adjust for the WAN lock-out due to our unexpected power outages."
"The reports need to be improved. We need to have them customized but they don't have that right now. I would like for them to have better system predictions. We don't have that right now. My system may be working fine right now but after making some changes, that can change."
"I am happy with this product. If anything, its price can be reduced. It is a bit expensive."
"Citrix should continue to offer a perpetual licensing model because it is very important to us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is highly competitive when compared to other brands that offer similar functionality."
"The solution is very expensive so pricing is rated a one out of ten."
"Go for long term pricing negotiated at the time of purchase."
"There is a subscription-based model to use Fortinet FortiGate. We pay annually for the solution along with the support. If you want to have all the updates, and security patches you will need to renew your support."
"Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."
"Fortinet costs are 25% lower than the high-cost provider. There is an equipment cost and a recurring monthly cost for licenses and technical support."
"I do not have first-hand experience with the rice of Fortinet FortiGate, but I have heard the price was reasonable."
"The beauty is the price performance ratio is great with FortiGate. It provides all the features we needed and the price is comparable with others' firewalls. The price is quite competitive with the firewalls with similar features."
"On a scale of one to five, I would rate Cisco's pricing as a three."
"The costs are a bit on the high side."
"Cisco is more expensive than some competing products."
"The pricing is fair, and it's on par with the market vendors. But based on the competition, Cisco could work on the pricing, go deep on discounts and provide more commercially viable solutions to customers."
"There is no license required for this solution."
"The price of Cisco SD-WAN could improve, it is expensive. The cost of the solution is approximately 30 percent higher than competitors."
"Cisco is more expensive than FortiGate."
"In the Russian market where we operate, this solution is expensive."
"It's a little bit on the high side compared to the other products."
"The price is relatively expensive."
"It depends on the scale. In our case, it would have been better if we had known about the life cycling steps, but otherwise, it is worth the money."
"The price of the subscription should be cheaper."
"I'm not quite sure of the price ranges. Roughly, the hidden devices can scale up to $20K for one appliance. However, the branch CPs are USD $1,000 to $2,500."
"The license was a one-time purchase. It's expensive."
"It would be helpful to have a demo license available for customers who want to prove the concept and conduct a proof of concept (POC) before committing to the solution. This is particularly important for customers in Egypt who often require a demonstration of the solution's features and compatibility with their needs before making any investment or incurring costs. Providing a demo license would allow customers to assess whether the solution would meet their needs or not."
"I believe that Citrix SD-WAN is a good investment, but I do not have the information to be more specific."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business360
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise190
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise44
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
 

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 ...
What do you like most about Cisco SD-WAN?
When considering the most valuable features of Cisco SD-WAN, the decoupling of self-monitoring stands out significant...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco SD-WAN?
The pricing of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is rated between eight and nine out of ten, where ten is the most expensive.
What needs improvement with Cisco SD-WAN?
I have found some other solutions more insightful and user-friendly as compared to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, but the bas...
What needs improvement with Citrix SD-WAN?
The solution's licensing model could be improved. Citrix SD-WAN is a good product from a technical point of view. How...
What advice do you have for others considering Citrix SD-WAN?
If a customer already has Citrix NetScaler and is not looking to change anything in their existing environment, we pr...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
Cisco SD-WAN
Citrix CloudBridge, WOC, NetScaler SD-WAN
 

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
Doyle Research, Ashton Metzler & Associates
AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Cornerstone Home Lending Inc., Dallara, ecVision, Essar, Eurofred, Groupe Promutuel, HMSHost Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Ltd, Royal Caribbean International
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Cisco, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.