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Impulse Point SafeConnect 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

Impulse Point SafeConnect
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Portnox
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA (8th), Passwordless Authentication (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Access Control (NAC) category, the mindshare of Impulse Point SafeConnect is 1.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Portnox is 7.7%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Access Control (NAC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Portnox7.7%
Impulse Point SafeConnect1.8%
Other90.5%
Network Access Control (NAC)
 

Featured Reviews

CD
Director of Computer Information Services at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
Easy to scale, enforces policies well, and has responsive technical support
A lot of campuses use SafeConnect. It gives us good visibility and enforces policies. It helps enforce network security by scanning devices, making sure they have current and valid antivirus solutions with up-to-date antivirus definitions, and steers our end users by enforcing policy groups and steering them to the right access. Technical support is responsive. The stability is pretty good. It is very easy to scale the product.
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

"It gives us good visibility and enforces policies, helps enforce network security by scanning devices, making sure they have current and valid antivirus solutions with up-to-date antivirus definitions, and steers our end users by enforcing policy groups and steering them to the right access."
"It is very easy to scale the product."
"Portnox's pricing is very conservative and offers great value for money."
"Portnox integrates seamlessly with existing identity providers such as Azure AD, Okta, and Google Workspace, and its integration capabilities and security features such as zero-trust and passwordless authentication contribute significantly to an organization's security posture."
"Portnox is a highly effective tool that will significantly lower your incident resolution times, so be prepared to push through a slight learning curve at the beginning."
"The most important of all is that we are aware of situations the minute anyone on the network has issues, with a very good graphical interface that shows us exactly where the issue is and what ports it is occurring at, making it a lot easier for us to troubleshoot network issues and helping with uptime and productivity."
"The cloud-based feature of Portnox is excellent."
"What I like most about Portnox is its cloud-native Zero Trust/NAC approach, its ability to integrate with a customer’s existing environment, and the ease of positioning it from a reseller perspective."
"CLEAR is one of the best of its kind on the market with respect to compatibility."
"It's easy to manage and troubleshoot thanks to the lightweight components."
 

Cons

"The solution would be much better if it offered self-service onboarding."
"In many situations, the authentication steps cause slightly slow access and introduce some delay in the authentication process."
"I guess the only thing that might really make a difference is a change in the pricing structure."
"The licensing is based on a per-port price, even when you are not using all of the ports, and this is something that could be improved."
"The integration between Portnox CORE and Portnox CLEAR can be better. These are two different systems, and there is no unique console for both devices. Portnox CORE is agentless, whereas Portnox CLEAR is not agentless."
"It could be a little cheaper."
"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."
"We have seen instances where the older version stops working properly, and we have to update each system individually."
"The solution did have some stability issues, however, all I had to do was restart it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For our tier group, for one year, the cost is probably around $10,000 for the license. If you do multi-year, you could get two years, and you could get it for about $8,000 per year. If you do three years, you get it around $7,000 a year."
"We pay for port licensing and support on a yearly basis, and it's not cheap."
"Pricing is quite reasonable."
"Portnox CORE's pricing is adequate and cheaper compared to other complex solutions. Its licensing costs are yearly and include support. Cost is calculated per device."
"Pricing is not cheap. It is based on licenses per port. After licensing is purchased, you only pay for support."
"It's not cheap. It's not expensive. It's in the middle."
"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."
"The vendor price is fair."
"The solution is very expensive and I would rate it 10 out of 10."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portnox Clear?
The pricing and setup cost as well as licensing is a bit high compared to the competition. If it were better, we could also have some pricing specific or special discounts to cater for SMBs.
What needs improvement with Portnox Clear?
If the MSSP offering could be the primary push or primary concern, it would be the best thing that could happen. Based on the Tanzanian market, AI governance is something that is coming through. Fo...
What is your primary use case for Portnox Clear?
Portnox is for the network access control use case. The use case focuses on wired network access, specifically how users are connecting to the network and how we are checking their security posture...
 

Also Known As

SafeConnect
Access Layers Portnox, Portnox CLEAR
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aerohive Solution
Sallie Mae, Roku, Vuori, Legal Zoom, Anaplan, Aecon, H.I.G. Capital, McLaren Construction Group, PFCU, UK Mortgage Lending Limited, CCC Intelligent Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco, ThreatLocker and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.