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Menlo Secure 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

Menlo Secure
Ranking in ZTNA
28th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (26th), Firewalls (53rd), Cloud Security Remediation (7th)
Portnox
Ranking in ZTNA
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (3rd), Passwordless Authentication (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the ZTNA category, the mindshare of Menlo Secure is 2.0%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Portnox is 3.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Portnox3.1%
Menlo Secure2.0%
Other94.9%
ZTNA
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2701794 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.
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

"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."
"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."
"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."
"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."
"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."
"Either you have access to something or don't have access to it, and if you do, we can ensure, 100 percent of the time, that there is nothing malicious that is going to impact our system in any way."
"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools prior to implementing them had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged."
"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."
"Portnox is better than other solutions that I tried before, at least with Cisco, because it has lots of features that are not included in Cisco, so it is the best for me."
"Portnox provides excellent security by following Zero Trust security principles."
"The features and functionality provide great value."
"Most customers feel value immediately upon deployment; they are able to see what is connected and apply the policies."
"Portnox helped to free up staff time and resources for other IT security priorities and IT work."
"Technical support was very helpful when we needed them."
"The most important feature is that this solution is agentless. So, you don't have to install any agents on endpoints."
"It's easy to manage and troubleshoot thanks to the lightweight components."
 

Cons

"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."
"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."
"The user monitoring could still be improved."
"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."
"The price could be better."
"Ideally, we should be able to search for any MAC address in the database, regardless of its authentication status, to see all its associated groups and potential conflicts."
"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."
"Portnox CORE can improve on support for unmanaged switches (or hubs) and other brands of network devices. These kinds of devices are still in use in organisations, especially SMEs who cannot afford to buy a managed switch."
"In Portnox, the area that has room for improvement is that older data is not fetching correctly."
"Portnox can occasionally knock out a switch port, causing network downtime and requiring manual reset."
"One of the things for the on-premise is that sometimes you click on it and it takes a while for it to respond."
"The Wi-Fi integration could be done better from their end."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."
"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."
"It's not cheap. It's not expensive. It's in the middle."
"The users are not very happy with the new licensing option where there is only a subscription license. There is no perpetual license."
"It is not bad. It is a bit on the high side, but considering the cloud features and how much it costs to run the instance in the cloud, it is not unreasonable. We do have RADIUS servers for the US, Asia, and Europe."
"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."
"The solution is very expensive and I would rate it 10 out of 10."
"The cost of Portnox Clear is reasonable."
"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."
"We pay for port licensing and support on a yearly basis, and it's not cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
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

What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which mak...
What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic access, and by doing it that way, it has multiple use cases. For example, it man...
What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some of these functions, people typically choose another technology for those specifi...
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

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
Access Layers Portnox, Portnox CLEAR
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 Menlo Secure vs. Portnox and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.