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NordLayer vs Portnox comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 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

NordLayer
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
21st
Ranking in ZTNA
23rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (37th), Internet Security (16th), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (26th), ZTNA as a Service (26th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (32nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (25th)
Portnox
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
5th
Ranking in ZTNA
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Passwordless Authentication (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Access Control (NAC) category, the mindshare of NordLayer is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Portnox is 6.4%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Access Control (NAC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Portnox6.4%
NordLayer0.7%
Other92.9%
Network Access Control (NAC)
 

Featured Reviews

Christophe Derdeyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner delaware Singapore at delaware Singapore
A convenient and easy tool with an incredibly high number of dialing points
The solution is convenient and easy. It has an incredibly high number of dialing points for pretty much every single country in the world. It has a few additional security features. It has a function that prevents unsecured access if my connection were to drop for any reason. It’s something I like. It has threat protection features. It can protect my web connection and files against malicious downloads and trackers.
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

"The solution is convenient and easy."
"One of the features I enjoyed the most about Portnox was the ability to dive in with proper details on an endpoint."
"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."
"For the information security team, the security level was improved because it helped to manage and prevent rogue devices from connecting to the corporate network."
"I surely recommend Portnox to other users because of the price, ease of use, and fast setup."
"Most customers feel value immediately upon deployment; they are able to see what is connected and apply the policies."
"The Vidahost feature is currently in action, and it appears to be providing valuable data insights."
"This is a self-sufficient network monitoring and security product that saves time and employee resources."
"We are very satisfied with this solution; we like it because it is agentless."
 

Cons

"The tool is not perfectly stable."
"One of the things for the on-premise is that sometimes you click on it and it takes a while for it to respond."
"Areas that Portnox CORE can improve include: Support for unmanaged switches (or hubs) and other brands of network devices."
"Their filtering system tends to lag quite a bit, so when I'm doing filtering at times, it doesn't filter the items properly."
"From a resource perspective, the OEM can do better in terms of resource utilization."
"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."
"The solution did have some stability issues, however, all I had to do was restart it."
"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."
"I believe there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We pay for port licensing and support on a yearly basis, and it's not cheap."
"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."
"Pricing is quite reasonable."
"The tool is more expensive than Fortinet."
"Pricing is not cheap. It is based on licenses per port. After licensing is purchased, you only pay for support."
"The vendor price is fair."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portnox Clear?
Regarding hidden maintenance costs, I would say I have never encountered a challenge where Portnox was not able to work or where I told the customer to do any major infrastructural changes. Even be...
What needs improvement with Portnox Clear?
I used to have difficulty sometimes with VPN in Portnox, but in general, I am not sure about areas for improvement. I did not try the mobile application, and the documentation is important because ...
What is your primary use case for Portnox Clear?
From customer to customer, the use case for Portnox is different. Some customers ask for a network to protect their board and local network, while others want to allow employees to access via VPN a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Access Layers Portnox, Portnox CLEAR
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hostinger, Shutterstock, USMobile, Soundcloud, Calendly, whatagraph.
Data Realty, Royal London, Wales Millennium Centre, McLaren Construction Group, EL AL Israeli Airlines, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: May 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.