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Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
373
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (9th)
Zscaler Cloud Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
25th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.2%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zscaler Cloud Firewall is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
RonnieYazdani - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly CLI and efficient dashboard streamline operations with robust security features
I find Palo Alto Networks VM-Series easy to deploy, and none of my customers have had significant complaints. My customers have high certifications provided by Palo Alto Networks. The friendly dashboard and the ability to easily command and use the CLI make Palo Alto Networks VM-Series a better product. It offers robust solutions, making it valuable to my customers.
Bhaskar Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Though it helps deal with web traffic or any malicious traffic, it needs to work on its DC performance issues
The product's initial setup phase is moderate in level, so it is neither very complex nor very easy. For the deployment, my company first needs to gather all the requirements of the users and the domain names and consider how many users there are in the company. In the implementation and planning part, my company needs to consider what kind of policies we will create while ensuring that the policies are created based on the requirements of the users. There is a need to segregate the users' requirements since there are separate departments in the company, like the HR department, sales department, IT department, and manufacturing department, so that our company can create policies depending on their requirements. On-site, if you want a GRE tunnel, our company can handle GRE tunnel traffic routing and Zscaler Cloud Firewall, after which Zscaler will take action based on the policies created by our organization. For the deployments and maintenance, a team of five members consisting of two managers and three engineers is required.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"It is useful for protecting and segregating the internal networks from the internet. Most of our customers also use the FortiGate client to connect to their offices by using the VPN client, and of course, they usually activate the antivirus, deep inspection, and intrusion prevention services. They are also using it for web filtering and implementing various policies dealing with forwardings, NAT, etc."
"The performance is good."
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"Using Palo Alto Networks Panorama, we were able to deploy a single point of management and visualization of the firewall infrastructure in cloud, on-premise and integrated with Azure to automate scale up. Its security features, i.e. anti-malware, threat prevention, URL Filtering, VPN, and antivirus are the most valuable. The ID-User integrated with AD and 2FA features are also very useful to provide secure access to servers and some users in the company. "
"AWS has improved our agility to apply firewall rules. It has reduced the amount of time that it takes to apply firewall rules because everything is based in the cloud."
"They now know the details about their network traffic that they did not know before: Applications that they are using and some application they did not know they were using."
"With the improved visibility we now have, the traffic is being properly monitored, which means that we are better able to manage it. These are improvements that we saw very quickly."
"Overall, I give Palo Alto Networks VM-Series a rating of nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is that you can control your traffic flowing out and coming it, allowing you to apply malware and threat protection, as well as vulnerability checks."
"It has a good performance which helps you with the stability of your virtual environment."
"It is an easy-to-scale product."
"Since it is really customizable, I can use it and avoid enabling access to the full network."
"It helps a lot of companies to reduce their downtime. Also, It helps businesses in terms of being secured and protected from any threats."
"Includes advanced tech protection."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Most of the features that Zscaler has to offer, we will deploy."
"The visibility and log availability offered are highly valued for troubleshooting purposes, and this is a key factor driving customer interest in the firewall module."
"I like the ease of deployment and its flexibility. We don't need to deal with license, quotes, procurement, delivery, and installation. Everything is software-based, and it's very easy to operate."
"The solution offers good sandboxing."
 

Cons

"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"FortiManager has not been my favorite. I don't use it and cannot say I really care for FortiManager for managing the firewalls."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"Previously it had a hiccup around a bug within the authentication VPN due to the firmware, but after updating, it's easier to control."
"I wish that they could integrate zero-trust technology into Fortinet FortiGate. I am not sure whether it has been done already, but if they could implement that, it would help significantly."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"At the moment, the main concern is the pricing and the type of licensing."
"There are some delays that I have observed when my company communicates with Palo Alto's support engineers."
"Just sometimes it can be a bit sluggish navigating through pages. That is just purely because of Java.​"
"The user-friendliness of the UI could be improved."
"I would like to have automatic daily reporting, such as how many users have connected via SSL VPN."
"The product needs improvement in their Secure Access Service Edge."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration of multi-factor authentication vendors."
"The DLP functionality or data classification can be improved in the solution's basic firewalling."
"I would like to see a more thorough QA process. We have had some difficulties from bugs in releases."
"Because it's on cloud, it doesn't allow application of extra settings."
"Zscaler Cloud Firewall should have a better understanding of all dynamic cloud applications."
"There are some areas it could improve when it comes to blocking, we have to block some things manually. For example, if we block a top-level domain we have seen that the new IPs come through, the IPs are not blocked. There should be some more granular way of doing it. My only request is if you're blocking something at a top level, the sub-level sub-domains and all those other IPs should be blocked too automatically."
"When it comes to customer support, there is room for improvement in Zscaler's service."
"Instead of the standard license, they should certainly provide customers with the visibility to access and view the logs."
"Apart from the issues associated with the product in areas like the DC performance issues and DC failover, Zscaler Cloud Firewall's IP should not have a proxy IP."
"There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, the GUI is outdated, with noticeable lags and delays, especially when generating reports for past transactions."
"Certain criteria need to be met if you want to scale this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be lower."
"It is not the cheapest one, but its price is very competitive."
"Licensing is usually on a three-year period."
"It is affordable. Palo Alto is much more expensive than Fortinet."
"Fortinet FortiGate is expensive."
"Fortinet FortiGate gives you most of the features in one license."
"We find the most valuable aspect of this solution is the price. It is affordable, and cheaper than other firewalls."
"Fortinet FortiGate as a less expensive solution than Palo Alto."
"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is the most expensive tool among competitors"
"Because the solution was getting deployed on AWS, it was the best place to go and it was available there."
"Sometimes, it's cheaper to buy a new firewall with licensing instead of renewing the licenses of an old firewall."
"The box, if you do not want to buy the threat prevention license in the box, you can buy it only with the support license. It is for the support of the hardware. It works like a simple firewall. It integrates what it calls user IDs and application IDs. If you do not buy any other license, only the firewall, Palo Alto will also help you improve a lot of your security."
"I rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series pricing an eight out of ten."
"The VM series is licensed annually."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is notably cheaper than other firewall vendors, except Fortigate."
"It is expensive for small businesses."
"There are different subscription models available."
"It comes at a significantly reduced cost while ensuring control and effectiveness."
"The product is a bit expensive compared to the solutions offered by its competitors, like Palo Alto. There is a need to make yearly payments towards the license in charges associated with the product."
"Zscaler is priced too high compared to the cost of Fortinet."
"It is not the most budget-friendly solution, but it's important to consider its overall value."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"There are licensing costs, and I would not say that it's a cheap vendor."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the...
Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?
Netscope, Zscaler if they continue route they are on now. FIrewalls needs great deal of automation on each end, datac...
What do you like most about Zscaler Cloud Firewall?
The product’s firewall and VPN package are fantastic compared to any other solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler Cloud Firewall?
Zscaler Cloud Firewall is quite expensive compared to competitors. However, it offered moderate value for money.
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
No data available
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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
Warren Rogers Associates
Zenith Live, Azure, Carlsberg Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.