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Prisma SD-WAN pros and cons

Vendor: Palo Alto Networks

4.3 out of 5

24 reviews
95% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Prisma SD-WAN offers comprehensive analytics with insights such as internet health metrics for latency, packet loss, and MOS. Its simple architecture eases network troubleshooting, supporting dynamic routing for seamless operation. Advanced path selection and QoS enhance service quality. Though stable and efficient, it has premium pricing and issues with setup, support, and integration with other Palo Alto solutions. Training and documentation are areas needing improvement for easier transitions from legacy systems.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Prisma SD-WAN ensures a smooth transition for branch site traffic when MPLS is down and quickly advertises the routes of that site.

The cloud availability of its gateway allows access from anywhere while still connecting to the home gateway, enhancing accessibility and integration with Palo Alto.

From the main controller, it provides full administration of customer devices, QoS, network, traffic, and total control through the Prisma SD-WAN portal.

Prisma's analytics offer extensive data like internet health charts showing latency and dropped packets, useful for troubleshooting internet connections.

The high-speed dynamic routing and self-healing capability during connectivity loss, along with AI ops for automated compliance, make Prisma SD-WAN comprehensive and highly reliable.

CONS

Palo Alto's pricing model for Prisma SD-WAN is considered too high, making it less accessible for smaller companies.

There is limited documentation on how Prisma SD-WAN manipulates traffic, causing troubleshooting challenges.

Palo Alto has not initiated sufficient training for Prisma SD-WAN, particularly for those moving from legacy environments.

The quality of technical support for Prisma SD-WAN has decreased, affecting the speed and effectiveness of customer service.

Prisma SD-WAN requires more flexibility, scalability, and advanced security features, as well as a unified approach to deployments.

Prisma SD-WAN Pros review quotes

reviewer1752819

Technical Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 27, 2021

If the MPLS goes down, there is a really smooth transition for a branch site to take traffic over the Internet. It will advertise the routes of that site in a jiffy.

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Network Administrator at Wipro

Oct 21, 2022

From the main controller, we can administer the customer's devices, QoS, network, and traffic. We can monitor it and we can change and create policies as well as upgrade the software. We can totally control a customer's network from one site, the Prisma SD-WAN portal.

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reviewer2060541

Sr Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 18, 2023

Prisma's analytics provide a lot of valuable data. I like the internet health chart that shows latency, dropped packets, MOS for data quality, etc. It also runs a continuous speed test in the background. I've used it multiple times to troubleshoot internet connections when the service provider has attempted to claim nothing is wrong with the circuit. It gives me data to send them showing we're not getting the speed we should, or there is constant packet loss.

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Free Report: Prisma SD-WAN Reviews and More

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reviewer2060574

Pcs at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 25, 2022

I like the link monitoring and analytics. These are the features that set Prisma apart from other products. Prisma works well with large, complex networks. One of my clients is a top bank in the United States, and Prisma has performed well for that customer.

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reviewer2198622

Network Team Lead at Wipro Limited

May 30, 2023

It is flexible to use the internet connection via local breakouts without going to data centers.

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Imran Taiyeb Ali

Senior Solutions Specialist at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

Nov 13, 2023

The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.

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DD

Network SME at Sanofi

Jan 10, 2023

When it comes to supporting large, complex, network architectures, it's a very simple architecture. The main component is the fabric. It's very easy to troubleshoot if there is an issue happening in the underlying network.

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reviewer1688805

IT Communications engineer at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 20, 2022

I like that the integration with Palo Alto is easy.

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reviewer2706744

Cybersecurity Analyst at a government with 201-500 employees

Jun 4, 2025

The biggest benefit for us is that we've seen a reduction in incidents.

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MH

Regional Technical Manager at Nestingtech

Mar 15, 2022

The gateway is available on the cloud which allows you access from anywhere and still connects to your home gateway.

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Prisma SD-WAN Cons review quotes

reviewer1752819

Technical Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 27, 2021

We are incorporating their zone-based firewalls. Prisma SD-WAN has limited documentation on how it manipulates traffic, e.g., how it is interacting with TCP and UDP. We recently had some traffic that was black holing. We literally had to do packet captures to see that the new zone-based firewall, which runs on top of Prisma SD-WAN, was causing issues.

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Network Administrator at Wipro

Oct 21, 2022

I would also like to see improvement in the product training for customers. Palo Alto has not initiated very much training but they have to do so because this is a new product. If you have experience in a legacy environment, and you are moving to Prisma SD-WAN, you don't have a training framework. That is one of the disadvantages.

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reviewer2060541

Sr Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 18, 2023

Customer support is our biggest pain point. The quality of support has gone down a little since we initially deployed this product. I don't know if this is due to turnover at Palo Alto or a lack of training. It is now taking one or two days to get an initial response that says, "Hey, we've looked into this, can you pull this data for us?" In the past, we'd immediately get a response.

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Free Report: Prisma SD-WAN Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Prisma SD-WAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer2060574

Pcs at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 25, 2022

There are two parallel things that we want Palo Alto to work on. First, customers want a unified appliance that does the work of all firewalls in addition to SD-WAN. Second, the cloud presence should be completely automated. If I purchase the SASE architecture, I shouldn't worry about deployments in Prisma Access or on Prisma SD-WAN. It should be deployed in one go.

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reviewer2198622

Network Team Lead at Wipro Limited

May 30, 2023

Prisma SD-WAN's technical support should be improved.

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AW

Sr. Networking Engineer at Emerson

Jun 6, 2024

Accessibility could be improved. Any new person attempting to access Prisma will have difficulty. It doesn't have CLI available.

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Imran Taiyeb Ali

Senior Solutions Specialist at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

Nov 13, 2023

Sometimes, during the product's initial setup phase, bypass pair or couple ports don't come up normally, and it requires an hour and a half to troubleshoot to reset the box from Prisma SD-WAN to factory default.

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DD

Network SME at Sanofi

Jan 10, 2023

Event correlation and analysis capabilities do not help minimize the number of alarms from a single event. That is the problem. We are getting a lot of incidents, and there is some issue with the correlation. That is still a drawback.

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reviewer1688805

IT Communications engineer at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 20, 2022

The only con is the pricing because it's more premium.

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reviewer2706744

Cybersecurity Analyst at a government with 201-500 employees

Jun 4, 2025

The documentation tends to be outdated, often directing us to resources that are no longer accurate or available, and this is one of the reasons we are potentially looking at alternatives.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 24)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

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Product Categories

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Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

Popular Comparisons

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