SonicWall NSa vs Zscaler Internet Access comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
306
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (2nd), WAN Edge (1st)
SonicWall NSa
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (19th)
Zscaler Internet Access
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Internet Security (2nd)
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Firewalls category, the market share of Fortinet FortiGate is 22.9% and it increased by 13.2% compared to the previous year. The market share of SonicWall NSa is 1.6% and it increased by 8.7% compared to the previous year. The market share of Zscaler Internet Access is 0.3% and it increased by 84.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
Unique Categories:
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
21.5%
WAN Edge
24.4%
No other categories found
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
19.4%
Internet Security
38.4%
 

Featured Reviews

DP
Mar 28, 2022
Straightforward implementation and affordable
Whenever we install a new release of an OS we should expect lots of bugs on the system that could break the system. Something that is working fine in the previous system, if we upgrade it, it could break it. Fortinet should work a lot on this to remediate it before releasing any OS. This includes any update and upgrade of FortiOS because I have seen issues when I upgraded, such as the memory and CPU jumping to 100 percent, and some or all functions were not operational. These bugs should be fixed in the firmware. If there is a need for some upgrade or update on an existing system then I will plan ahead, but if it is not stable I will not do it. We have new releases being tested now and once they are rated stable I will upgrade.
AJ
Nov 30, 2022
Very user friendly with great performance and stability
Our company uses the solution as a firewall that provides different levels of protection for our office and factory. We currently have 500 users.  The solution is very user friendly. The performance and stability are two key features. We have not found any vulnerabilities since implementing the…
ArunGauttam - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 14, 2023
Its most valuable feature is the well-structured functioning of services and helping us monitor them in the best possible way
We use the solution for web security services such as DLP, VPN, BPA, ZIA, and CASB.   We needed a solution to control the user traffic on the internet earlier. But now, with Zscaler's help, we can adequately handle the data using CASB. Also, we can control URLs and Web accesses with the help of…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The usage in general is pretty good."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"It is easy to manage, and it doesn't need much knowledge from the team. It is a stable device, and there are many features that are included out of the box."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"The most valuable features are simplicity, management, and that it's constantly evolving."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"I like that SonicWall NSa is a stable product. It's also a scalable product."
"It is a brilliant product. It is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) system. It has got about 11 security services that take care of your perimeter security. It takes care of any kind of cyber threats that could come in. It takes care of creating VPNs between two SonicWalls instantly and very easily. It has got spyware in it as well as a firewall. It has also got a gateway antivirus and an application firewall that can block things from outside."
"The most valuable feature is the sandbox."
"It allows us to block applications, i.e., websites by application type category. It is far more capable than content filtering alone."
"We can do the hosting and security all under one box. The UTM is a good feature."
"This product has kept us safe and we haven't had any breaches."
"Since SonicWall is a UTM, we have enabled all the features: antivirus, IPS, URL filtering, and content filtering. All of these features are working fine."
"The basic firewall rules of the solution are great."
"The scanning feature is impressive, because they do not introduce a big latency to the traffic."
"All internet access flows through the Zscaler proxy, regardless of whether people are in office or remote. I have greater control site access and I minimize the number of compromises that we experience to almost none."
"The solution is stable."
"In terms of management and visibility, there is a single panel where you can configure the policies for your entire organisation worldwide."
"For our needs, the cloud-native proxy architecture is a very good solution. We are moving away from on-prem appliances and moving more toward cloud-based solutions. Zscaler is a good fit for our strategy. This architecture helps with cyber threats because we inspect most of the traffic and we can see that a lot of threats are stopped directly in the secure web gateway."
"The solution offers a distributed organization to master and to control all of the endpoints."
"The most valuable feature is bandwidth control."
"The solution replaces multiple vendor technologies with one which makes it worth the cost."
 

Cons

"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"It's very hard to manage this box. You really need a lot of skills to operate the SonicWall. There is training and the like, but it's just hard to manage. Even if you have the knowledge, there are too many options. The menus are not very clear, where you should find the information."
"Vendor support needs improvement. The frequency of time and support should be increased."
"The anti-spam requires a specific Java version on the server side (do not update it, otherwise it will break)."
"Do not even consider NetExtender - probably one of the most horrific, nightmare grade Java-based VPN clients. We have but all given up trying to make it work reliably."
"I'd like to see integration with Microsoft 365 for authentication."
"The solution can be a bit expensive."
"The stability is not there. The features are there, but they are not stable. They need to improve on this product because I feel that they have launched this product without much R&D."
"The only thing that we would want would be single-pane management, which it has, but the GMS is not very good. It's purely the management of multiple devices for multiple customers, that's the only thing that it's lacking."
"The pricing is an issue. It is expensive if you have all of your users in the same location. It is expensive compared to other firewalls on the market."
"The performance needs improvement. Some areas create performance issues and, depending on the use cases, require reconfiguration to perform again."
"I would like to see the ability to choose a pool of IPs for my company, set up rules based on them, and know that those IPs are not used by other companies."
"The solution is expensive. They recently revised the pricing and packaging. Some of our existing customers have been asking for alternate solutions for a lower price."
"Do not expect to pay for the service and start using it, like Gmail. Zscaler requires a proper implementation to be done to make it successful."
"An improvement would be if they could provide an out-of-the-box experience, like 20 to 30 features all ready to go. In comparison, LogRhythm offers out-of-the-box features. With Zscaler Internet Access, there is firewall IPS, multiple security services, filtering, DLP, and CASB browser isolation. These are things that all users are going to be using. However, when an administrator or architect would start building this, I would definitely need to engage professional services to help clients do it."
"Zscaler should provide adjacent services, which would be complementary to their current offering that could to be more pragmatic for a customer. For example, if you take Akamai, you get multiple sets of services, all depending on the customer and the strategy and the complexity and the problems. In some areas, they are more varied in terms of coverage."
"There are a few features that are not compatible with the Azure cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet FortiGate has different licensing models, depending on what you're going to do. Services included would depend on the license model. Licenses can be renewed annually."
"Fortinet costs are 25% lower than the high-cost provider. There is an equipment cost and a recurring monthly cost for licenses and technical support."
"Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."
"While Fortinet FortiGate has a higher price point compared to Sophos XG, its user-friendly interface justifies the cost."
"The price for the device and software is high. However, the solution is of good quality and has a lot of features."
"Compared to Palo Alto, which we have used in the past, pricing and licensing are okay."
"Setup costs and pricing depends on many variables, but it's mostly affordable."
"Its pricing is good. It's average or normal as compared to Palo Alto and Check Point firewalls."
"Its price is okay."
"While I don't know the exact amount off the top of my head, I would estimate the licensing package was about $15,000 to $20,000 a year."
"If you want to connect more than five concurrent users by VPN then you have to pay an additional fee."
"SonicWall NSa has reasonable pricing. My company pays for it yearly, but I forgot how much the company pays. From what I remember, you only pay for the license fees."
"The CPUs are not able to compete with a similar price point to the Fortinet, WatchGuard, or Palo Alto product."
"SonicWall is not an expensive solution."
"A firewall doing anti-spam might be a low cost solution, but it is not your best strategy."
"There is a license required for this solution and you can purchase a one, two, or three year term. Typically businesses choose the one year subscription and then later choose the three year licensing option if they are satisfied."
"Zscaler is transparent about its pricing model."
"Licenses are available on a per-host basis. Some features like sandboxing require an additional fee, but most standard features are included in the license."
"The pricing is an issue. It is expensive compared to other firewalls on the market."
"If we need any extra features, the price will increase."
"The solution is a little bit expensive. On a scale of one to five, I would rate it as a three."
"The price is competitive. It's not cheap and it's not expensive."
"The tool is moderately priced."
"We pay around 6,500 INR per user per year, which is very expensive. I would rate Zscaler's pricing one out of five."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Retailer
7%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 ...
What do you like most about SonicWall NSa?
The product blocks access when I visit unrecognized websites.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall NSa?
The solution is cheaper than others. It has a reasonable price.
What needs improvement with SonicWall NSa?
The dashboard must be improved. The product should enable alerts. When hackers compromise our websites and applicatio...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...
Which is better, Zscaler internet access or Netsckope CASB?
We researched Netskope but ultimately chose Zscaler. Netskope is a cloud access security broker that helps identify ...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate
NSA 250M, NSA 2600, NSA 3600, NSA 4600, NSA 5600, Dell SonicWALL NSA
ZIA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Amazon Web Services 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Cisco 5. Dell 6. HP 7. Oracle 8. Verizon 9. AT&T 10. T-Mobile 11. Sprint 12. Vodafone 13. Orange 14. BT Group 15. Telstra 16. Deutsche Telekom 17. Comcast 18. Time Warner Cable 19. CenturyLink 20. NTT Communications 21. Tata Communications 22. SoftBank 23. China Mobile 24. Singtel 25. Telus 26. Rogers Communications 27. Bell Canada 28. Telkom Indonesia 29. Telkom South Africa 30. Telmex 31. Telia Company 32. Telkom Kenya
Orange County Rescue Mission, First Source, Michaels & Taylor, Green Clinic Health System, Aspire Chiltern Skills and Enterprise Centre, UnitedStack, Faith Lutheran College Redlands, Celtic Manor Resort, Star Kay White, Air Works, Unimat Life, NHS Yorkshire and Humber Commissioning Support (YHCS), Hutt City Council, Mato Grosso do Sul, Nspyre
Ulster-Greene ARC, BanRegio, HDFC, Ralcorp Holdings Inc., British American Tobacco, Med America Billing Services Inc., Lanco Group, Aquafil, Telefonica, Swisscom, Brigade Group
Find out what your peers are saying about SonicWall NSa vs. Zscaler Internet Access and other solutions. Updated: July 2019.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.