Hillstone E-Series Reviews

I use the solution in my company for site-to-site VPN, SSL VPNs, URL filtering, IPS, IDS and all the other features which are available in the firewall.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the ransomware protection that the tool offers.

We received an update for the tool in July. The update was provided for the tool as there was a problem with the firewall, where too much memory was consumed, and the firewall was hanging a lot. When we updated the tool's features, everything became okay.

The tool only had some memory-related problems. It took the tool a month to fix the issues.

I have been using Hillstone E-Series for two years. I specifically work with Firewall Hillstone Networks E1700.

I contacted the solution's technical support, and they helped us. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I cannot speak about Fortinet and Palo Alto as I have not used those tools.

The product's deployment phase had no issues.

The solution can be deployed in a week.

The tool saves money and time for my company. Fortinet and Palo Alto or some other firewall tools are expensive by around 50 to 60 percent compared to Hillstone E-Series. As per Gartner's report, Hillstone E-Series firewall is shown as a positive tool.

Our company did not use the tool's micro-segmentation features.

There were no issues while integrating the tool.

I have not used any AI in the tool.

I recommend the tool to others.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Speaking about the use cases of Hillstone E-Series, I would like to say that the firewall's security is too strong. We use IPS and an antivirus subscription in the same firewall, making it very comfortable and easy to use and manage the policies.

Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement.

Our company would recommend that it would be good if Hillstone could dedicate an area-wise support team for the firewall provided by Hillstone. Hillstone can give a single email address to its customers for raising tickets and make it an easier process to manage. In the current scenario, while considering the global level, when an email drops in, Hillstone assigns an engineer, which takes time.

It should be easier to manage the ticketing process of the support team.

I would want Hillstone E-Series to have a built-in switching capacity similar to Fortinet.

I have been using Hillstone E-Series for four to five years. Now, our company uses the new firewall from Hillstone, with which we are satisfied. I am a customer of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

My company has 70 to 80 active users of the solution.

My company plans to increase the usage of the solution.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

We previously used Aruba Switches in our company, and our feedback for it is a ten out of ten.

In my company, we previously used Sangfor, for which the renewal cost was too high compared to other brands.

I rate the initial setup phase a nine out of ten.

The solution is deployed on a public cloud.

The deployment process can be completed in a few hours.

One person is required for deployment.

Hillstone's pricing is economical and neither very high nor very low.

I recommend the solution to those planning to use it since it is easy to use and manage.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The most valuable features of the Hillstone E-Series are its hardware capacity, innovation, and the throughput that the hardware can take. It is a user-friendly and marketable solution.

One good thing about Hillstone E-Series is that you don't have to have a switching capability or get third-party switches or routers. The solution has a virtual switching and a virtual router with that capability. So if you're using a passive switch and have a router from the ISP, you can have a direct internet connection using the firewall virtual feature and router without implementing the hardware.

I've been looking for live webinars from the website. Unfortunately, I could find only the ones that are already being done. Having frequent live webinars on a monthly basis would really help.

I have been using Hillstone E-Series for six months.

I rate Hillstone E-Series a ten out of ten for stability.

I rate Hillstone E-Series a seven out of ten for scalability. Our clients are medium-sized companies.

We recently requested Hillstone E-Series’ technical support, which was quite good.

Positive

The initial setup of the Hillstone E-Series is very simple. Once you get trained and understand what to do, the installation is pretty straightforward.

If the client's environment meets the prerequisites and you're just putting in the basic firewall and its features, the installation may take an hour or two. However, for testing purposes, it might take a day or two to get the client's response.

From our company, four engineers are required to deploy the Hillstone E-Series. However, since we are training our partners, about 20 engineers are available for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

I work with the latest version of Hillstone E-Series. The company I work for offers cybersecurity solutions, and we are a cybersecurity value-added distributor in Kenya. We onboarded Hillstone E-Series recently. There's also interest from our end users for the solution.

It's easier to use the solution if you get the proper training.

Overall, I rate Hillstone E-Series a ten out of ten.

We use the product to provide prevention against gateway-level attacks for our customers.

This solution has two main features that we find very valuable; a threat-intelligence option, and a web/application filtering option. 

The current usage reporting is very basic. I would like to be able to access more granular data.

We have been using the solution for a year.

We have found the solution to be very stable.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support team are very good and very quick.

The initial setup was very easy. Deployment of the solution, using advanced configuration, took an hour using only one person.

The implementation was carried out in-house.

The cost per year for licensing, and hardware, is approximately $850 for the basic plan.

We use the basic E1600P model of the solution, and I would recommend this version to businesses with up to 50 concurrent users. I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

We utilize the on-premises version of the solution, but there is also a cloud-based version available.

I am impressed with the application filtering feature. 

The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature. 

I have been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. 

The product is scalable. We have more than 70 customers for the solution. Our customers are small and medium-sized businesses. 

The tool's technical support is fast. They will respond within five minutes once we book a case. 

The tool's setup is easy. The tool's deployment takes around two hours to complete. It depends on the requirements of customers. 

The tool's pricing is reasonable. It depends on the model. The product's pricing is around 600 USD. You need to buy a software license to activate the features. You need to pay around 150 USD for that. 

I would rate the product a ten out of ten. The tool's application filtering is stronger compared to other alternatives. The tool is very easy to handle without any additional documentation. It has GUI as well. 

We deploy the firewalls here in schools, in universities, in energy companies, so they like it very much.

They have their own call processor 64-bit. With the call processor, they're able to perform according to the load of the data volume that goes through these firewalls. 

The room for improvement would be the SSL VPN license cost. They're not cheap, that's the only problem. Those are a little more on expensive side, but again, not many would deploy Hillstone for SSL VPN, they use purely for file protection.

I've been using it for two to three years.

It's a very reliable solution.

The scalability is very good.

We have a lot support from Hillstone. We contact them when we have some unknown variable cases. They're very good. There are a few levels of tech support, so it depends on the nature of the problem, but most of the time, we can resolve issues on our own.

Comparing Barracuda with Hillstone, Barracuda is not a firewall. They're more like an accelerator or a web access firewall (WAF). Hillstone is not built to be a WAF, so we are comparing an apple an orange. It's very difficult for me compare because they're both very different products.

It's very easy to setup and easy to maintain. It's a quite straightforward implementation. Internally, we're trained by Hillstone to do the deployment on our own.

I would rate the ROI a five out of five because TCO is amazing. It does the job and the cost of maintenance is very affordable. To give you an idea, if we compare Fortinet with Hillstone and their different customers, normally after one year, or just before the year is up, we have to remind the Fortinet customer to renew their subscription. When we call them, they have to handle the price. It's very expensive. 

With Hillstone customers, they're quite different. Every year, instead of us going to them, they come to us and say, "Hey, we need to renew." After going through a round of renewals, they keep coming back to us for renewal. I ask them to renew for three years because it's cheaper, but they say no because they want to do it every year. 

These are two different kinds of customers who choose two different brands. That's the catch. With Hillstone, TCO and ROI are very good. It's an easy sale.

I would rate the E-Series a nine out of ten. 

If you want to go for value for money and don't go for the E-Series, the only advice I would give is upon purchase, get whatever base you need, or the bundle you need at three-year pricing. That way, the annual cost is very cheap. It's much cheaper than any of the competitors out there. Whether buying the first unit with a 12-month period, you buy one at first purchase with a 36-month period and your cost savings are expanded from there. That's the thing about the Hillstone, it is value for money in terms of a firewall. It is really, it does the job very well.

In fact, I think the founder of Hillstone was recently invited to be part of the Forbes Technology Council. You don't apply, you get to be invited to be part of the council and that was quite impressive. 

With the Apple iPhone, you see the iOS Apple IOS updates every now and then. There are a lot of security updates. The Hillstone team has contributed quite a number of reports to Apple in terms of vulnerabilities to their current iOS and Apple actually accepted those recommendations. They put those recommendations in the next iOS expression update.

The Hillstone team has actually contributed a fair bit to Apple in terms of all this. They're also a strategic partner with Microsoft, whereby Microsoft endorses Hillstone for the security of the Azure Cloud. It's one of a few partners. For five years in a row, Hillstone has also been on the Gartner chart as the best enterprise for firewall feature innovation.

I have been using Hillstone E-Series within the past 12 months.

We have been satisfied with the technical support for small and medium scale clients but we have not seen the support quality for the needs of enterprise organizations.

The installation is easy, we have not had any complaints from our customers.

The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand.

I have evaluated other solutions, such as Palo Alto and Check Point.

I rate Hillstone E-Series a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as a firewall to protect the local network.

The solution, in general, is great. There isn't one feature that stands out; holistically it's a very good solution.

The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change.

Sophos also has a scanner that's on the interface itself. This solution would be improved if it added this functionality to it as well.

Overall, the solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. It's very simple and straightforward. We have about 10,000 users on it currently.

The technical support is very good. I would rate them nine out of ten.

The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy.

I handled the implementation myself.

We use the E-2000, 3000 and 5000 series versions of the solution. We use the public cloud deployment model.

If an organization is not looking for a web proxy, it's a very, very good product. It's stable. It's simple, and the support is great.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is general remote working and VPN setup. We're not using the VPN tunnels for any service, so it is just purely and utterly for remote working.

Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients secure connectivity from a remote location to their offices or their servers. It’s a security system that has helped quite a bit.

The Hillstone E-Series currently offers everything I need. 

I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage. Adding support to the interface will also help. If they can have reporting built into the solution, one can actually integrate into a call-center system.

This solution is very stable and I've had no issues with it. 

I haven't looked at the scalability of this solution because I've only used it for one function. I will soon be looking at the other features it offers but I believe the Hillstone E-Series will allow me a lot of different changes that I can make to the solution. I do plan to increase my usage. It looks very scalable. I'm fairly sure it will allow me quite a lot of different changes that I can make to the solution. I plan to increase usage. We've been implementing the system and so forth, and I've not really compared it price-wise to anything else out there. 

The technical support was fairly straightforward. 

The initial setup of this solution was very straightforward and I didn't experience any problems. It took me about 20 minutes to install and implement.

I installed it myself.

So far we've only been implementing the system and I haven't really compared this solution to other options out there. We have used many different VPNs before. There are many free VPN solutions available as well as paid-for VPN solutions. Price-wise it will probably compete in the middle range to entry-level range. There is justification on what a product can do, as long as the product stays stable, people don't mind actually paying for the product.

I did evaluate other options but in the end, the Hillstone E-Series offered what I was looking for.

Adding better integration to this solution will be beneficial. I will rate this solution a seven or eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature of the Hillstone E-Series is its user-friendliness. 

The tool needs to improve its price. 

I have been working with the solution for three to four months. 

My company has one to two users for the product. 

Hillstone E-Series' deployment took more than an hour to complete. 

I rate the product a seven out of ten.