Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Azure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks VM-Series comparison

Sponsored
 

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
7.2
Number of Reviews
318
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Azure Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
16th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Firewalls
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.8%, up from 17.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Firewall is 2.2%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

EhabAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable
In the past, NSS Labs was utilized to test files and verify the numbers and datasheets. It would be beneficial to have an organization or testing lab that can verify the numbers in our datasheets since changes are frequently made, which can be inconvenient for review. For instance, when comparing different competitors such as Forcepoint, Palo Alto, and Check Point, the throughput or numbers in the datasheet may be lower than the actual numbers. Conversely, Fortinet typically reports very high numbers, but they cannot be replicated in the real world. Therefore, it would be advantageous for them to partner with a neutral testing organization such as NSS Labs to validate these numbers, thus providing more credibility and comfort to everyone regarding the accuracy of the datasheets. For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial. This tool shows a lot of promise and is very good. Making it free would help many companies deliver their products in a more efficient and integrated way. It would also be more valuable to include the tool with the firewall package or license instead of having to pay extra for it. Paying extra puts more pressure on small companies to deliver the firewall and complete the configuration, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of policies. It's very painful to move through these policies line by line. The stability has room for improvement. When it comes to Secure SD-WAN, everything is fine. They are going the right way. SD-WAN is very promising. They can provide the SD-WAN solution separately, but they will not take this approach because even the smallest firewall can support the features, so there is no need to have a separate service or appliance. They are following the right steps, and there is nothing to be improved. Feature-wise, I'm really satisfied with the new release, and the features they have added. For now, it's fine.
Charan Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and configure but could be more robust
The cost of the solution has increased. The robustness of the software could be better. It should be able to cover host-to-host traffic or HTTP traffic. Configurations can be better. The workloads need to still have free access. The encryption and decryption process is not that seamless. It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls.
AshwaniTyagi - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced protection and good integration capabilities with good reliability
We use Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to offer services to our customers as a managed security service provider. We provide solutions and services to our customers across the globe. For example, if I want to host a firewall in the cloud or somewhere where the physical appliance is not a possibility…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"The most important features with FortiGate are the web filter and application controls. We can control our internet usage and use the web filter for application purposes."
"The performance is good."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"The interface is very good."
"Azure Firewall is integrated well with Microsoft ecosystem."
"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."
"The solution has many useful features. For example, the solution allows users to create virtual IP addresses."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is the control over the network permissions and the network."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"Great security and connectivity."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"In the newer version, there are 3850s, all of them are scalable. They fit better into the medium or small businesses."
"It is reliable and the support is very good."
"Palo Alto offers excellent security, with features such as email scanning, malware protection, and efficient VPN and antivirus capabilities."
"The most effective features for threat prevention include the threat prevention signature level, the application filter capability, and the visibility provided by the firewalls."
"The VM series has an advantage over the physical version because we are able to change the sources that the machine has, such as the amount of available RAM."
"We can monitor the traffic manually and detect threats. Additionally, we can block different IP addresses and URLs."
"The solution enables organizations to enforce policies."
"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."
 

Cons

"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"The solution should incorporate features similar to competitors like split tunneling."
"It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB."
"The threat intelligence aspect of this particular firewall is not at par with other providers."
"Currently, it only supports IP addresses, so you have to be specific about the IPs that are in your environment."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"For larger enterprises, they need to adjust the scalability."
"The product pricing could be more competitive."
"It would be good if the common features work consistently in physical and virtual environments. There was an integration issue in the virtual deployment where it didn't report the interface counters, and we had to upgrade to the latest version, whereas the same thing has been working in the physical deployment for ages now. It seems that it was because of Azure. We were using VMware before, and we didn't have any such issues. We do see such small issues where we expect things to work, but they don't because of some incompatibilities. There also seems to be a limitation on how to do high availability in a virtualized environment. All features should be consistently available in physical and virtual environments. It is not always easy to integrate Palo Alto in the network management system. We would like to be able to compare two network management systems. They can maybe allow monitoring an interface through the GUI to create a reference or do a baseline check about whether your network monitoring system is actually giving you the correct traffic figures. You need traffic figures to be able to recognize the trends and plan the capacity."
"We feel that the setup was complex. So, we asked the tech team about the setup process. They explained how to deploy it in the right way, which made it very simple."
"It can definitely improve on the performance."
"When managing the firewall, it involves a Strata Cloud web browser that requires improvement to enhance deployment ease and call center efficiency."
"We have run into some issues with scaling and limitations associated with some of the configurations."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a complex product to work with."
"All areas need improvement: manufacturing, education, financial, etc."
"It is not very easy to scale up the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is too high... They have to focus on more features with less cost for the customer. If you see the market, where it's going, there are a lot of players offering more features for less cost."
"The price is fine."
"The price for the Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable. Secure SD-WAN is free of charge. If you have their firewall, it's free of charge. It's very tempting."
"Their licensing costs are annual. The UTM feature license along with their support is called FortiCare. We include that as a part of the annual maintenance cost. Palo Alto or Juniper also have an annual subscription charge for UTM. Price, of course, can always be more competitive, but it is not the most expensive product. The price-performance ratio is quite high for FortiGate."
"If you compare Fortinet FortiGate with Sophos and other firewall products available in the market, this solution is affordable."
"The pricing is perfect."
"By default, they give SD-WAN along with the firewall. They don't have separate licensing for the SD-WAN functionality. However, they have security licenses that are sold separately on a subscription basis. Customers can consume these security features to protect their users from internet traffic."
"The pricing depends on the FortiGate model we are using, ranging from $3,000 to $20,000 US dollars."
"The licensing module is good."
"Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."
"The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
"Azure Firewall is quite an expensive product."
"The pricing of Azure Firewall is pay-as-you-go. Fortinet also has a pay-as-you-go model, but Azure's pricing is higher and, with FortiGate, you also have the license."
"Before choosing this solution, we evaluated others, and we found this to be the most cost-effective."
"The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
"It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
"Purchasing on the AWS Marketplace was simple, effective, and easy."
"The product is costly but provides all essential security features. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"We found purchasing process the product on the AWS Marketplace to be very good."
"Palo Alto is more expensive than other products."
"Some parts of purchasing through AWS Marketplace are good, such as this product was easy to find and launch. Some of the other parts could be clearer in the AWS Marketplace, e.g., how to properly do an annual subscription."
"I rate Palo Alto Networks VM-Series pricing an eight out of ten."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is an expensive product but the best one in the market."
"The product is cheaper than the on-premise version."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?
Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firew...
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 would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?
Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigat...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series?
The pricing is reasonable and reflects the quality of the product. There are no issues with the cost, as it is commen...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
No data available
No data available
 

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
Information Not Available
Warren Rogers Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.