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Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Exinda comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 10, 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

Cloudflare Web Application ...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
Cato SASE Cloud Platform
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (2nd), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (11th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (6th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (4th), WAN Edge (6th), ZTNA as a Service (7th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (2nd)
Exinda
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
reviewer2697738 - PeerSpot reviewer
Product & Services Integrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Cloud security has unified global network design and has simplified threat visibility
I think all of the functionalities, such as the secure web gateway feature, are quite good. I also believe Cato SASE Cloud Platform is one of the only solutions that has not only a software firewall solution but also a physical software solution where you can change the company's firewalls and put in sockets from Cato SASE Cloud Platform, which I see as an advantage for them. The single-pass architecture has improved user experience with Cato SASE Cloud Platform as it provides security teams in companies a platform where they can easily obtain information if there are breaches or security issues. I assess the benefit of integrating WAN optimization as good. There is ease in making rules between WAN optimization, especially when it comes to global connections because of all their points of presence that are spread over the world. I think the real-time threat protection of Cato SASE Cloud Platform is also good. Their points of presence are quite efficient, and I do not see any delays in that area.
MJ
Senior Engineer, Team Lead, Network Operations at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Allows us to have better control over our network by shaping traffic more gently
There might be room for improvement in the speed and throughput of some of their devices. They're getting a bit slow on some of the bigger devices. It would be helpful if there were some sort of an ISP model. Also, while I don't think it would be possible for them to do, it would be better if they had the Citrix support and the visualization to visualize your network. Besides that, it fits its purpose as a shaper and accelerator. Some people would say things like, "Add a firewall to it," but I disagree. I think a firewall's a firewall, and Exinda's a shaper and accelerator.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"I haven't had any trouble, and practically forget that I'm using it."
"It's a cloud-based solution that integrates well with everything."
"If you really want to have a solution that has an easy deployment and provides SD-WAN and firewall abilities, go with Cato Networks."
"We never really had any outages."
"The product is very simple and everything can be done very quickly."
"The ability for this system to handle outages on one circuit out of four meant that we didn't have any downtime because of one of our circuits going down or having a performance issue."
"My rating for Cato Networks is eight out of ten because it's an excellent product, especially for what it offers."
"One of the advantages of Cato is that they provide a static IP from their cloud and assign it to us, and this is a service that comes with an additional cost but is cheap compared to getting it from my service provider."
"Getting Exinda was a life saver for our voice traffic"
"Customer Service: Top notchTechnical Support: Top notch"
"The most valuable feature is the ability to manage the traffic at the application layer. It makes things a lot easier. We're not digging for port numbers and IP addresses and different services... It makes us far more responsive in our ability to do things and speed up the process. We're a very small shop, so having something that's straightforward and easy to use is a big help."
"The benefit that we have seen is that if we turn it off, people notice that the applications are running slowly."
"You can use Exinda as a network orchestrator so you can be sure that the throughput is managed well and everything gets what it needs."
"The most valuable features are the shaper, accelerator, and the reporting... it will shape the traffic better than, for example, a Cisco, because it's more gentle on the shaping side of things. Suppose you were selling a 20-meg link. Because you can shape to the nth degree of traffic, the 20-meg link feels like about a 30 to 40-meg link."
"Compared to some of the stuff that I've used a decade ago, the Exinda solution is night and day."
"Exinda can show you which product uses how much throughput and can help you manage it."
 

Cons

"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"Its stability could be better."
"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"I'd rate Cato SASE Cloud Platform's pricing as about five or six out of ten. It's not the cheapest solution, but it is cheaper than Palo Alto and even VeloCloud."
"There's no principal in Malaysia, only a distributor."
"The price could be better."
"They can't do one-to-one NAT (Network Address Translation) in AP (their access point), and that is something that Palo Alto can do."
"The product could provide more advanced features for networking."
"The solution could be made more user friendly for the administrator to use the portal. It is difficult to use it for people who are not experienced with Cato Networks."
"However, Cato's solution is modular. You don't have to buy the whole package; instead, you can start with some of the functionality and then expand it as you see fit, based on its value and as your other contracts expire."
"I am located in South Korea, and I can say that most people here have no idea about Cato Networks. I think Cato Networks should promote its network services in various countries."
"It should improve the quality of service. It can improve their connection to the internet and your IP."
"The stability was terrible in version 7.0 but it's been good since version 7.2."
"The areas for improvement would be around the support service that GFI provides."
"Fundamentally sound with WAN acceleration, but needs to expand the range of accelerated applications."
"Creating the custom application is a bit awkward. I kind of have to guess my way through it sometimes."
"More free training on the website for those just getting started."
"In terms of improvement, one thing that has always frustrated me about it is that when you look at real-time monitoring, you can only filter it by IP address. You can't filter it by anything else. It would be good if we could filter by VLAN."
"What I don't like is the fact that I haven't purchased the overall management interface. That is the interface that allows you to manage multiple Exindas. Personally, I think Exinda should provide that for free. I think that if you buy more and more Exinda boxes, you shouldn't then have to incur a charge for the overall management software. While I can manage each Exinda separately, if they provided me with the overall management platform for free that would probably encourage me to buy more appliances."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It is not too pricey."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The solution is expensive."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"Cato Networks seems more expensive than Cisco Meraki."
"You pay yearly based on the speed of your network. If you increase the speed of your network, you increase the cost for your throughput. It is by bandwidth for the most part and then licenses for VPN. There is some per-seat licensing for VPN access, but the majority of it is minimal. It is like $30 a year per client. The rest is based on how much bandwidth you'll use. You pay for that upfront for the year, and if you have to increase it, you increase it, and then they let you send more data through. There are no additional costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The platform is expensive."
"The pricing is on the higher side, almost an eight out of ten."
"I rate the price of Cato Networks a four out of five."
"I'd rate Cato SASE Cloud Platform's pricing as about five or six out of ten. It's not the cheapest solution, but it is cheaper than Palo Alto and even VeloCloud. We've been working with them for a while and have significant discounts. Our licensing costs vary because we keep adding sites, but it's about 280 per month per site. This includes additional features beyond the base product, starting at around 200."
"The solution's pricing is flexible."
"The pricing of this solution depends on what you need. It is based on bandwidth."
"It is priced well for the market, for what it needs to do."
"The pricing and licensing are pretty fair and really competitive. There are other SD-WAN solutions that are pretty costly because they build in a service where they'll manage it for you, which is really great. I don't know if Exinda has that option as well. However, we are a small shop and cost-conscious. For things like this, we are accustomed to self-managing and this solution suits us just fine. For a tool that gives you, like the graphs and reporting, it has a fair price point."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
What is your primary use case for Cato Networks?
I can see that I am a consultant at a reseller and I am the architect of Cato SASE Cloud Platform designs. In the bas...
What advice do you have for others considering Cato Networks?
It is difficult to find types of companies I would not recommend Cato SASE Cloud Platform to, and I believe you can u...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cato Networks?
I do not find it particularly expensive, but for some companies, they may not have the budget to be at that level of ...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Cato Networks
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Paysafe, AdRoll, Pet Lovers Centre, Arlington Orthopedics, Humphreys & Partners Architects
UMass Dartmouth, MLB Network, R&R Ice Cream, Savills, Manhattan School of Music, Blum Shapiro, Cincinnati Public Schools, City of Richmond, Genting Casinos, The Salvation Army, VoIP Unlimited, Frontier Silicon, Lakeshore Toltest, CTI Foods
Find out what your peers are saying about Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs. Exinda and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.