We performed a comparison between Hillstone E-Series and Meraki MX based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"There is an easy process for configuring it, and it is straightforward to implement the device from scratch."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."
"Five out of five ROI."
"Very reliable solution with good scalability and straightforward implementation."
"This solution has two main features that we find very valuable; a threat-intelligence option, and a web/application filtering option. The technical support team are very good and very quick."
"The most valuable feature of the Hillstone E-Series is its user-friendliness."
"I am impressed with the application filtering feature."
"Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients a secure connectivity."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It has the most advanced security features, for example, layer 3 and layer 7 firewall capabilities and the end team and IPS protection. It also has IPS, and it has very good functioning of cloning services. You don't actually have to touch the device. If you have multiple companies in different countries, you don't really require this device to be touched. You can get it delivered directly to any office of a country, and then you can simply put your configuration over the cloud. It's very simplified and easy to manage. It gives a very good granular visibility about your network. Earlier, a lot of things were lacking in the network. We were unable to identify where the problem was, but after implementing Meraki MX, we are able to dig down and identify where is the problem. We can easily and quickly identify the sources and the root causes of the issues."
"It prevents us from being hacked and delivers information about who and where the attack came from."
"We switched to Meraki because it lets you see what's happening in your LAN and WAN in a graphic and web environment."
"When you try to create an IP or when you have an alert about when a website is banned, these features are helpful."
"I am happy with the technical support for the solution. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"The internet traffic shaping has been very valuable."
"To me, the analytics feature is one of the most valuable in Meraki MX. I also find that it has good usability as it's cloud-based. Another valuable feature of Meraki MX is that it's simple to use and it's user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki MX is I can manage the solution from anywhere remotely, I can throttle bandwidth, and create all rules. Additionally, it is secure for our customers."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
"Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."
"Having frequent live webinars on a monthly basis would really help."
"The current usage reporting is very basic."
"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."
"We have been having a problem with the VPN. When the energy goes down and is back again, the VPN link doesn't get established. We have to manually turn off the modems and other pieces of equipment and manually establish the VPN. It has been around one month since we have been having this problem, and we don't have enough support from Meraki to solve the problem."
"The solution's pricing should be reduced."
"The product is quite complex to set up."
"Meraki MX firewalls are great for small to medium-sized businesses, but other solutions are better for enterprise-sized companies."
"It would be nice if the different services, including the SIEM SOC and endpoint detection and response (EDR) were integrated into one, so that I don't have to go to different vendors for different services."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"In the next release, because the security is pretty basic, I think they could include additional security features."
"What I would like to see in the next version is to have more interfaces for WAN links."
Hillstone E-Series is ranked 33rd in Firewalls with 9 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 59 reviews. Hillstone E-Series is rated 9.0, while Meraki MX is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Hillstone E-Series writes "A user-friendly and marketable solution with a virtual switching capability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". Hillstone E-Series is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, OpenVPN Access Server, Netgate pfSense and A10 Networks Thunder CFW, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Netgate pfSense. See our Hillstone E-Series vs. Meraki MX report.
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