Palo Alto Networks K2-Series vs SonicWall NSa comparison

Palo Alto Networks and SonicWall are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #28 with an average rating of 8.5, while SonicWall is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.2. Palo Alto Networks holds a 0.0% mindshare in Firewalls, compared to SonicWall’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Palo Alto Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of SonicWall users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

SonicWall NSa and Palo Alto Networks K2-Series are two prominent security solutions. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series stands out due to superior features, making it a worthwhile investment.

Features: SonicWall NSa is praised for its robust firewall capabilities, VPN support, and threat prevention. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series receives accolades for advanced threat detection, automated policy management, and comprehensive security suite. The K2-Series offers more advanced features compared to the SonicWall NSa, making it more appealing for organizations requiring cutting-edge security.

Room for Improvement: Users have noted that SonicWall NSa could improve its reporting capabilities, streamline its configuration processes, and enhance its technical documentation. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series could benefit from enhanced technical support, reduced complexity in policy administration, and better integration options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SonicWall NSa is generally considered easier to deploy with straightforward installation processes. Users also appreciate its responsive customer service. Conversely, Palo Alto Networks K2-Series may have a steeper learning curve but offers extensive documentation and substantial support options. The ease of setup gives SonicWall NSa a slight edge in this area, though K2-Series's support mitigates its complexity.

Pricing and ROI: SonicWall NSa is viewed as cost-effective, offering good value for money with substantial ROI. Palo Alto Networks K2-Series, while more expensive, is justified by its comprehensive features and enhanced security capabilities, which users find worth the investment. Budget-conscious buyers may lean towards SonicWall NSa, but those prioritizing superior security might prefer the Palo Alto Networks K2-Series.

To learn more, read our detailed Palo Alto Networks K2-Series vs. SonicWall NSa Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks K2-Series vs. SonicWall NSa

April 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.1%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is 0.0%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall NSa is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Firewalls

Featured Reviews

EhabAli

Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB

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.

Read full review

Krishnakumar M

enterprise architect at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

One of the best tools for the prevention of evasive threats

There is a feature called granular application controls, which I liked. Instead of relying on ports and IP addresses, they use AMP ID. This kind of solution is very good. Another valuable feature is the prevention of evasive threats, which is one of the best tools I've encountered. SSL decryption and app ID-based SSL decryption are also impressive, along with the integration with user ID. Identity-based policies ensuring only authorized users can access specific resources are excellent features. Normally, there is something called SIM or SCIM in IDA IDM, but this feature is provided on the box, which is exemplary.

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Vijay Mohan

Senior Manager INFOSEC AND Risk ASSESSMENT Engineering at Atlas Systems

Offers a simple console to manage multiple branches and content filtering

The centralized console is great for managing multiple branches. It's a very simple console to connect all three of our branches in the US and India. We connect through three firewalls in a single console and manage any policy. So, if we need to change a policy, the global admin can connect from anywhere and easily make changes. Log usage is also very easy. The threat prevention capabilities are very good. Preventing the latest threats is very easy. You can define rules, and it automatically alerts you. For example, if there's a sudden increase in malicious spam, it will notify you immediately.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution."

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration."

"This is an easy solution to deploy."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."

"Fortinet FortiGate has a threat detection capacity compared to other vendors."

"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known."

"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series is the performance which is above their competitors. The throughput they have delivered is good. When we used other solutions they failed the deployment when we were using different rules. They have a theory perform performance light and performance degradation. However, Palo Alto Networks K2-Series never fails in that scenario."

"I have found that Palo Alto Networks K2-Series has the best security. They are more user-friendly, older firewalls used to have to be configured using the command-line interface, but in this solution, it can be done in the GUI."

"The scalability of the product is quite high."

"Palo Alto has a unique solution for DNS security, which is very good."

"It is a stable solution."

"The most valuable features are the virtualization of the firewall and the antivirus."

"The company is inventive and always adds a lot of great features."

"The customer service and support are really good."

More Palo Alto Networks K2-Series pros

"One of the main features is the built-in storage capacity."

"SonicWall has all the usual functions, like LAN configurations, security features, word filters, etc., but it also has the CFS agent, which isn't available in any other firewall. Reporting port support is also there."

"Easy to setup and implement"

"I like this solution because we are focused on VPN and have many brands that need to link a VPN and have security, like ransomware, spyware, and basic protection."

"We can do the hosting and security all under one box. The UTM is a good feature."

"It has good reporting, the reporting is marvelous."

"We like the features, but the main thing is from a commercial and cost perspective it is very good."

"SonicWall NS has a lot of valuable features. One of the best SonicWall NSa features is the ability to collect mini routers and get only one user connection."

More SonicWall NSa pros

Cons

"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."

"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."

"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."

"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."

"The reports are very basic."

"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."

"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."

"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."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"They could improve by providing more features in the solution."

"The licensing cost is a typical complaint with many clients. The solution is expensive."

"The ease of management and configuration should be improved."

"There are a lot of bugs in this solution."

"Palo Alto releases a lot of bug fixes for their firewalls, which means it's necessary to do frequent upgrades. They should work on decreasing their bugs so that upgrades aren't needed so often."

"Threat prevention could use improvement."

"The solution's commitment time could be reduced as it often takes a lot of time to execute."

"The reporting functionality in GlobalProtect needs to be improved."

More Palo Alto Networks K2-Series cons

"The scalability is something that should be improved."

"We also use the Sophos Firewall for web configuration, which we don't have in SonicWall. Only Sophos has those options. If SonicWall included that feature, that would be a benefit for us."

"A room for improvement in SonicWall NSa is the log server because it could be more user-friendly compared to Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks. My company has many rule sets up for review, so sometimes, my team needs to use Excel for filtering, but the UI cannot support the Excel function."

"The logging, reporting, and storage capacity size could improve in a future release."

"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."

"SonicWall NSa has occasional bugs, particularly during upgrades, and that's an area for improvement."

"The product must enable integration with endpoint protection tools."

"We're not particularly fond of the way it generally performs. We are finding ourselves rebooting often. There are freeze-ups and that kind of thing. The stability needs to improve exponentially."

More SonicWall NSa cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Here in Brazil, we're going through difficult economic times and the tax on the dollar is high. All the solutions from minor competitors are growing in the market. The prices have come more competitive."

"It's very affordable."

"Fortinet has more device options that are affordable for small businesses than Palo Alto, and its enterprise-level models are also cheaper. Palo Alto also has a separate license for VPN connections and SD-WAN, but FortiGate offers these features standard."

"Fortinet is competitive price-wise."

"It is more expensive than Sophos. Fortinet is overall more expensive than Sophos. The small range of Fortinet, such as 60F and 80F, is more expensive than the small range of Sophos. Sophos is cheaper. In addition, if you jump from 80F Series to 100F Series, the price doubles."

"Setup costs and pricing depends on many variables, but it's mostly affordable."

"The license is too expensive to renew. The license renewal process is also complex."

"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"This is an expensive solution, although you will get value for the price."

"We are on an annual license to use Palo Alto Networks K2-Series."

"Pricing is a sensitive issue because the cost is high in this market."

"This solution is expensive compared to other, similar products."

"The overall price of Palo Alto Networks K2-Series could be reduced."

"The pricing is expensive."

"Products by the leader in the field are justifiably a bit more expensive compared to other vendors."

"It is an expensive solution."

More Palo Alto Networks K2-Series pricing and cost advice

"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."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis, and we are happy with the pricing."

"We paid about 10,000 in our currency for one packet of SonicWall NSa."

"Normally, when we buy any product, we buy it with a five-year service built into it. Later on, depending on the growth of the organization, we go for a new one or an upgrade."

"SonicWall NSa has two types of license. The advanced license is a bit expensive when compared to the comprehensive license, but when you compare the advanced license to the licensing cost of other brands or competitors, it is expensive."

"SonicWall still is only a dollar or Euro per gigabit. This means, of the IPsec, it's the cheapest solution."

"A firewall doing anti-spam might be a low cost solution, but it is not your best strategy."

"SonicWall is not an expensive solution."

More SonicWall NSa pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

28%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Media Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

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...

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

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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...

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What do you like most about Palo Alto Networks K2-Series?

It is a stable solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks K2-Series?

The pricing for the Palo Alto Networks K2-Series solution is affordable and there are no complaints about the licensing.

See all answers

What do you like most about SonicWall NSa?

The product blocks access when I visit unrecognized websites.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall NSa?

I would rate the price of the product as seven out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SonicWall NSa?

There are some aspects of the dashboard configuration or customization that could be improved.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 22% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

Palo Alto Networks WildFire vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 2% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks K2-Series

Compared 100% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks K2-Series Competitors

Sophos XG vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 14% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 11% of the time

Meraki MX vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 8% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 6% of the time

OPNsense vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 5% of the time

More SonicWall NSa Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

April 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks K2-Series

April 2025

Download Palo Alto Networks K2-Series product report

Buyer's Guide

SonicWall NSa

March 2025

Download SonicWall NSa product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

No data available

NSA 250M, NSA 2600, NSA 3600, NSA 4600, NSA 5600, Dell SonicWALL NSA

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Fortinet

Designed to handle growing throughput needs due to increasing amounts of application-, user-, and device-generated data, the K2-Series offers amazing performance and threat prevention capabilities to stop advanced cyberattacks and secure mobile network infrastructure, subscribers, and services.

Palo Alto Networks

SonicWall NSa dispenses advanced threat protection using a high-performance security platform. The NSa series implements intuitive deep learning technologies in the SonicWall Capture Cloud Platform to dispatch the automated real-time threat detection and deterrence enterprise organizations need today. SonicWall Network Security appliance (NSa) series is best for mid-sized organizations to distributed enterprises and data centers.

SonicWall NSa series next-generation firewalls (NFGWS) combine two very robust security ideologies to deliver advanced threat protection to keep users’ networks safe. Boosting SonicWall’s multi-engine advanced threat protection (ATP) is their Real-time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI™). The RTDMI intuitively identifies and stops aggressive zero-day threats and vicious malware by investigating memory directly. This real-time process allows SonicWall RTDMI to be accurate, lessen false positives and discover and alleviate malicious threats and attacks. SonicWall’s single-pass Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection (RFDPI) will audit every byte of each and every packet by investigating both outbound and inbound traffic on the firewall. By combining the SonicWall Capture Cloud Platform along with on-box offerings such as intrusion prevention, web/URL filtering, and anti-malware, the NSa series is able to block the most malicious and dangerous threats at the gateway.

Additionally, SonicWall firewalls supply absolute protection by executing complete inspection and decryption of SSH and TLS/SSL encryption connections - no matter the port or protocol. The firewall takes a deep dive into each and every packet (the header and data) routing out any anomalies, zero-day intrusions, threats, and protocol non-compliance. Users can also define unique criteria specific to their organization to ensure their networks remain safe. This aggressive deep packet inspection is able to identify and block malicious attacks, stop dangerous malware downloads, prevent the spread of infections, and defeat command and control (C&C) communications and data exfiltration. Protocols involving inclusion and exclusion allow users complete control to decide, based on specific governance policies, organizational policies, or government or legal compliance, which traffic is to be investigated for decryption or inspection.

SonicWall Nsa offers enterprise organizations the network control and fluid flexibility they desire using an intrusion prevention system (IPS), VPN, real-time visualization, and other advanced powerful security features, making it a popular firewall solution in today's marketplace.

Reviews from Real Users

“The features that I have found most valuable are the firewalling, which is very good, and the GUI which is very intuitive. It is easy to use and provides great security.” - Network Engineer at a maritime company

“What's valuable in SonicWall NSa is the ATP (advanced threat protection). It can protect users from malicious links. SonicWall NSa also has a Sandboxing service that is very helpful for us, especially when end users accidentally click on malicious links. Another valuable feature of this solution is that it is very useful for site-to-site VPN connectivity issues. SonicWall NSa has very good hardware. I also love that SonicWall has very good technical support, who are very knowledgeable, provide good suggestions, and they're easy to reach.” - Mohammed M., Network Administrator at Transgulf Readymix

SonicWall

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

State of North Dakota, SEGA, Alameda County Office of Education, Temple University, VERGE, CAME

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

Buyer's Guide

Palo Alto Networks K2-Series vs. SonicWall NSa

April 2025

Free Report: Palo Alto Networks K2-Series vs. SonicWall NSa

Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks K2-Series vs. SonicWall NSa and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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