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Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (11th)
SonicWall Capture Advanced ...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
30th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 2.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

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…
MG
When compared to other solutions, it is cheaper and more economical
The most valuable feature is the alerting system. For a small to medium customer, it is a cost-effective value. It does all the basic requirements. It fulfills all of our requirements. We get alert messages whenever there is a new threat. We are notified at the firewall level that things are blocked, which keeps us in our comfort zone.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has everything centralized. You have the VPN solution, firewall, routing, UDR, flexibility, updates, and full visibility of your traffic."
"What I like about the VM-Series is that you can launch them in a very short time."
"Scalability is a strength of Palo Alto VM-Series."
"Palo Alto offers excellent security, with features such as email scanning, malware protection, and efficient VPN and antivirus capabilities."
"The feature that I have found the most useful is that it meets all our requirements technically."
"The most valuable features are web control and IPS/IDS."
"It provides complete security posture from end-to-end. This has given us better visibility into what our security aspects are."
"You already can scale it if you put it in Auto Scaling groups. If you put it in a load balancer, it should already be able to scale."
"They have a large database of commonly known things that they can catch automatically, then they have anything which is questionable go to the sandbox and be examined there before going into our network."
"We use it for protection against viruses and ransomware attacks."
"Provides good protection and security."
"The ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) on scanning is the most valuable feature."
"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't had any breaches or crashes. It's been very stable for us."
"The reporting that you get from it is the most valuable feature. You can see it via the appliance itself, and also via the MySonicWall account for the registered device. You are able to select the file if it's malicious, and you can select it in the reporting and see what triggered it, and things like that. I found that to be quite useful."
"It also has an easy configuration. The feedback that we get from our customers is that it's a good product."
"I like this setup for a firewall. You can set things up very easily and you can automate items as well. It's a very robust firewall solution for enterprise as well as small businesses."
 

Cons

"All areas need improvement: manufacturing, education, financial, etc."
"When managing the firewall, it involves a Strata Cloud web browser that requires improvement to enhance deployment ease and call center efficiency."
"It can definitely improve on the performance."
"With Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, it is hard for me to manage its network configuration part."
"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."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a complex product to work with."
"The scalability could be improved further."
"Palo Alto should update their documentation to make it more readable and provide easier-to-follow instructions through videos."
"SonicWall had a recent layoff. This is a concern for us, because now we are missing the local presence from both the engineering and sales side."
"It does fare well against enterprise products."
"The setup needs improvement. It needs to be made more user-friendly."
"SonicWall should promote their roadmap and improve their marketing to customers."
"If anything at all, it would be some very minor updates that need to be done, but in terms of changes, nothing comes to mind."
"Could provide online training to allow customers to learn more about the product."
"Having an on-premise solution as well would be an option for some people, but they'll want to use a cloud solution for their sandboxing. Certain sites would want to keep all the checks done on an on-premise appliance. All the checking, rather than sending that up into a cloud engine."
"I would say the solution needs a much simpler user interface, but the functionality of the firewall is quite extensive. You need the user interface to be that way. However, if there was a way to make the user interface a little easier, that would be great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is cheaper than the on-premise version."
"Because the solution was getting deployed on AWS, it was the best place to go and it was available there."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is the most expensive tool among competitors"
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is notably cheaper than other firewall vendors, except Fortigate."
"Sometimes, it's cheaper to buy a new firewall with licensing instead of renewing the licenses of an old firewall."
"The price is not bad. They have a yearly renewal fee, and the pricing is exactly where we expect it to be."
"It is an expensive product."
"Based on the customer budget, they can choose from 12-month, 36-month, or 60-month licensing models."
"The best deal from SonicWall is to buy the HA pair. When you buy the initial one, you receive the second one at a significant discount. If there is an event and something happens to one firewall, then you have the second firewall to roll into. For the price, it's pretty to tough to beat and not a lot of other firewall vendors offer it. You battle for a discount on both. Where with SonicWall, if you buy one, the second one is at half price. It's pretty straightforward."
"We get our value for our money."
"When you compare it with other solutions, they are cheaper and more economical."
"It's thirty dollars per user and we have 30 users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...
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 overall cost is reasonable. Azure Firewall offers a solid threat awareness, can...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Warren Rogers Associates
Wonder Cement, Foster Clark Products
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.