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SonicWall NSv vs Stormshield Network Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
591
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
SonicWall NSv
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (16th)
Stormshield Network Security
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Unified security and sd-wan have improved uptime and cut wan costs for multi-site branches
Users report stability issues in certain versions, which requires regular updates. Real-world attacks have also highlighted the need for urgent patching of vulnerabilities.Fortinet FortiGate, while a powerful and feature-rich web firewall, could improve in areas like firmware stability, documentation, and ease of use. The learning curve can be steep for some users. For beginners, support quality can vary, and frequent updates with occasional vulnerabilities call for careful patch management. However, once Fortinet FortiGate is configured, it remains highly reliable and efficient. Customer support needs improvement, as I find it very slow, with reports from other users reflecting that customer support is inadequate.
SG
Senior Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Secures east-west cloud traffic and improves threat visibility through deep inspection
SonicWall NSv offers great features. I cannot pinpoint a single best feature, but the best feature is the ability to deliver the full, high-efficiency inspection power of a physical SonicWall, including zero-day defense using Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection to the cloud, efficiently removing the performance versus cloud trade-off typically associated with virtual firewalls. Regarding deep memory inspection and real-time zero-day defense in SonicWall NSv, deep memory inspection is distinct from traditional sandboxing methods because it is focused on what is happening in the memory during file execution time, rather than just observing file system behavior. The deep memory inspection process addresses all challenges by employing a proprietary technique within the secure analysis environment, focusing on CPU-level analysis and real-time verdict. Those are the key points. SonicWall NSv's user interface is quite clear and easy to navigate. If someone has not worked with SonicWall and this is their first experience with the platform, I would highly recommend it. It is very easy to navigate and very user-friendly. SonicWall NSv has positively impacted our organization because we gained clear visibility into our network, and it helps to identify potential security issues that we had. We were able to remediate those issues, and so far, we have had a great experience with SonicWall NSv. We were able to manage approximately 99% of network-based attacks through this platform.
Zsolt Jónás - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at NaxoNet
Advanced GUI and layered security have supported compliance and simplified intrusion prevention
I haven't had a task that I couldn't solve with Stormshield Network Security. The active-active high availability solution would be beneficial because currently, if you build a high availability solution with Stormshield Network Security, you have a main device and another one is a backup device. The HA can switch between them, but it would be good to have a master-master solution, not just a master-slave one. I could set a URL that I can call to update the DNS record. Currently, Stormshield Network Security devices support DynDNS, which is not a usual feature request from a server environment. I have my own solution instead of DynDNS because I don't prefer it, so I have my own service for that. However, the GUI does not support using a custom service instead of DynDNS. I had to solve it in the console on Stormshield Network Security device, but it would be much better if it was reachable on the GUI. I had to figure out a trick for the IPsec configuration. In the IPsec config, we have to provide the remote side's IP address, but it's always changing. This means that an office, for example a company that has an office but without a fixed IP address, cannot be used with IPsec VPN.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable for an SME."
"I've found the solution to be very good."
"FortiGate NGF is simple compared to other firewalls. It is easy to use and you don't need any training. Any person with basic firewall knowledge can use it."
"I previously used Meraki but I prefer Fortinet for its value and software capabilities, and it's better than any of the other products in this field."
"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate include the simple user interface."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"I would rate FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) as a solution a 10 out of 10."
"I would rate the overall product a nine out of ten."
"The customization of firewall rules provides great value to our customers as it allows them to lock things up in the way that they desire. When it is used for internal access, with a VPN in place for remote workers, the firewalling services provided by Azure, such as the default services that can be turned on, are applied. However, the use of a software-based virtual firewall gives us greater flexibility in introducing security controls for customers who are publishing applications that are publicly accessible from the public cloud. This virtual firewall provides an additional layer of security and more extensive security control options to ensure the protection of our customers' valuable information and assets."
"SonicWall NSv has positively impacted my organization by being cost-effective, with latency monitoring as an added advantage for us, along with full SD-WAN."
"The user-friendly interface of SonicWall NSv makes it easy for me to accomplish whatever tasks I am given due to the proper arrangement of words and the way it is designed."
"Out of ten, I would rate the solution at an eight."
"We have definitely seen a positive return on investment after implementing SonicWall NSv, mainly in terms of time savings, operational efficiency, and reduced security-related costs."
"SonicWall NSv has helped me to secure cloud workloads faster, maintain consistent security controls, and reduce operational overhead without needing a completely new firewall platform."
"SonicWall NSv has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to scale growth without having to constantly reinvent our processes."
"A very robust product."
"The solution has improved my organization because I can see what traffic is happening and I can use it to block and prevent attacks."
"The performance of this solution is good."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its dashboard, which helps you manage different aspects of a single page. The intrusion detection system helps our organization by automatically detecting and responding to potential threats. It operates similarly to Darktrace, which detects and responds automatically based on the security rules you apply. Initially, you configure everything to block, and then you can whitelist specific items as needed."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"Filters and URL filtering helped us to optimize our bandwidth."
"It's an easy, straightforward management platform to use."
"Stormshield is a very strong firewall and very easy to configure and maintain."
 

Cons

"Fortinet FortiGate can improve performance. There was a huge challenge in terms of CPU and memory where the IPS engine would keep triggering. There were random spikes of overutilization in the CPU and memory resources. They have to work on CPU and memory stability considering these IPS engines. A few versions were very unstable."
"It would be helpful to have a better tool for migrating all policy rules using an automatic script."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"FortiGate can only retain logs for 24 hours or 7 days. I'm not sure if it holds them for a longer period, such as for a month. It will be useful for assessing our strategy and monitoring our environment without investing in FortiGate Analyzer. It would be beneficial if Fortinet could enhance the FortiGate by providing more statistical and monitoring views for a longer timeframe, rather than requiring access to FortiGate Analyzer."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations."
"It would be helpful to have a better tool for migrating all policy rules using an automatic script."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"Maybe they can offer a smaller scope for a cheaper price for smaller organizations."
"I believe SonicWall NSv is performing well overall, but I think it would be beneficial to have physical versions, such as the hardware of SonicWall NSv, for some environments that may not necessarily need to be connected to the cloud."
"In terms of user-based policies and Gen 7, we have several problems with the ULA, and the page does not appear."
"Customer support from SonicWall could see some improvement. With the number of items that SonicWall has going on at the moment, the wait line can be quite intrusive."
"I would prefer to see improvements in the quality of the OS running on it, particularly if there are some bugs. The improvement needed is about the user interface."
"I faced a problem when migrating from an old Generation 6 firewall to a Generation 7 firewall, where I could not simply copy the configuration from one appliance to the other; I had to rebuild the entire policies, IP addressing, the rules, the NAT rules, the tunnels, and the VPN policies."
"The price is a significant factor. Mostly in India, the customer service has many hurdles to get real support."
"While I have not encountered significant challenges, during the configuration part, I noticed that some features, such as user-based policy for web filtering, are not available in SonicWall NSv compared to other firewalls."
"One challenge was the initial setup. Some options were not very clear in the beginning, so it took some time to configure everything properly."
"With Stormshield, there are difficulties joining things, and it can be complex depending on the architecture."
"Being more cost effective. I went with a pair of Watchguard M300 recently when buying a new firewall cluster for our own use because it was way cheaper than NetASQ/Stormshield N700 while being faster, and it offers true multi-master firewall clustering if needed."
"The biggest issue was their support department was not able to help us, then everything stops. This is a no-go area for me."
"The filtering configuration could be better. We have some difficulties with the filtering configuration and the filter extension. It's not that easy. It's not that straightforward. In the next release, I would like to see a reporting system. Stormshield doesn't have any tutorials on how to do the configuration and things like that. They just have documentation on the website. If you want to configure, for example, Cisco or Fortinet, you can find tutorials on YouTube. They show you how to configure the features, and so on. In Stormshield, there is nothing on social media or the internet on how to configure different things. The lack of documentation or the lack of material makes it difficult for others to adopt this solution."
"One thing, though, is that not all the fields are activated yet and we were informed that it will take at least one month."
"The main area of this product that has room for improvement is pricing. Stormshield Network Security is quite expensive."
"The product must improve its pricing."
"Support is always an issue because they're constantly busy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licenses cost the same for different subscription plans."
"FortiGate SWG is reasonably priced."
"The main reason we chose Fortinet FortiGate was that the price was better than the competition."
"The solution could be better priced."
"The price of FortiGate support is too expensive."
"Other firewalls are more expensive than Fortinet FortiGate, such as the Azure firewall."
"I pay €1,200 per year for the license along with Fortinet's 81E firewall appliance. I would rate this pricing as 3/5 stars, and I believe the price is reasonably similar to its competitors in the market, being somewhere in the middle."
"The price is high compared to some of the other solutions."
"The solution’s pricing is less compared to other products."
"The tool is moderately priced."
"Our initial purchase, which included a three-year term of support, was about $25,000 USD."
"The solution's pricing is good for the technology it offers."
"SonicWall NSV is not very costly."
"We are currently using the trial version."
"I think the price is good."
"We bought a three-year license, and we renew it whenever it expires. The price could be better. It's always very expensive."
"For mid-sized companies, they sell their appliances for good prices."
"The pricing could be better."
"The price of this solution and the price of support are ok."
"We chose Stormshield for its price, as the Azure firewall was too expensive."
"The SN200 series costs between $500 USD and $600 USD per year, whereas the SN700 series costs approximately $1,000 annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Security Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business367
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise193
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise2
 

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 your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall NSV?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of SonicWall NSv has been mostly positive, though there are...
What needs improvement with SonicWall NSV?
Overall, SonicWall NSv is a strong and reliable virtual firewall, but based on my hands-on experience, there are a fe...
What is your primary use case for SonicWall NSV?
The main use case for SonicWall NSv is to secure virtual and cloud-based infrastructure by providing centralized fire...
What needs improvement with Stormshield Network Security?
I haven't had a task that I couldn't solve with Stormshield Network Security. The active-active high availability sol...
What is your primary use case for Stormshield Network Security?
I already use Stormshield Network Security, and I am now looking for a new solution. I am already working with Storms...
What advice do you have for others considering Stormshield Network Security?
The pricing is increasing, and I would say it is a bit expensive. Palo Alto and others are much more expensive, but S...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
SonicWall Network Security Virtual
NETASQ Firewalls
 

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
Comlogic, Depaul, Hutt City Council
ACESUR group, Ministry of Education Oman, Anios Laboratories, Zain, DLM Location
Find out what your peers are saying about SonicWall NSv vs. Stormshield Network Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.