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Prisma SD-WAN pros and cons

Vendor: Palo Alto Networks

4.3 out of 5

22 reviews
100% willing to recommend

458 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Prisma SD-WAN offers a smooth transition from MPLS to the Internet for branch sites, featuring fast route advertisement and cloud-based remote access. It includes comprehensive device administration and network monitoring with analytics for troubleshooting. Dynamic, high-speed routing enables self-healing capabilities. However, technical support is declining, pricing is premium, and product training is lacking. Setup complexity and event correlation need improvement to enhance user experience, especially for smaller companies.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Prisma SD-WAN provides seamless failover from MPLS to the Internet, ensuring smooth transition and route advertisement.

Cloud-based gateway accessibility allows connection from anywhere, offering flexibility and connectivity to the home gateway.

The integration with Palo Alto is straightforward, enhancing overall network management and policy administration.

Prisma SD-WAN's analytics deliver valuable data, including internet health metrics, continuous speed tests, and log visibility, aiding network troubleshooting and performance optimization.

Prisma SD-WAN's dynamic routing rapidly adapts to changes, maintaining connectivity and enabling network self-healing with efficient handling of large, complex networks.

CONS

Customer support with Prisma SD-WAN is a significant issue, with response times having increased and the quality of support decreasing.

Prisma SD-WAN needs better integration with other Palo Alto offerings, like Prisma Access.

There is an expressed need for a unified appliance that can consolidate firewalls alongside SD-WAN functionalities.

The pricing model for Prisma SD-WAN is considered premium and may be prohibitive for smaller companies.

Customers have found initial setup challenging, with complex troubleshooting required for operational issues.

Prisma SD-WAN Pros review quotes

reviewer1752819

Technical Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 27, 2021

If the MPLS goes down, there is a really smooth transition for a branch site to take traffic over the Internet. It will advertise the routes of that site in a jiffy.

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Network Administrator at Wipro

Oct 21, 2022

From the main controller, we can administer the customer's devices, QoS, network, and traffic. We can monitor it and we can change and create policies as well as upgrade the software. We can totally control a customer's network from one site, the Prisma SD-WAN portal.

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reviewer2060541

Sr Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 18, 2023

Prisma's analytics provide a lot of valuable data. I like the internet health chart that shows latency, dropped packets, MOS for data quality, etc. It also runs a continuous speed test in the background. I've used it multiple times to troubleshoot internet connections when the service provider has attempted to claim nothing is wrong with the circuit. It gives me data to send them showing we're not getting the speed we should, or there is constant packet loss.

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reviewer2060574

Pcs at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 25, 2022

I like the link monitoring and analytics. These are the features that set Prisma apart from other products. Prisma works well with large, complex networks. One of my clients is a top bank in the United States, and Prisma has performed well for that customer.

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reviewer2198622

Network Team Lead at Wipro Limited

May 30, 2023

It is flexible to use the internet connection via local breakouts without going to data centers.

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Imran Taiyeb Ali

Senior Solutions Specialist at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

Nov 13, 2023

The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.

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DD

Network SME at Sanofi

Jan 10, 2023

When it comes to supporting large, complex, network architectures, it's a very simple architecture. The main component is the fabric. It's very easy to troubleshoot if there is an issue happening in the underlying network.

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reviewer1688805

IT Communications engineer at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 20, 2022

I like that the integration with Palo Alto is easy.

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MH

Regional Technical Manager at Nestingtech

Mar 15, 2022

The gateway is available on the cloud which allows you access from anywhere and still connects to your home gateway.

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CarlosNascimento

Senior Cyber Security Consultant at Compwyre

Jun 7, 2024

The dynamic routing in Prisma SD-WAN is high-speed and valuable because it quickly adjusts, so users do not realize the link is down.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 21)

Prisma SD-WAN Cons review quotes

reviewer1752819

Technical Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 27, 2021

We are incorporating their zone-based firewalls. Prisma SD-WAN has limited documentation on how it manipulates traffic, e.g., how it is interacting with TCP and UDP. We recently had some traffic that was black holing. We literally had to do packet captures to see that the new zone-based firewall, which runs on top of Prisma SD-WAN, was causing issues.

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Network Administrator at Wipro

Oct 21, 2022

I would also like to see improvement in the product training for customers. Palo Alto has not initiated very much training but they have to do so because this is a new product. If you have experience in a legacy environment, and you are moving to Prisma SD-WAN, you don't have a training framework. That is one of the disadvantages.

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reviewer2060541

Sr Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 18, 2023

Customer support is our biggest pain point. The quality of support has gone down a little since we initially deployed this product. I don't know if this is due to turnover at Palo Alto or a lack of training. It is now taking one or two days to get an initial response that says, "Hey, we've looked into this, can you pull this data for us?" In the past, we'd immediately get a response.

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Free Report: Prisma SD-WAN Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Prisma SD-WAN. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.

850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer2060574

Pcs at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 25, 2022

There are two parallel things that we want Palo Alto to work on. First, customers want a unified appliance that does the work of all firewalls in addition to SD-WAN. Second, the cloud presence should be completely automated. If I purchase the SASE architecture, I shouldn't worry about deployments in Prisma Access or on Prisma SD-WAN. It should be deployed in one go.

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reviewer2198622

Network Team Lead at Wipro Limited

May 30, 2023

Prisma SD-WAN's technical support should be improved.

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AW

Sr. Networking Engineer at Emerson

Jun 6, 2024

Accessibility could be improved. Any new person attempting to access Prisma will have difficulty. It doesn't have CLI available.

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Imran Taiyeb Ali

Senior Solutions Specialist at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

Nov 13, 2023

Sometimes, during the product's initial setup phase, bypass pair or couple ports don't come up normally, and it requires an hour and a half to troubleshoot to reset the box from Prisma SD-WAN to factory default.

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DD

Network SME at Sanofi

Jan 10, 2023

Event correlation and analysis capabilities do not help minimize the number of alarms from a single event. That is the problem. We are getting a lot of incidents, and there is some issue with the correlation. That is still a drawback.

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reviewer1688805

IT Communications engineer at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 20, 2022

The only con is the pricing because it's more premium.

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MH

Regional Technical Manager at Nestingtech

Mar 15, 2022

I'd like to see them move more towards CASB.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 22)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

Popular Comparisons

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Fortinet FortiGate vs Prisma SD-WAN

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Prisma SD-WAN

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