The product is an Internet proxy solution. We use it to manage our users' Internet access, making sure that they don't go to the wrong site. We also use it for data loss prevention.
Architecture Senior Manager at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Provides quick access to cloud services, securing our data and allowing us to inspect all our traffic
Pros and Cons
- "The data loss prevention feature is the most valuable. It stops our users from inadvertently leaking our customers' data to the Internet or anywhere else it shouldn't go."
- "One thing that they could improve is the ability to import rules from other platforms."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
The main benefit that we have seen is performance improvements based on not having to backhaul traffic and getting cloud services closer to the user.
It provides a modern, cloud-first model. It allows the users quick access to the cloud, depending on where they are in the world. We have users all over the world who access cloud services in their native regions. Previously, we had to backhaul the traffic to our data centers somewhere in the world, then go back to that region. Now, we don't have to do that. A user and data stays within that region. There is no latency there.
It allows us to inspect all our traffic, including SSLs. This is extremely important because most sites use SSLs nowadays. Putting non-SSL inspected data directly into the source would mean that there is a potential for data loss.
Protecting our customers' data is our number one priority. The data loss prevention rules that we have in place make sure that there is nothing within the packets relevant to our customers.
What is most valuable?
The data loss prevention feature is the most valuable. It stops our users from inadvertently leaking our customers' data to the Internet or anywhere else it shouldn't go.
The cloud-native proxy architecture certainly seems fast enough. The performance is good. The multi-country nature of it allows us to keep the proxy closer to the user so a user's data doesn't transit as far as it would otherwise. It helps to keep latency down and the speed up. It also helps a little bit with cyber threats, but that is not necessarily its primary purpose for us.
Zscaler is constantly improving the network. They are adding new data centers and regions all the time. They listen to feedback, and based on where we tell them to go and put data centers, they add new data centers. For example, they created a couple of data centers in the Middle East, which has been very helpful for us.
What needs improvement?
One thing that they could improve is the ability to import rules from other platforms.
Buyer's Guide
Zscaler Internet Access
December 2025
Learn what your peers think about Zscaler Internet Access. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,986 professionals have used our research since 2012.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using it for slightly more than a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Its stability is first-class. We haven't had any issues during the time that we have been using it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It certainly scales to what we have asked it to do so far. We have over 50,000 users on it without a single problem.
How are customer service and support?
From a technical support perspective, when we leave a ticket, the time it takes for them to close the ticket is very fast. Their resolution time is exceptional.
I would rate Zscaler Professional Services and technical support as eight out of 10. I am dropping two points because of some blanks in the time zone support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are using it with 20% to 25% of our business at the moment. We are migrating to it from our previous legacy platform.
It adds an alternate layer of protection. We were already using a very powerful tool to do this, but that tool wasn't quite as fast and smart.
How was the initial setup?
It was very complex, but there was training provided by Zscaler. That was very good for understanding it thoroughly. It was complex because we had to make sure that all our rules from previous platforms were migrated over so all our users had access to the same things that they had access to in previous models.
We aren't yet fully deployed. We have been at it for about a year and a half. We currently have over 50,000 users deployed and another 120,000 to go.
The only pain points that we have are self-inflicted because of our slow rollout of the product, which is not actually Zscaler's fault.
What about the implementation team?
We had Zscaler Professional Services helping us for quite a long time at the start of the project. They made sure that everything was set up correctly with no holes. They were very good and first-class.
What was our ROI?
So far, it has not saved us on costs as a result of retiring on-premises technology, next-generation firewalls, legacy proxies, or MPLS links. Though, we are expecting it to do that going forward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have not been involved with pricing and licensing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated several solutions.
What other advice do I have?
Try it, test it out, and make sure it works for you. It is not going to work for everybody because it is not a zero-cost solution. However, it does provide significant benefits in terms of its latency and capability to inspect your traffic as well as keeping your customer data secure.
It hasn't saved us time as compared to deploying and managing traditional network security hardware because we already had everything in place from a traditional standpoint. We take security very seriously. Security is paramount to what we do. We cannot, under any circumstances, allow our customers' data to be compromised. So, we have all the correct things in place from a traditional standpoint. We are now modernizing, and Zscaler Internet Access allows us to do that. However, we will not compromise at all. We have to move slowly to it.
It has not reduced the time that we spend managing security policies. The security policies used on Zscaler Internet Access are the same ones that we used with our previous technologies.
It has not really reduced the number of infected devices in our organization because we already had preventions in place with other technologies. We didn't previously have any infections.
I would rate Zscaler Internet Access as nine out of 10. It is a very good solution.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Principle Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Configuring policies is user-friendly but challenges with stability
Pros and Cons
- "The policies are very intuitive and easy to configure, with very little possibility of messing things up."
- "One thing that needs to be improved is their presence in China. I'm not sure if that's a Zscaler thing or if it's a problem with all vendors in this space, but it would be nice to have better coverage in China. This concern is a common one for vendors across the board when dealing with the Chinese market."
What is our primary use case?
Primarily, it was to replace our existing on-premises box infrastructure. That's what it started with. And lately, we've been using it more for secure web gateway purposes.
How has it helped my organization?
It's primarily meant for perimeter security and the ability to securely access the internet and SaaS applications. So that has definitely helped us get rid of our bulky firewall hardware firewalls, at least for internet access. So that's a cost optimization. And performance. It definitely helps us boost performance.
What is most valuable?
The ease of deployment is the most valuable feature. All it takes is building a few QRE or ITC tunnels and installing agents. It's a piece of cake.
And the policies are very intuitive and easy to configure, with very little possibility of messing things up. I also like the great analytics and good visibility into the traffic that goes out of my organization.
Shadow ID Discovery is also great for finding out what SaaS applications people in my organization are trying to access.
What needs improvement?
One thing that needs to be improved is their presence in China. I'm not sure if that's a Zscaler thing or if it's a problem with all vendors in this space, but it would be nice to have better coverage in China.
This concern is a common one for vendors across the board when dealing with the Chinese market. So, currently, there is the Great Firewall of China. This firewall can significantly impact internet performance for users in China. A better presence in China from Zscaler could mean more breakout points between China and the rest of the world.
This would help to improve internet performance for users in China and make Zscaler a more viable solution for organizations with a presence in China.
For how long have I used the solution?
I started using it in 2015, but then I used it intermittently for the next couple of years. But lately, I've been using it quite a lot. So I've been working with it for about seven years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Occasionally, I've faced challenges with applications going down, but these incidents don't usually result in disconnections.
If I were to rate its stability on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most stable, I would place it around a seven, I suppose.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I've never encountered challenges where a client exceeded the bandwidth or processing limits of Zscaler. When you reach your peak, the solution is flexible enough to handle it.
If necessary, you can provision another circuit to increase your Internet bandwidth and set up an additional enforcement point, which is essentially a Zscaler reinforcement point. So, it's highly elastic and scalable.
I would give scalability a perfect ten out of ten rating.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service and support are fairly good.
In terms of their technical capabilities, response times, and issue resolution, we've had positive interactions with their support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The primary alternative for Zscaler is Prisma Access. It stands out as the strongest contender. Additionally, there's NetScope in the mix, although it's not a direct comparison. Another player is Blue Coat, or rather Symantec, now Broadcom. They also compete in this space. However, from what I've observed, most clients transitioning from traditional proxy setups tend to gravitate towards either Zscaler or Prisma.
Prisma Access extends beyond mere web security. This puts it in a separate category, making a direct comparison with Zscaler Internet Access somewhat challenging. Prisma offers a broader array of features, including threat profiling, threat intelligence, diverse integrations, endpoint security evaluations, and deep packet inspection. These are areas where Zscaler Internet Access falls short. Zscaler, essentially a cloud proxy, serves a specific purpose.
On the other hand, Palo Alto Networks not only operates as a proxy but also incorporates firewall functionality. It functions as a service, includes VPN replacement capabilities, and encompasses features like antivirus, anti-spyware, and IPS for threat filtering. Palo Alto holds an advantage in these aspects. However, if your primary aim is to replace an on-premises proxy, Zscaler is the way to go. Opting for Prisma Access exclusively for proxy functionalities might prove cost-prohibitive.
How was the initial setup?
I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one being difficult and ten being easy to setup.
With regard to complexity, it largely depends on the number of redundancies that you require. For example, if you just have a standby setup with maybe two or three Zscaler enforcement nodes that your tunnels need to terminate on, it's fairly simple.
However, the more redundancy and higher availability requirements that the company has, the more complex it gets. So it can get pretty complicated if you have some crazy requirements with regard to high availability and redundancy.
You just need one person to deploy the solution. One person can mostly do it. A lot of parts as well.
You would require an endpoint specialist; someone who manages the endpoints. Additionally, you might need someone from your SOC to ensure that you're able to ingest all the logs and security alerts that are being dumped into the same solution. Perhaps one or two individuals for testing purposes. The policy installation process is quite straightforward and shouldn't take a lot of time. One person should be sufficient for that.
What about the implementation team?
We deployed the solution ourselves. We have a team of in-house experts who can troubleshoot any issues that may arise. We have also used Zscaler's professional services team on occasion, for example, to help us with sizing and design, or when there are complex requirements from our clients. But for the most part, we're able to handle the ZIA deployment ourselves.
Most standard deployments take around two weeks. For example, I deployed Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) for my previous organization, with 20,000 users in two weeks. However, I've also seen deployments for 50,000 to 60,000 users that took at least three to four months.
The exact deployment time will vary depending on the size of the deployment, the complexity of the environment, and the specific requirements of the organization.
In a typical deployment process, the first step is to procure licenses. You can either do this yourself, or Zscaler can do it for you. Once the licenses are procured, Zscaler will create a tenant for your organization. This tenant will include the enforcement nodes that will be used to process traffic for your users.
Following this, the installation of Zscaler tunnels transpires, along with the deployment of the Zscaler Client Connector (ZCC) on user machines. Configuration of policies is then carried out, encompassing aspects such as policy definitions and potential additional inspection of HTTPS traffic.
Moreover, ancillary facets are incorporated. These entail the establishment of compatible streaming services and TLS inspection. Integration with the corporate identity provider (IdP) is also a crucial step.
Furthermore, if automation is a consideration, additional automation or orchestration components can be implemented to facilitate automatic policy enforcement. While integration with Extended Detection and Response (XDR) systems is conceivable, this is an aspect I have not personally done. This more or less encapsulates the overall process.
What other advice do I have?
I would suggest knowing the use cases beforehand. Many customers I've seen aren't entirely clear about their specific use cases. They often dive into the product first and then work backward to identify whether Zscaler Internet Access aligns with their needs. Understanding your use cases is essential; it serves as a foundation for determining if Zscaler Internet Access is the right solution. If the required capabilities are already available, or if a few API integrations or lines of code can sustain the existing solution, that's worth considering. This advice isn't exclusive to Zscaler, but I've witnessed clients who become uncertain because they lack the necessary set of use cases that would justify their investment.
Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten for two reasons, namely, the China issue for the improvement section and the pricing is expensive. I am not sure about the exact price, but it is expensive.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
Buyer's Guide
Zscaler Internet Access
December 2025
Learn what your peers think about Zscaler Internet Access. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,986 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Technical Writer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Though the solution offers good support and stability, it needs to improve its interface
Pros and Cons
- "Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine and a half out of ten...The setup phase was easy."
- "Currently, the solution's interface is not that user-friendly."
What is most valuable?
The permission settings in the solutions are the most valuable feature in the solution since it allows me to assign roles and permissions.
What needs improvement?
I am just an end-user of the solution. I can't speak on what needs improvement from an admin's perspective. The interface of the solution needs to be clear and user-friendly. Currently, the solution's interface is not that user-friendly.
Zscaler is not like Okta. Okta has a marketplace, while Zscaler doesn't have one. Zscaler needs to have a marketplace.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Zscaler Internet Access for two years. I am using the solution's latest version. My company is just a customer of the solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine and a half out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
My company has 200 users using the solution.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the solution's technical support more than nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
I rate the setup phase a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy. The setup phase was easy.
The cloud is deployed on-premises.
The time taken for deployment is around fifteen minutes.
One admin person is required for deployment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I am not aware of the solution's pricing model since my company paid for the solution.
What other advice do I have?
I like Zscaler Internet Access a lot.
There are some sites it fails to find and block, causing such sites to get away from Zscaler Internet Access.
Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Cloud Architect Azure at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Allows us to secure endpoints using a proxy and provides technical support to help us set up new use cases and identify configurations
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature is the ability to drop packets."
- "The OS capabilities and WSL support could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
We use Zscaler to secure endpoints using a proxy.
This solution is used by 500 people. We have plans to increase usage by 10-20%.
It's a cloud based solution.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the ability to drop packets.
What needs improvement?
The OS capabilities and WSL support could be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used this solution for about four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's not very stable, but I think Zscaler is trying to improve that. This solution is typically deployed in endpoint environments like Windows, Linux, and even WSL, which is the Windows encapsulated version of Linux.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's scalable.
How are customer service and support?
We have used technical support to identify configurations, help us set up new use cases, and to secure endpoints that we want to be integrated.
How was the initial setup?
Setup is about medium difficulty. We needed more background information on how to set up a proxy. Setup could be easier.
It took between 30 minutes and one hour to set up the solution, activate our Zscaler company profile, and to configure ZIA.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is a little bit expensive. On a scale of one to five, I would rate it as a three.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.
I would absolutely recommend this solution to those who want to start using it.
It's a cloud based solution, so Zscaler provides everything needed to set up and start using it, without complex requirements.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Provides another layer of protection when a user goes to the Internet to browse or download something
Pros and Cons
- "Zscaler Internet Access has helped us reduce the time that we spend managing security policies by about four hours a week. We can use this time to focus on other things, especially the IT team."
- "They could provide more time for the onboarding the training of an IT person."
What is our primary use case?
We have Windows 10 laptops. We wanted help securing our laptops for remote work, but we don't have the server for this infrastructure. Whereas, with this solution, the cloud server is managed by Zscaler.
It is a pretty lean solution. We only need to manage the agent and some very small tools on the laptops.
How has it helped my organization?
Currently, we have an on-premise firewall. However, most of the time, users are not working in the office. Therefore, we need to use something, like a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), to help users. So, we are trying to protect users without a corporate firewall.
We just wanted laptops to have more secure features to help users and protect the company's data. There are two major things deployed on our laptops: Zscaler Internet Access and endpoint detection response (EDR).
Zscaler Internet Access has helped enable our digital transformation.
What is most valuable?
When you try to access suspicious websites, they will give you a warning. This helps us with user access without our office network.
Its cyberthreat protection is important for our needs. We use it for Internet access control, e.g., accessing web pages. We also use it when a user downloads or uploads files from the Internet.
When a user goes to the Internet to browse or download something, it is secured by this tool. This is important to us because it is another layer of protection.
What needs improvement?
They could provide more time for the onboarding the training of an IT person.
We did run into some compatibility issues. We just needed to test its configurations on the web portal and that detected the issues.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for half a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven't had any issues with stability.
No maintenance is required.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have 120 users. We have never tested it to go above 1,000 users. It shouldn't have problems because it is an agent working on the laptops using a centralized online server.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is very good. We create a ticket every week or two.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We didn't have an Internet access control solution previously, only anti-malware for endpoint protection.
Our legacy systems only protected our on-premise network.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward. It took about three days to set up.
What was our ROI?
Zscaler Internet Access has helped us reduce the time that we spend managing security policies by about four hours a week. We can use this time to focus on other things, especially the IT team.
Versus deploying and managing traditional network security hardware, the solution has saved us about four hours a week.
The solution has helped us reduce the number of infected devices in our organization by proactively preventing attacks because some users were unaware of some malware sites.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated two or three different vendors, but finally selected Zscaler Internet Access due to its reputation. Also, the GUI for Zscaler Internet Access was very clear when we tested it.
What other advice do I have?
We are not using the solution for data loss prevention.
When you select this product, test it with other tools running on your machine to ensure there are no compatibility issues between different products.
I would rate it as nine out of 10.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Service Manager at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
AI decision-making on quarantined documents reduces manual work
Pros and Cons
- "For our needs, the cloud-native proxy architecture is a very good solution. We are moving away from on-prem appliances and moving more toward cloud-based solutions. Zscaler is a good fit for our strategy. This architecture helps with cyber threats because we inspect most of the traffic and we can see that a lot of threats are stopped directly in the secure web gateway."
- "The reporting functionality could be a bit easier to use. There is a reporting function, but it's quite hard to do any good reporting, from a user-management perspective. For example, if a department manager wants to know how his department is using the web, there is a way to get the data, but it's quite cumbersome to get it and show it well. And that's true for comparing between departments."
What is our primary use case?
It's primarily for end-user access to the public internet. We use the proxy functionality and the URL Filtering.
We have a global policy for all our users. While there are a few categories of URLs that we are not allowed to do SSL inspection on, the primary function for us is to do SSL inspection so that we can make use of the built-in anti-malware and antivirus—the advanced-threat features—within the platform. We do SSL inspection of some 80 percent of all the traffic and we can evaluate if it's malicious or not.
It is a cloud solution where pretty much everything is handled by Zscaler.
How has it helped my organization?
Zscaler has helped to reduce the time we spend managing security policies. That is very important to us. A lot of the features it has are AI-based decision-making. For instance, if we implement a sandboxing rule for how files of a certain type should be inspected, we also can activate the AI decision-making process. That way, even if a file is new to the sandboxing environment, it can still see that it is a PDF and has these and these characteristics. Based on that, the AI says that "No, this file is not malicious," even though it normally would have been quarantined and sandboxed and have gone through the whole analysis process. The AI helps out in minimizing the time to do that analysis. And that also helps in reducing the burden of someone actually having to do things manually.
If you count everything that was involved in managing the appliances, the lifecycle management, and support contracts, in our old environment, we have reduced the number of FTEs managing the environment from five or six to about two.
It has also definitely helped reduce the number of infected devices in our organization by proactively preventing attacks. Since we scan almost all of the traffic, we now see how much of the traffic is "malicious." In our environment, we block about 1.6 million threats every quarter, but we don't know the severity of those threats. Maybe 1 million of them are malicious content in some way, while half a million are adware. But there are real threats that are being blocked, like botnet callbacks, cross-site scripting, and browser exploits. On average, we are blocking about 500,000 threats per month.
What is most valuable?
There are a bunch of different capabilities that are valuable within the platform. We use quite a lot of them, but not everything. The ones that are most important to us are the URL Filtering and the application control.
For our needs, the cloud-native proxy architecture is a very good solution. We are moving away from on-prem appliances and moving more toward cloud-based solutions. Zscaler is a good fit for our strategy. This architecture helps with cyber threats because we inspect most of the traffic and we can see that a lot of threats are stopped directly in the secure web gateway. But there are parts of it that we don't use yet, like the DLP functions. Instead, we are using the Zscaler Cloud Sandbox feature for content that is downloaded as files. We detonate the document in a sandbox and see if it's malicious or not.
It's a very easy-to-learn and easy-to-use platform, even for me as a more non-technical person. I'm still able to do a lot of work in this platform.
What needs improvement?
The reporting functionality could be a bit easier to use. There is a reporting function, but it's quite hard to do any good reporting, from a user-management perspective. For example, if a department manager wants to know how his department is using the web, there is a way to get the data, but it's quite cumbersome to get it and show it well. And that's true for comparing between departments. It's quite hard to get a good report.
Another issue is that the API documentation could be a bit more up-to-date. They're implementing stuff, but not updating the documentation all the time.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Zscaler Internet Access for the last five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Since we have global reach, we are seeing a bit more instability in Asia, primarily in China, but I'm not sure that it's related to Zscaler. I think it's more due to how China does things in terms of internet access.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It scales very well, if you go for the cloud-based solution alone. In certain regions in the world, we have started to implement local appliances, like a VEN node, where we don't have good coverage from Zscaler's public data centers. But if you only use the public data centers, it's getting a lot better. A while back, there were 35 or 40 data centers that we could use globally, but now there are over 80. So the scalability is quite good for us.
How are customer service and support?
Zscaler's technical support team is good at what they do, and they help us fix our problems quite fast. I would rate them eight on a scale of one to 10. There's always room for improvement.
We have had issues from time to time where they don't really see our problem as a problem, but we, as a customer, are being affected. They have a few different ISPs that take care of traffic to and from their data centers, and when their ISP is not performing, we, as customers, are suffering. There have been occasions when we have seen that our traffic is being routed very strangely within the Zscaler network, but they don't see that as a problem. We do, because all of a sudden, all of our Swedish users are going to the data center in Norway instead of Sweden. For Zscaler that is not a problem because they are still doing their job. But for our users, it's complicated because Norway is not part of the European Union, whereas Sweden is. If they go through the VEN node in Oslo, Norway, we cannot reach stuff that is EU-regulated, such as export and import functions within the EU. That is a big part of what we do. At times, it has been hard to get the Zscaler TAC team to understand that this is a problem for us, as a company.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used to have an on-prem solution doing pretty much the same thing as Zscaler, but as our strategy is cloud-first and internet-first, we thought that we should also use a cloud-based solution. We started to look at the alternatives, five or six years ago. What we saw was that there was only one, at the time, that was mature enough for our needs.
Since then, Zscaler has evolved quite a lot. In the beginning, there was no Zscaler Client Connector, an agent on your computer. It was all cloud-based, but that changed about a half a year after we started to use Zscaler. We assessed whether Zscaler fit our needs or not and we saw that for 75 or 80 percent of our needs, it was a good fit. Some aspects were not mature back then but they have matured over time.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment was quite straightforward. I wasn't really on board at the time the implementation of Zscaler took place, but overall, when new features and functionalities are added to the product, it's quite straightforward to implement them and to roll them out to large user groups, or globally. From a rollout perspective, it's quite easy to use.
Initially, one of our demands was that everything should be cloud-based, meaning we shouldn't have any agents on each computer. We learned the hard way that such an approach doesn't work well, because you need something to control the path from the user's computer to the Zscaler cloud. You need to be able to steer how the traffic goes. You can do that with PAC files. But ultimately, together with Zscaler, we figured out that a client was needed, at least for our needs.
What was our ROI?
Zscaler has helped us save costs by enabling us to decommission all of our legacy proxies. We had at least nine locations with appliances, and we had multiple appliances per location. It has helped us save money.
We have also seen ROI in terms of the cost of both the lifecycle management and the service and support contract that we previously needed. We have saved quite a lot there. I don't know the exact numbers, because I'm not in charge of the finances, but if you count the resources needed to manage the platform, we have saved up to 45 or 50 percent of the cost we used to have.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Back then, there weren't many other cloud-based solutions available. There were hybrid models, but we wanted a completely cloud-based solution.
At the time, Symantec had the beginning of a cloud-based solution, but it was very immature and it didn't work as well as Zscaler. Zscaler had been around since around 2010 and was five years into their journey, while Symantec was only a year or two into their journey. We opted for the most mature at that time.
Since then, we have looked at other solutions, including Netskope and a few others. They are similar in their design, but Zscaler has features in its design that make it stand out from the competitors. For instance, their scanning methodology is something like, "Scan once, analyze many times." That means there is a one-time scan of the traffic, but with multiple different threat engines, for antivirus and anti-malware, et cetera. And they do it only in the RAM memory of their cloud solution machines, which makes it super-fast. They can scan a lot of traffic in a very short amount of time. That part is something that a lot of other vendors are not doing. They're scanning in sequence, not in parallel.
What other advice do I have?
Make use of the Zscaler Client Connector as much as you can, with all of the functionality that comes with it. Also, do not allow the users to disable the Zscaler Client Connector, because then you don't know if traffic is actually going through Zscaler or not. If it's always on, you know that if something is not working, it's your policies that are doing something to the traffic. We used to make it possible for a user to disable the Zscaler Client Connector, which then made it impossible for us, as the team that troubleshoots problems, to know if the traffic was actually going through Zscaler or not. If you don't have that control, you don't know where the problem is. Now, at least we know that it's either on the client or it's on Zscaler or it's on the destination that they're trying to reach.
As for saving time with this system versus deploying and managing traditional network security hardware, it depends on how you build your management of the solution. We have opted for a solution where we manage everything centrally. We have one IT team that manages all of the Zscaler Internet Access policies and settings. But there is an option, and it's one of the strengths of Zscaler, to delegate control of parts or all of the solution to other teams. For instance, you could have URL Filtering policies that are managed by a local IT team in a given country. We don't do that. We manage everything from one team and we control everything, for our whole organization, from this management platform. We control the forwarding policies, the application access policies, the URL Filtering policies—pretty much everything.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Technical Consultant at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Good features and a straightforward setup but needs a better user interface
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is stable and reliable."
- "Technical support could be better."
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for internet access, web-based policies, and application-based policies. It has a device posture profile, which is new.
DNS security is in progress now. I have done the test cases in my lab, however, now we are deploying it for 30,000 users. I'm working on that project as well. Apart from that, I have worked in ZIA's firewall and DLP.
What is most valuable?
The product is simple yet has a lot of features.
It offers a straightforward setup process. Setting up the solution is simple.
The solution is stable and reliable.
Users can scale the product.
What needs improvement?
There are some flaws which I don't like. Mostly I was an engineer for the proxy. In that case, there are limitations. There are limited categories and limited URLs which we can create.
We'd like to see a more user-friendly interface.
Technical support could be better. They should be more technical. Also, they need to ensure when you ask for help, they communicate better amongst themselves what the issue is so that customers aren't constantly repeating themselves.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for about one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's quite stable and offers good performance. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's scalable and easy to expand.
We have multiple clients that use the solution. We have between 8,000 and 50,000 clients.
How are customer service and support?
I've contacted technical support multiple times. They are okay. However, they could be better. We sometimes need more technical responses.
Often, our support person will change, and then we have to explain over and over the issue, what went wrong, and what's been done. It may take days to resolve things even if it is a simpler case due to the repetition and the fact we are changing from support staff to support staff.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
The solution is very straightforward and simple to set up.
Users just decide if they want to connect via desktop or remote VDI servers, and that's it. They decide on what ports and protocols they want to connect. Once that question is clear, then they just have to just create the connection between the cloud and between the enterprise. After that, it's all about the configuration once you are done on the portal.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't deal with the licensing aspect. I can't speak to pricing.
What other advice do I have?
I'd rate hte solution seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
CISO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Easy to deploy with good security and seamless integrations
Pros and Cons
- "There is no lag in service when accessing the internet."
- "We'd like to have more plugins and integration."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for a secure web gateway and secure internet access.
We wanted something for an overall internet access solution, an in-office, and out-of-office solution. We chose Zscaler Internet Access.
What is most valuable?
It is very transparent.
It securely transfers internet connectivity seamlessly, without any problems or issues. It's very simple for the user.
The product offers easy deployment.
Security is very strong. There is seamless integration as well.
There is no lag in service when accessing the internet.
The initial setup was straightforward.
It is scalable.
The solution is stable.
What needs improvement?
The technical support could be better. We need more of an online knowledge base, so we don't have to lodge tickets whenever we have a question or issue.
We'd like to have more plugins and integration.
Even in a CASB scenario, if we could get API and JSON-contained decoding, that would be helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for over a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable and secure. We haven't had any issues. The product is great.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have more than 1,000 people using the solution.
The scalability is really good. We've had no issues with the scalability. We even don't know when the performance tuning is happening in the back end. The user is not experiencing any problems, even if all thousand-plus users have started using it at the same time. There's no slowness or lag which is experienced.
We use it on a daily basis and plan to increase usage in the future.
How are customer service and support?
If you want some support, you have to log a case. However, if there was more online support or a knowledge base that was readily available, it would be better.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The set up is very straightforward. It's a pretty easy process. The deployment scenario is pretty simple. You can just deploy it through a simple policy. You can deploy it even in terms of the distribution of hardware to users.
To set it up took about three and a half weeks, from beginning to end.
I'd rate the ease of deployment at a four or 4.5 out of five.
After it is set up, there isn't really much maintenance.
What about the implementation team?
We handled the deployment in-house.
What was our ROI?
After three or five years, after not having any bad experiences, we can see some ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is quite expensive. It's around double what others are offering. The price we pay includes everything. It comes as a bundle.
I'd rate the affordability of the solution at a two or three out of five.
While the product quality is very good, the price is very high.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have looked into Netskope.
What other advice do I have?
I'm an end-user.
I am dealing with the latest version of the solution.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. The only downside is that it is so expensive.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Zscaler Internet Access Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: December 2025
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Buyer's Guide
Download our free Zscaler Internet Access Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Quick Links
Learn More: Questions:
- Looking Into Implementing a Web Security Solution.
- Can I deploy Zscaller as a transparent proxy?
- Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
- Which is better, Zscaler internet access or Netsckope CASB?
- How does Prisma SaaS by Palo Alto Networks compare with Zscaler internet access?
- When evaluating Web Security Gateways, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?
- What is the best security web gateway?
- Is Netskope's SWG as good as the Zscaler SWG?
- What secure web gateway do you recommend?
- Why is Secure Web Gateways (SWG) important for companies?














