We compared Cato Networks and Cisco SD-WAN across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Cato Networks provides useful features like continuous VPN, web filtering, and antivirus capabilities. Users appreciate its simplicity and efficiency. Cisco SD-WAN is praised for its service quality, real-time traffic visibility, and automation capabilities.
Room for Improvement: Cato Networks could enhance its security measures by incorporating a web application firewall feature and improving intrusion detection. Cisco SD-WAN should enhance its connectivity to prominent cloud providers and incorporate additional security features.
Ease of Deployment: Users have found the initial setup process for Cato Networks to be straightforward, and it takes only a short time. Cisco SD-WAN can be more complicated and may require expert help. While some users found it to be easy, others encountered difficulties and uncertainty during the setup.
Service and Support: Cato Networks' customer service is commended for its prompt and involved assistance during implementation. Some reported occasional issues with support consistency and internal communication. While some Cisco SD customers found the support to be outstanding, others encounter delays and challenges in connecting with the appropriate personnel.
Pricing: Cato Networks offers flexible pricing based on bandwidth and socket type, while Cisco SD-WAN has received mixed feedback regarding its cost. Cato Networks is regarded as competitively priced and affordable, whereas Cisco SD-WAN is perceived as pricier compared to its rivals.
ROI: Cato Networks provides noticeable cost savings and efficiency improvements within a year, resulting in a positive return on investment. Cisco SD-WAN offers flexibility and scalability, leading to long-term benefits and cost reduction.
Comparison Results: Cato Networks offers valuable features like always-on VPN and web filtering. However, it lacks advanced networking capabilities and a web application firewall. The pricing is reasonable but slightly higher compared to some competitors. Cisco SD-WAN is a highly scalable solution with a comprehensive feature set and scalability, but it requires improvements in stability and native connectivity to cloud providers.
"The most valuable feature is that it also works as a next-gen firewall because it has security features."
"The visibility control and security aspects are amazing."
"The most valuable feature of Cato Networks is the CASB and the documentation is useful."
"The solution is stable."
"Cato offers all the functionality found in other solution. The life cycle management is always very stable."
"The feature that I find to be the most valuable is the bandwidth aggregation."
"It is a stable solution...it is a scalable solution."
"It is quite simple and easy to use."
"The solution has great scalability."
"The solution is great at aggregating the traffic and then sending it in one direction."
"The most useful feature for our organization is the combination of on-prem and cloud-based deployments. We connect securely to our hybrid cloud using transit VPCs and cloud on-ramp for fast deployments."
"Cisco SD-WAN is a stable solution."
"Encryption, which is native to the solution, is a valuable feature. Also, central management, onboarding of devices, QS, and routing applications are all okay."
"Installation is easy."
"Cisco products are rated to handle the heat and are very rugged, making them a good corporate standard."
"This solution can scale from SMB to the enterprise level. It is very impressive."
"The different languages in the user interface should be enhanced."
"The product must evolve into the endpoint domain."
"The product may be complex for users with few years of experience."
"We would like the product to continue to improve its security."
"They should include a web application firewall feature in the solution."
"For a packaged solution, needing external intervention or a system integrator to get other features not offered by Cato Networks could be an area for improvement. Cato Networks does what it's meant to do and is even overstretching capabilities when introducing new features. The product can only have very few features added on top of what its currently doing. Managed service providers can deliver the extra features you'd need. It's a set of managed services, and what Cato Networks does is very comprehensive. So, for the time being, when the actual incarnation of the SASE solution is deployed, Cato Networks is a very effective product. Naturally, technology will evolve, so everybody knows that in three, four, or five years, there will be a new kid on the block, a new game. Still, at the moment, Cato Networks only needs to improve a little regarding SASE delivery. The product is doing very well, but one feature the Cato Networks team is doing right is preparing for the future through deploying the SSE 360, so the security service is at that edge. It's an excellent strategy to prepare for the future. SSE 360 is what Cato Networks should invest in the most to keep prospering."
"Web application firewalling (WAF) is a feature we would like to have in this solution and does not exist yet."
"Modifying or incorporating Cato Network to work with a third-party platform, such as Microsoft, or other Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings would be beneficial. Having more integration partners would help the users implement the solution."
"We need them to start focusing on the SD-WAN compatibility with other environments and not being so vendor locked with Cisco environments."
"The user interface needs to be more friendly."
"The bandwidth limitations would be good to remove, but it is a policy and license situation for Cisco because the cost is very high. It would be good to have OTP implemented with VRF. It can have support for EIGRP Over the Top (OTP) VRF. I saw some limitations in regards to the VRF protocol and the advertisement between VRF configuration. EIGRP Over the Top basically was quite limited with the VRF configuration. If you wanted to do rollback in VRF by using the EIGRP OTP protocol, the formation was not populated across. Cisco got back and confirmed that it is a configuration that I need to wait for until the next release, which is going to happen in one year. Cisco documentation is not the way it used to be before. It just gives an easy way to configure, but it doesn't go into the details of the configuration. The information that you need is there, but sometimes you want to go further and get more information, but the information is quite limited. It would be good to cover a few business cases or configuration cases. They used to be there in the past."
"The product needs to have more understanding staff in their support team. The tool needs to provide support in every stage of deployment. We did not get the expected support from their team. The product is also not easy to use."
"Cisco SD-WAN is not as easy to deploy as the Meraki and FortiGate solutions. The zero-touch deployment could be a lot better. The deployment and initial setup are complicated and could be better."
"The security features could be improved."
"I would recommend better-integrated management."
"The licensing model needs to be improved."
Cato SASE Cloud Platform is ranked 5th in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 21 reviews while Cisco SD-WAN is ranked 1st in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions with 86 reviews. Cato SASE Cloud Platform is rated 8.8, while Cisco SD-WAN is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cato SASE Cloud Platform writes "Useful remote worker VPN, centralized management, and simple on-boarding process". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco SD-WAN writes "A solution for integrating services to enhance up-time, performance and lower costs". Cato SASE Cloud Platform is most compared with Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet FortiGate, VMware SD-WAN and Cisco Umbrella, whereas Cisco SD-WAN is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Meraki SD-WAN, VMware SD-WAN, Juniper Session Smart Router and Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform. See our Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs. Cisco SD-WAN report.
See our list of best Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions vendors and best WAN Edge vendors.
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