You can’t put a price on peace of mind—but it can feel like network security providers are trying their best. As network traffic continues to grow exponentially, stakes in the arms race between cyberthreats and cybersecurity measures grow. Even small businesses now consider purchasing some sort of firewall for their network to be a must, rather than a luxury. 

In this rapidly changing landscape, it can be difficult to know what kind of firewall capabilities you need-—or how much you should be paying for it. For instance, home office firewalls start as cheap as $200, while larger enterprise firewalls can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Additionally, most network firewall providers have a huge catalog of appliances, from home office firewalls to multi-branch enterprise appliances. Many network firewall products are sold through third parties as well, further complicating the pricing landscape. 

TrustRadius has aggregated pricing information for some of the most popular firewall products to help shed light on what pricing buyers should expect. It includes pricing information directly from suppliers where possible, as well as input from third party resellers where appropriate. This post also includes other information that buyers may find helpful, such as secondary costs connected to commercial network firewalls. 

Network Firewall Pricing across Leading Products

Below is a breakdown of prices buyers should expect to pay for some of the most popular commercial network firewall products on the market. Due to the wide range of scaling that firewall vendors offer, pricing is broken up into common ranges, from small scale firewalls for home offices or very small businesses, to midrange organizations, up to campus-wide or multi-branch enterprise firewalls.

Leading Firewalls Pricing Comparison

Considering the Total Cost of Ownership

Part of the difficulty around purchasing network firewalls is determining all the other costs that can come on top of the one-time appliance purchase. This total cost of ownership can vary dramatically because it can be heavily influenced by internal factors like IT or network security administration costs. However, there are some costs connected to specific firewall products that buyers can account for. 

The most common add-on cost to a network firewall appliance is additional services, especially for more complex systems. In their simplest form, most commercial firewalls can come with 1-3 years of support from the vendor, often as 24/7 online or phone support. More mature firewall vendors will expand this offering to include various managed services, up to remotely managing the firewall in its entirety. While each additional tier reduces in-house costs, they also come with heftier vendor price tags. 

While additional services may be more relevant to larger-scale buyers, the costs around extended security features within a firewall will be of more interest to SMBs. There are still some vendors who specialize in delivering just the traditional, standalone firewall capability, but many are bundling extra features like VPNs with their Next-Generation Firewalls. Some vendors also package 2-in-1 firewall and router appliances. Whether these capabilities are included can vary in the SMB space, but all will impact the price point.

What’s Best for You?

Businesses looking for a network firewall should consider what features and capacity are necessary for the business, then consider the pricing options for products that meet those requirements. At this point, products have distinct pricing and feature combinations that will best serve certain use cases or specific priorities:

• Highest Rated: SonicWall TZ
• Best Additional Services: Fortinet FortiGate
• Budget Pick: pfSense
• Scalability: Cisco Firepower
• For SMBs: Cisco ASA 5500-X

Want to Know More?

Pricing can help narrow down what the best network firewall options are for your budget. Once you’ve determined which products you are considering, you can see what verified users think of each option at TrustRadius.