If you run Zenarmor Business NGFW today, the first thing to know is that your plan is not going anywhere. Business NGFW remains fully supported, and existing customers and partners can continue to renew it and purchase it. The only change is that we no longer offer it to new customers.
So why write a whole post comparing it to the new plans? Because for most businesses, Unified Secure and Unified Secure Plus offer more protection, more flexibility, and better value over time. This guide clearly lays out the differences, runs through real-world examples, and helps you decide whether switching makes sense for you now, later, or not at all.
Business NGFW counts every active device on your network, measured by the number of unique local IP addresses seen each day. That was simple to understand, but it meant the printer in the corner, the security cameras, and the smart TV in the meeting room all counted toward your license.
Unified Secure plans count users instead. One license covers the two devices a person actively works on, typically a laptop and a phone. Everything else on the network is still protected by the gateway; it just does not appear on your bill.
This matters more every year. Offices keep adding connected equipment, from access control and VoIP handsets to sensors and displays, while headcount grows at a much slower pace. With per-user licensing, your costs track your team rather than your hardware.
Secure access from anywhere. Business NGFW protects the network at the gateway. Unified Secure adds Zero-Trust networking and mesh VPN, so staff can reach internal resources securely from home or on the road. With Plus, every user is covered, and your offices can connect to each other through site-to-site mesh across up to 20 locations, removing the need for a separate VPN product.
Protection that leaves the building. Endpoint agents keep laptops and phones under the same policies when they are off the office network. Unified Secure includes five agents for admins and key staff, while Plus covers two devices per user.
Identity that fits the modern stack. Policies can follow users and groups directly from Entra ID, Google Workspace, Okta, or any SAML provider, with captive portal authentication for guests and shared spaces.
Better visibility. Scheduled reports move from individual gateways to central management, with 15 or 30 days of cloud retention depending on your plan, and Plus adds private network analytics.
Resilience at no extra cost. Each site includes two gateway keys, so an active/passive HA pair is billed as one site. You also get Tier-1 threat intelligence and VPN infrastructure with geo redundancy.
Room to grow. Per-user rates step down as your team grows, and prepaid terms take 15%, 25%, or 35% off list for one, three, or five years.
A small accounting firm has 10 staff, each with a laptop and a phone, plus a printer, two security cameras, and a meeting room display. That is 24 active devices, just under the Business NGFW limit of 25, for $50/mth.
On Unified Secure, the same firm pays $50/mth for 10 users. The monthly cost is identical, but the firm now gets remote access for key staff, five endpoint agents, cloud IdP sign-in, and centralized reporting included.
The real difference shows up when the firm grows. Hiring two new staff and adding a camera would push the network to 29 devices, past the 25-device limit and into a larger device tier on Business NGFW. On Unified Secure, the same change costs $10/mth more for the two new users, and the camera costs nothing.
Most web traffic today is encrypted, and threats often hide inside it. Full TLS inspection decrypts and checks that traffic before it reaches your users, and it is not available on Business NGFW. For a 20-user business, Unified Secure with the TLS add-on comes to $160/mth. Unified Secure Plus is $180/mth and includes TLS inspection along with full mesh VPN for every user, 40 device agents, three overlay networks, and 30-day retention.
For $20 more a month, Plus is often the smarter choice for teams that want this level of protection. Once you start adding both TLS and extra agents to Unified Secure, the numbers tip even further: a 10-user team with TLS and five extra agents would pay $95/mth on Unified Secure, compared to $90/mth for Plus with all of it included.
A company with 60 staff across three offices wants every location protected, the offices connected, and remote access for people working from home. On Business NGFW, each location needs its own gateway license for every active device on site, and remote access and site-to-site connectivity have to come from somewhere else.
On Unified Secure Plus, 60 users land in the 50 to 99 user tier at $8.50/user/mth. With two additional sites at $50 each, the total is $610/mth, or $518.50/mth billed annually. That single subscription covers gateway protection at all three offices, site-to-site mesh between them, remote access, and two endpoint agents for every employee.
There are good reasons some customers will stay put, and that is completely fine.
- You are in the middle of a committed term. There is no need to rush. You can move when your renewal comes around, or talk to us about switching sooner.
- Your setup is simple and stable. If you have a single gateway, very few connected devices, and no need for remote access, Business NGFW will continue to do the job well.
Existing customers and partners can keep buying and renewing Business NGFW for as long as it works for them.
- Choose Unified Secure if your team mainly works from the office and a handful of people need remote access.
- Choose Unified Secure Plus if you want full TLS inspection, have staff working remotely, or need to connect multiple offices.
- Talk to our sales team if you have more than 150 users or 20 sites, or need enterprise features such as CASB, CrowdStrike-integrated device posture checks, or custom SLAs.
- Check your user count. Open the Subscriptions menu in Zenconsole to see the detected user count for your network.
- Estimate your cost. Use the calculator on our pricing page to compare plans based on your users and sites.
- Contact us. Our team will map your current Business NGFW features to your new plan and sort out any remaining term on your existing subscription.
You can also start a free trial of either plan first, with no credit card required, and see the difference on your own network.
