Good questions.
Clear answers.

Windows is designed for Windows Server and IIS environments, combining a local reverse-proxy WAF with host-level protections for supported services. Linux is a self-managed, multi-tenant gateway appliance intended for physical servers, virtual machines and cloud deployments. Linux is licensed by CPU cores.

The product direction is self-managed deployment, so the enforcement layer can run on customer-controlled infrastructure. Exact external dependencies, update services and optional threat-intelligence connectivity should be documented for each release.

The Linux appliance is designed for multi-tenant gateway deployments. On Windows, one licence covers every IIS website on the licensed server, and new sites are picked up automatically.

The Linux appliance is intended for supported physical, virtual and cloud environments. Exact operating-system, instance-family, networking and deployment requirements should be checked against the current technical documentation before installation.

Windows bot protection is included in Premium and Enterprise. Linux bot protection is included in Premium and Enterprise.

API security is included in Windows Enterprise and Linux Enterprise. The capability set includes API specification checks, JWT validation, CORS policy checks and GraphQL query/resource limits.

No. CORS is a browser-enforced cross-origin policy and is not an authentication or authorization mechanism. JWT validation can verify token properties according to configured rules, but application authorization still needs to ensure that each user is permitted to access the requested resource.

No generic gateway can guarantee that. Some issues—such as broken object-level authorization—require application-specific identity, object ownership and permission context. PortWall's API checks should be described in terms of the validations they actually perform.

Herd immunity is the shared threat-intelligence concept: when a participating instance confirms a malicious indicator, other participating deployments can receive that indicator and apply their configured policy. Only public attacker addresses are shared, never your visitors, sites or traffic, and your allowlist always wins. On Windows, herd immunity and premium threat intelligence are included in Premium and Enterprise. On the Linux appliance they are included in every edition.

New sites start in monitor mode: PortWall records what it would block so you can tune before switching a site to blocking. A staged rollout is recommended for production applications to identify false positives and legitimate edge cases.

Windows uses per-server licensing. Prices are Standard at $49/server/month, Premium at $99/server/month, and Enterprise from $199/server/month. Paying annually gets 12 months for the price of 10: $490, $990 and from $1,990 per server per year.

Linux uses a CPU-core-based license. Premium is $499/month for 2 cores, $799 for 4 cores, $1,299 for 8 cores, $1,999 for 16 cores and $2,999 for 32 cores. Paying annually gets 12 months for the price of 10, from $4,990 a year for 2 cores. Each licence covers the cores shown; more cores need a larger licence. Linux Enterprise adds API security; contact sales for Enterprise pricing.

No. Core count defines the licensed CPU allocation, not a universal throughput guarantee. Actual performance depends on CPU generation, clock speed, TLS load, request sizes, rules, enabled inspection modules and network constraints. Benchmark guidance should be used to size a deployment.

The licence and your infrastructure are separate costs unless a written offer states otherwise. Customers should budget for their cloud compute, storage, networking, bandwidth and other provider charges.

Yes. Prices are in USD, excluding applicable taxes, billed monthly or annually (annual is 12 months for the price of 10). Enterprise pricing and volume discounts are quoted by sales.