We compared SonicWall TZ and WatchGuard Firebox across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Comparison Results: SonicWall TZ is highly praised for its user-friendly interface, robust features, and cost-effectiveness. However, there are areas that need improvement such as reporting, licensing, scalability, and support. On the other hand, WatchGuard Firebox is commended for its comprehensive features, ease of use, and reasonable pricing. However, it also has areas that need improvement including the interface, web blocker feature, reporting, customer support, security, configuration options, scalability, and integration.
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"The features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"I have found the stability of this product to be excellent."
"Good VPN connection."
"The most valuable feature is content filtering and app control."
"Access restriction and IP whitelisting are the most valuable features."
"Ease of management and the VPN integration."
"The general feature is the antivirus policy, followed by the ransomware protection, and these are the features I was looking at."
"The best thing about the product is the very good threat prevention output."
"SonicWall TZ is stable."
"[A] valuable feature would be the branch office. We have five offices throughout the United States, and it coordinates the connections of those offices."
"The most effective and helpful features of WatchGuard Firebox, especially when purchased with the full suite of applications, are its bundled applications and subscriptions for comprehensive protection against various threats."
"Firebox's best feature is the access portal."
"The set up of the VPN is pretty straightforward. Being able to build VPNs on the fly for certain users, if need be, is also valuable."
"WatchGuard has a very easy VPN and branch office VPN setup, so we use those pretty extensively."
"The most valuable feature for small and medium businesses is the support for various protocol proxies."
"It also provides us with layered security. It has onboard virus scanning features that allow it to scan before something gets to the host. It will also stop a person from going to a site that is known to be bad."
"The main features of the solution are the control of the site-to-site network access and the overall features."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"Lacks training for new features."
"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"User interface could be improved."
"Support for SonicWall TZ needs improvement, particularly the time it takes before you're able to speak to a support person, e.g. you have to wait for at least 30 minutes on the phone."
"I would like to see a SonicWall integration with the DLP tool, this would be interesting. Data Loss Prevention integration."
"I would like to see lower antivirus pricing."
"In general, the company needs to think contingently and integrate more security options."
"The reporting analytics could be improved, it is very unstable."
"We encounter issues while generating new reports."
"There are a couple of things I wished that it would do, but I can't think of those off the top of my head."
"This is a great product and offers great protection but they don't hear the customers' needs. They don't make improvements as per the customers' requests."
"I haven’t dug deeply into the reporting features yet or if they are working well. However, I have generated several reports and there was too much unnecessary information, in comparison with the reporting features in the Sophos firewall. Sophos' reporting is more readable and easier to configure."
"There's always room for improvement, especially if the threats are getting more sophisticated and the IT department cannot sufficiently meet this kind of sophistication with their own knowledge and experience. Knowing that this solution can get up to the level of addressing a lot of these threats is something that everybody wishes for. If we look at the dark web and the lawful web, they are two opposites, and if these two good and bad collide in the world of the internet, you want the best possible product—especially if you cannot get to that point of knowledge. I am just an individual and end user, with limited knowledge of usage. That's why I say there's always room for improvement, from their side and also from mine, because by knowing exactly what they can achieve and the knowledge that they can get on an everyday basis, and the portion that is understandable to me, it's an improvement for them as well."
"There should be better integration and a way to configure multiple vendors into the same data center in order to offer more flexibility."
"One other shortcoming is that there is no backup for it. We really haven't figured out how we might solve that problem. We may want to put a duplicate in... With WatchGuard, we just have the one box. If that were to fail, we'd probably be really hurting."
"The UI and web view aren't nice."
"A 12-hour power outage... got our batteries."
SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Meraki MX and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our SonicWall TZ vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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