We performed a comparison between Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: WatchGuard Firebox comes out on top in this comparison. It is easy to use, performs well, and has robust security protocols. In addition, its support is better than that of Sophos XG.
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"It's very easy to configure."
"The product has a console that is based in the cloud for all their products. In this console, they have email security, firewall security, endpoint security, et cetera. All of the products on offer in the console are very useful for us."
"Because of the pandemic, the VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The firewall feature of Sophos XG has been the most effective for threat prevention."
"The security of Sophos XG is very good."
"I recommend the solution due to its ease of use and pricing."
"The product has all the latest features."
"The most significant aspect is the protection it offers."
"We are able to trace any user and pinpoint any vulnerability or any malicious software. We are able to synchronize between the local and active directories so we can catch users easily through their login names and IDs."
"All of the features have been valuable. There's nothing on my M270 that I'm not using. If you have remote access, you can see how many users are coming from the outside world to be connected to the systems, through the virus systems that we have behind the firewall, in order to gain access to their files and do their work. We can also see how long they stay online and whether these connections are closed forcefully or for any other reasons, such as a glitch or some kind of misbehavior, to see if internet traffic is optimized and if that particular traffic is under company policies, concerning which websites were visited."
"The most valuable are the VPN and proxy features."
"The most valuable features of this solution are live logging, rule setup and maintenance, and VPN creation."
"The solution has a useful traffic monitor."
"One of the most valuable features is the Geolocation. Because we aren't a multinational corporation, it allows me to look at things which might be suspicious to make sure that they are legitimate transactions rather than people sniffing around the network."
"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."
"Regarding the reporting, I was in the Dimension server earlier today. It's very powerful. I like it. And the management features are easy to use. I like the fact that I can open up the System Manager client or I can just do it through the web if I'm making a quick change."
"The client is easy to use and stable"
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"Its customer service could be better."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"I would like some automated custom reporting."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"Its user interface is a little bit slow."
"The user interface could be improved and more bandwidth management would be helpful."
"Support for this product is something that is really important, and it needs to improve."
"I would like to have a more efficient login process."
"Data traffic analysis could be better. I think Fortinet products like FortiAnalyzer are very effective in analyzing data traffic. I think it's better than Sophos. It could also be more stable."
"Everything is working as expected at this moment, but the anti-spam solution in Sophos XG needs to be improved. It needs more granular features and more stability. The anti-spam solution currently doesn't have many features, and we would like to have more features. At this moment, there is no expression filter for anti-spam. We need something to be able to filter subjects or attachments in emails based on the keyword. Sometimes, there is an issue with anti-spam, and Sophos XG suddenly stops processing incoming or outgoing emails. The only solution for this issue is to restart the appliance. Their support should be improved. It takes a long time to escalate a support case from level one to level two."
"Inability to investigate incidents, there is no tracking."
"Integration with Active Directory is not reliable."
"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."
"Setup of this solution is complex, it's not plug and play."
"Due to their lack of investment in marketing, channel development, and certifications, WatchGuard faces challenges in gaining visibility and market share, especially in regions like Pakistan."
"I'm not really impressed with the reporting side of it. It may be something I just haven't figured out very well, but it's hard to filter down on reporting of the actual valuable information that you would want. There is a lot of information out there so you have to have some kind of tool capture it and then filter through. So far, I haven't found the reporting side of the WatchGuard to be that user-friendly."
"Last year, I had an issue with one of the Fireboxes going down. It was overheated, because my server room became overheated and this fried it."
"The reporting is a little on the weak side. I would like to see a better reporting set and easier drill-down options."
"The VPN aspect of the WatchGuard Firebox is an area that could potentially benefit from improvement. We encountered difficulties while attempting to integrate Windows 11 laptops into the system, which resulted in unreliable connections. After some research, we discovered that this was primarily due to compatibility issues with Windows 11 and required a patch. However, it was still a challenge as it seemed that even when we tried to keep the laptops on Windows 10, they still exhibited the same issues as Windows 11 machines. Despite WatchGuard attributing the problem to Microsoft, we were eventually able to find a solution and all the machines are now functioning seamlessly."
"The UI and web view aren't nice."
Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Sophos XG is rated 8.2, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Check Point NGFW, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Sophos XG vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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