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.
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"The most valuable features are security and technical support."
"I like the firewall product, the security server, and the content filter."
"The most valuable feature is content filtering and app control."
"It is very user-friendly, and there is no problem in using its interface."
"We are very much happy with the support."
"Good VPN connection."
"The solution is stable."
"The stability is very nice."
"There are no problems with the technical support. If a problem occurs it gets resolved immediately with our technical support partners."
"The most valuable features of the WatchGuard Firebox are all the security and updated features. You are able to configure the solution from the cloud platform and the application and web interface are very nice."
"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 most valuable feature is the GUI, especially the real-time bandwidth usage report. Also, its integration with WiFi access points is nice."
"The set up was quite straightforward and we handled it in-house. It took a few hours to deploy the product."
"If you just plan to use WatchGuard Firebox in your office and not publicly, then it is okay to purchase it. With WatchGuard Firebox, you can manage your users and permissions while also taking care of the basic setup phase in your office."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use of the interface."
"It's pretty simple to understand when you want to do any diagnostics on your network. If you want to go in and see what packages are having trouble getting through, what's being held, stalled, etc., it's very easy to use in that way."
"The captive portal could be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"The cloud features and integration could be improved."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"The solution must provide more ports."
"There is a point I don't like about SonicWall in the past and now. Most of the destinations we look at when we're detecting some user using too much bandwidth or something like that, SonicWall just gave us destination IP address, instead of the full qualified domain name. I think that's the most important part that is still missing. I think that's the most important for us."
"They should consider working a bit more on their ransomware application."
"The user support could be improved because you have to go outside to get that kind of support."
"The monitoring is a little bit confusing."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"You need to be a certificate holder to set it up and configure it. It's really important because it looks easy, but it is complex. You need to have the knowledge and experience. But this is normal for technical products. It's not a product for regular user. It's for technical people. You need to have skills."
"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 more simplified management of the firewall... It's a complicated system to use."
"Its documentation could be improved. Sometimes, you need to search a bit longer to find what you are looking for."
"An area for improvement is that when we use a web administration link, there is no security."
"There is room for improvement on the education side, regarding what does what, rather than just throwing it at a person and assuming they know everything about it. A lot of times, you have to call WatchGuard support to get the solution that will work, rather than their just having it published so that you can fix the problem on your own."
"Make WatchGuard Firebox capable of integrating with third-party vendors like FireMon, Splunk, Tenable, etc."
"I would like to see the devices made more flexible by adding modules to increase the ports that we can use."
"The next release should have better software and configuration systems that can also be used on Linux."
"It's very hard to get information from their website, for exactly what I need to do. Sometimes I end up having to open a lot of support tickets... It's a navigational issue which makes it hard to find what I'm looking for and it's just so broad."
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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