We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"Whenever we raise a complaint with FortiGate, their response and resolution times are minimal."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"They have a good system operator in the firewalls and it provides many tools that they can use to protect their networks."
"The graphical interface is easy to troubleshoot because it has a drill-down sequence. It is easy to monitor traffic."
"We utilize advanced threat prevention features like web filtering and SSL decryption, which haven't caused any issues."
"The strengths of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are application visibility and application awareness. Their strong point is identifying applications for traffic. So all of the policies that are configured are related to the application and not to a port."
"The most valuable features are the IPS/IDS subscriptions."
"The solution is user-friendly. It's secure and easy to understand your network visibility, control the network, and prevent attacks."
"Palo Alto offers better Layer 7 protection than competing solutions by Cisco and Fortinet. I also like the VPN client more. The interface is simple, so administrators can deploy and configure it much faster than other firewalls"
"The DNS sync code in your filtering is the most valuable feature of the Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls."
"One of my favorite features is the Geolocation service, where you can actually block specific activity or IP addresses registered to certain countries. For example, I don't want any web traffic from Russia or North Korea. I may even lock down certain policies down to 'I only want U.S. IP addresses.' I find that very useful."
"It's very easy to use, especially compared to similar products. A lot more users use the WatchGuard appliance now than use the SonicWall appliance because of the ease of usability."
"It protects me against malicious websites, as well as malicious downloads, as a perimeter anti-virus. I've also seen it blocking a lot of pings and different probes."
"If there is any conflict, the reporting feature will kick out all types of information, which is great."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is its ease of use."
"WatchGuard Firebox is easy to configure and has a nice user interface."
"WatchGuard has a very easy VPN and branch office VPN setup, so we use those pretty extensively."
"I like the High Availability features of the newest ones I'm using because they allow a firewall to fail and still be up and running."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"It does not have key authentication for admin access."
"Technical support could be faster."
"I would like to see better integration with IoT technologies."
"There has been a recent change in the graphical interface. For the monitoring part, they could have a better UI."
"The tool's central management system is complicated, making it challenging to manage multiple devices centrally. Individually, the firewalls are easy to use and manage. I'd like to see better central management features in the next release. They've introduced some, but I haven't tried them yet, so I can't say how effective they are. However, having a single management interface would be a big improvement."
"Need improvement with their logs, especially the command line interface."
"Technical support can be faster at responding."
"Once in a while, they have new features being released that can be buggy. My criticism is more general to all sorts of network or security devices. In general, everybody is releasing less-tested software. Then, it usually ends up that the first few customers who get a new release need to end up troubleshooting it."
"Unfortunately, Palo Alto Networks products aren't cheap, but you have to pay the price for good security technology. I don't know the exact price, but it's about $10,000 to $15,000 without a subscription. Cisco is priced similarly. FortiGate is inexpensive in Poland, so a lot of customers prefer that."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"There is room for improvement in the threat protection, data packet inspection, and performance of the solution. Generally, it's just a lower-end product. It does the job but doesn't do it very well."
"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."
"An area for improvement is that when we use a web administration link, there is no security."
"Reporting is something you've got to set up separately. It's one of those things that you've got to put some time into. One of the options is to set up a local report server, which is what I did. It's not great. It's okay... Some of the stuff is a little complicated to get up and running. Once you do, it becomes very user-friendly and easy to work with, but I find there are some implementation headaches with some of their stuff."
"The scalability of the solution needs improvement."
"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."
"The solution needs to improve its accessibility."
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Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense and SonicWall TZ. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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