We performed a comparison between Sonicwall TZ and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Sophos XG’s single pane of glass makes it easy to manage the entire solution and it can be done anywhere. Users find it very light, stable, and it provides excellent real-time control. Users say SonicWall TZ struggles a bit with load balancing and data filtering, making it a slightly less desirable solution.
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"Its user interface and simplicity are the most favorite parts for our clients. They find it stable and easy to use. Its performance is also good."
"The performance has been very good. Overall, the solution is quite stable."
"The features that we have found most valuable in SonicWall TZ are the intrusion and brute force attack prevention."
"It does exactly what it says on the tin. It is good for protecting the business from being compromised. Its port protection is very good."
"The scalability of SonicWall TZ is good and easy to add users."
"I find the security we are able to do with the policies to be valuable. The monitoring is valuable as well."
"Content filtering and application rules are the most valuable features. It is also easy to configure."
"Access restriction and IP whitelisting are the most valuable features."
"Compared to other firewalls that I had looked at, I thought Sophos was the better solution. It just seems to be easier to manage versus Cisco, Fortinet, or one of the other options I was looking at."
"it's user-friendly, not complex."
"It's a good security tool and it aligns with the rest of our security stack."
"Valuable features include: the ease of setting up the VPN connection; the fact they have the cloud management option, so I can manage the firewall on a cloud platform from anywhere I am; the user interface is very user-friendly, so it's very easy for the administrator to make any policy changes."
"One of the most valuable features is the VPN."
"The updates are helpful and add to the solution in a positive way."
"I like the fact that it can self remove malware and do updates on the cloud via Sophos Central."
"What I like about his program, is that it is easy to use and easy to manage."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"The reports are very basic."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"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."
"An additional feature that I would like to see is reporting that includes metrics to give me more information about the number of viruses that it has actually detected and interrupted."
"The solution's antivirus checking could be improved so that we can have a deeper inspection of the packets."
"The user support could be improved because you have to go outside to get that kind of support."
"Full monitoring obviously needs to be improved. We need full monitoring covered under the security licensing."
"The solution should provide some additional ports."
"I would like the solution to build in more redundancy. I"
"The quality of tech support can vary."
"Sophos XG could improve the policies, they are a bit confusing when creating them. There are many options that make it confusing and it could be simplified."
"The main problem with Sophos XG today is that it doesn't have a feature where you actually know the quality of an international link, which would allow us to we know if the link is operational or not. We need more information. It's losing packets on the network. It's high latency. So, we need more information to know if the link is really bad or really good, and today, we will only know if it's working and this just isn't enough."
"The reports could improve, they do not seem complete and more information could be added."
"I would like to next release to be able to support on-premise deployment. The construction of the rules within the firewall could also use some improvement."
"I would want the level of integration to have another device on your network that is also reliable."
"Sophos XG could improve by being more stable and for it to be able to be used for large enterprises."
"I would like to have more artificial intelligence in the web monitoring service that comes with it. It should alert us when particular events happen. It has already got some of that. I know that it is more of a service, and Sophos is already looking at it. It is called SIEM."
"It is performing well. However, the only challenges that we are facing are the effectiveness with blocking the proxy and tuneling applications, aside from proxy and similar applications. So the application filter on the product is not really performing 100%. Every now and then there are some updates that are happening on such applications, and it takes time until it gets the appropriate updates and becomes capable of capturing such applications and blocking them. A new feature I would really like to see would be some sort of an enhanced application filter with greater efficiency when it comes to the applications that can bypass firewall policies. These applications are really a nightmare. Once they are on the network and not detected, or the appliance is not really successful in capturing them and unblocking them, the bandwidth gets wasted all the time."
SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. 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 Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". SonicWall TZ is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa, WatchGuard Firebox and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, Meraki MX and Sophos UTM. See our SonicWall TZ vs. Sophos XG report.
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