We performed a comparison between Sophos XGS 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."Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"It can expand easily."
"The most valuable feature is the policy routing and application control."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"The solution is easy to use and configure, once you know how to apply the policies."
"Setup was straightforward. One person is enough for deployment."
"The solution is stable."
"Spam filtering is what I love most about XGS."
"The solution is scalable."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Web filtering and intrusion detection are essential features. As system integrators, we also like the dashboard because it's easier to configure all the features."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos XGS is the application control."
"The most valuables feature of WatchGuard Firebox are the VPNs, and web filtering where we can stop users from going to malicious sites."
"The Dimension control, the one-spot reporting and control, has been nice. It's been easy to go in and make sure people are doing what they're supposed to be doing and that only the right stuff is getting in."
"I like intrusion detection the most."
"WatchGuard has a very easy VPN and branch office VPN setup, so we use those pretty extensively."
"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."
"Firebox's best feature is the access portal."
"From my experience with their customer service team, I would say that they seem quite knowledgeable and fairly quick to respond."
"Policy VPN, site-to-site VPN, traffic monitoring, anti-spam filters, and all other advanced features are valuable."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"You do need some IT knowledge in order to effectively work with the solution."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"The SD-WAN feature isn't very good. It's there, but it doesn't work properly."
"The solution could have a bit more functionality."
"We'd like an interface that can monitor everything."
"Sophos XGS could improve the automation system. It could be better if there was some level of automation, attacks automation, meaning if this happens, then it automatically executes a particular process."
"There are issues with some designs being able to work on high availability."
"I would like to see a history of the monthly bandwidth utilization, the bandwidth consumption for a period of time."
"Sophos XGS could improve the price."
"I recommend Sophos increase the user capacity of the firewall by 1.5 times. For example, say the firewall can accommodate 1,000 users now, then it should handle a load of 1,500 users."
"I would like to see more simplified management of the firewall... It's a complicated system to use."
"I would like to see the devices made more flexible by adding modules to increase the ports that we can use."
"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 solution needs to improve its accessibility."
"The user interface for WatchGuard Firebox has room for improvement. Right now, it's a bit complex to work with and could be easier."
"I believe there is a need for additional measures to connect mobile devices securely to the Firebox router."
"The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer... The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work."
"The data loss protection works well, but it could be easier to configure. The complexity of data loss protection makes it a more difficult feature to fully leverage. Better integration with third-party, two-factor authentication would be advantageous."
Sophos XGS is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 62 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Sophos XGS is rated 7.8, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Sophos XGS writes "Easy to use, simple to learn, and offers great reporting". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, Netgate pfSense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Meraki MX, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Sophos UTM. See our Sophos XGS vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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