We performed a comparison between Stormshield Network Security and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"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."
"The CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"I like that it works fine. Stormshield is a very good solution."
"A very robust product."
"The solution has improved my organization because I can see what traffic is happening and I can use it to block and prevent attacks."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"This solution is quick and easy to configure."
"Our organization's main concern is stability, and this is a stable solution."
"Ease of use is the best feature of the product."
"It's an easy, straightforward management platform to use."
"We experienced that WatchGuard is easy to setup regarding VPN compared to other firewalls of other brands."
"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."
"After conducting several tests I found the antivirus is working very well. Additionally, they have a very interesting feature, DNS WatchGuard, which is checking DNS requests for phishing, among other things, and it has caught a lot of unwanted attempts and attacks."
"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."
"The main reason we went with it was the security protocols. They were more robust on this device."
"[A] valuable feature would be the branch office. We have five offices throughout the United States, and it coordinates the connections of those offices."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is its ease of use."
"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."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve if it had a cloud-managed solution."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve to be on par with its competitors, such as Palo Alto and Sophos. They are the market leaders. Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve its capabilities. However, we are happy with Fortinet FortiGate."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"The reports are very basic."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"The filtering configuration could be better. We have some difficulties with the filtering configuration and the filter extension. It's not that easy. It's not that straightforward. In the next release, I would like to see a reporting system. Stormshield doesn't have any tutorials on how to do the configuration and things like that. They just have documentation on the website. If you want to configure, for example, Cisco or Fortinet, you can find tutorials on YouTube. They show you how to configure the features, and so on. In Stormshield, there is nothing on social media or the internet on how to configure different things. The lack of documentation or the lack of material makes it difficult for others to adopt this solution."
"Improvement is needed in terms of the technical support of the manufacturer."
"This is not a next-generation firewall."
"This solution has a big problem with web filtering and it needs to be improved."
"Not all the fields are activated yet and we were informed that it will take at least one month."
"Stormshield Network Security is quite expensive."
"It could be better if it were more user-friendly. It's too complicated for us to use it. The price could be better as well."
"With Stormshield, there are difficulties joining things, and it can be complex depending on the architecture."
"One area for improvement could be making the interface even more user-friendly."
"In terms of the reporting and management features — and this isn't necessarily a WatchGuard issue, this seems to be more of an industry-wide issue — you get reports, but a lot of times you don't know what you're looking at. You're so overwhelmed with the data. You're getting a lot of stuff that doesn't matter, so it takes time to parse through it, to actually get what you want to know."
"Websense is an application that monitors and filters internet traffic. Websense was derived from WatchGuard. But when you go to WatchGuard to actually implement that particular feature, you have to use some type of additional feature and you have to pay for it, unfortunately. I think it should be free or free in the WatchGuard box itself, as an option. It would be nice if they didn't charge us for that."
"The usability could be better, but it is definitely manageable. If we have to go to a backup internet connection, that could be a little bit easier."
"The drawbacks are just sometimes not having the technical information that we need in order to easily make connections with all of our Internet-based clients."
"The UI is not as user-friendly as the model that I had used before, which was from Check Point. The design of the Firebox UI is restricted and needs an experienced network guy to understand the format and settings."
"What could use some significant improvement in WatchGuard Firebox would be its interface and policy management. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of WatchGuard Firebox is the ability to modify an existing policy instead of having to recreate a policy when changes are necessary. At the moment, there's no possibility to modify the policy. You have to delete the policy and recreate it."
"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."
Stormshield Network Security is ranked 12th in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 16 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 4th in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 79 reviews. Stormshield Network Security is rated 7.8, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Stormshield Network Security writes "Handles monitoring, collection, analysis, and reporting of data in our HQ and branches". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Stormshield Network Security is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Stormshield Network Security vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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