We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and Sophos UTM 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 is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."
"Initial setup was quite straightforward, as we can simply head to the required sections to apply the planned network."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are the servers, analyzer, and track protection."
"It gives all the features of a full-fledged firewall with great performance."
"One top feature is the ability to use the appliance as a WLAN controller for up to 10 access points with the new 5.6 firmware."
"We work in the archiving domain where a secure environment is very important. We have some special requirements regarding the security of infrastructure."
"It’s easy to integrate the solution with our network infrastructure."
"It is very versatile."
"The standard features, including the filtering, are quite good. All the basic features are pretty useful for us."
"The solution is easy to handle and configure."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the simple-to-use interface."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is reporting, it is flexible. I can monitor the end user's devices, even when they are not on my network. It has good drill-down capabilities."
"Configuration could not be made any easier."
"Technical support is very responsive."
"It has allowed us to design a bespoke cloud space for our clients, while still having an excellent level of protection."
"Sophos integrates seamlessly, and we don't even feel it is running in the background."
"I like the web filtering options."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"The solution can improve by adding separate interfaces for proxy and flow-based usage."
"Now they do have the ability to pop up a command line, which is nice, however, the fact that you can't do everything within the GUI is probably a problem."
"The licensing needs to be improved. We need longer licensing periods, especially for POCs and trials. It should be for six months. Right now, it's too short of a timeframe."
"I don't have any specific improvements to suggest, but perhaps the pricing could be enhanced. Regarding updates, more frequent updates would be appreciated. FortiGate-VM is currently focused on providing very good firmware updates, automation, and top-notch features. It stands as a great product for now. Based on our needs and the vulnerabilities we've encountered due to various downloads, I suggest integrating with Kaspersky Gateway. This integration would involve scanning and inspecting both official emails and spam emails. Our customer has successfully worked with Kaspersky Gateway, and overall, the integration has been effective."
"The product needs to focus on cloud-nativeness and pricing."
"FortiGate should be more customer friendly and budgeted better."
"To improve FortiGate-VM, Fortinet needs to harden it more. For example, if you are using Hyper-V, then you need guidelines for hardening FortiGate-VM that are specific to the Hyper-V environment. If it's VMware, there should be at least a guideline on how to harden the firewall."
"In the next release, we would like to see full integration with VMware NSX virtualized networks."
"Sophos UTM could be simplified, and they can improve on the many other features, like SD-WAN and load balancing. Sophos UTM is missing a few features that their competitors have. For example, if you have multiple branches you would like to connect, the load balancing features aren't available on multilink. If we create a VPM for multiple LAN links, we cannot load balance the traffic."
"Sophos UTM sometimes falls short in high-availability environments. They used to launch firmware that didn't work very well in a high-availability environment."
"We would like to have unique viewable IDs for rules and in the packet filter logfile, for easier debugging of old log files."
"Reporting: We have had to work manually in many of our reports."
"The integration capabilities could be better."
"There needs to be some improvement in the IPsec VPN. There is implementation only support. I have version one. I'd be most interested in having IP version two from the protocol."
"The solution needs better integration with captive portals and XGs."
"Flexibility in pricing could be improved. It's more rigid in its pricing compared to its competitor: Kaspersky."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Sophos XG, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Sophos UTM report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.