We performed a comparison between Barracuda CloudGen Firewall and Meraki MX 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."The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"There are lots of features and most of them are deployed for internet security. Users are protected if they accidentally go to some malicious sites."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"It's an easy solution to set up."
"TINA (Transport Independent Network Architecture) VPN features - Allows automatic VPN configuration with little or no input from the tech. Drag and drop lines between Barracuda units and the VPN is built automatically."
"Its ability to block incoming attacks is valuable. Its logging, traffic monitoring, and VPN capabilities are also valuable."
"Single sign-on is also good. If you are accessing your corporate firewall from your home, during that time there is integration with AD. You can use your AD password to access your SSL VPN. It's not like if you buy an additional SSL VPN... You can directly integrate with your AD. If you change your password on the AD side, your client-to-VPN password also gets changed. You can integrate all your passwords from a single console. It's not like admin has to change your password, it's a single sign-on."
"The most valuable feature for us is the ability to offer firewall support to our clients."
"Add-on features such as Virus Scanning, ATP, and web filtering add another level of protection and block malware before it gets to the end user."
"Live monitoring of what is happening inside and on the interfaces, either ingress or egress."
"It provides a lot of functionality adhering to the current trends."
"I wanted to go to a software-defined WAN and in Barracuda they have a specific protocol called TINA (Transport Independent Network Architecture). You can create a master policy over the internet and it allows you to do Quality of Services on top of it. That is really helpful for me."
"It is very easy to use and manage. It is also very easy to scale."
"It has the most advanced security features, for example, layer 3 and layer 7 firewall capabilities and the end team and IPS protection. It also has IPS, and it has very good functioning of cloning services. You don't actually have to touch the device. If you have multiple companies in different countries, you don't really require this device to be touched. You can get it delivered directly to any office of a country, and then you can simply put your configuration over the cloud. It's very simplified and easy to manage. It gives a very good granular visibility about your network. Earlier, a lot of things were lacking in the network. We were unable to identify where the problem was, but after implementing Meraki MX, we are able to dig down and identify where is the problem. We can easily and quickly identify the sources and the root causes of the issues."
"When you try to create an IP or when you have an alert about when a website is banned, these features are helpful."
"Deployment takes no more than one working day."
"Very easy to use and navigate."
"The initial setup for me was straightforward."
"I use Meraki in my POCs and with my customers as well."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"Fortinet could improve the windows opener or the virtual IP solutions for opening windows. The virtual IP settings need improvement as firewalls are trending in new development directions."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"There is room for improvement in performance and the support language. The support they're providing right now is from a different country, and in our country, there are people—network admins and IT heads—who don't speak English properly. So Barracuda needs to provide support agents who speak additional languages, such as Bangla."
"If you have another brand of VPN where you have to put an SSL VPN between two devices, Barracuda doesn't support that at a certain point. You can't actually build the VPN between Barracuda and a different device of a different brand."
"Its interface could be better."
"Barracuda CloudGen Firewall should work a little bit more with the logs so that, in our company, we can generate a little bit more reports and get a bit more statistics, which would be fine for us."
"A rule for email announcements, when configured hits occur, would be a great improvement for a more efficient experience."
"It would be better if they had a trace and trap feature. It's hard for me to say anything bad about Barracuda. This is because we had a firewall go down in the town of Kirkland Lake, and it was a blown-out port, and they had an instant replacement."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly dashboard and an easier interface."
"The price is a bit higher than other vendors."
"It would be nice to get detailed logging information without third-party software."
"The only stability issue is in Content Filtering. Sometimes we need to report these types of issues to Cisco support."
"You cannot use switching behaviors as you see on the Meraki switch."
"An area for improvement in Meraki MX is that it needs some provision, as supplying the unit through Cisco can be tedious at times, but as far as the product itself and its offerings, Meraki MX is five-star all the way."
"You can only have one tunnel in the whole infrastructure — one tunnel with one device."
"Meraki MX firewalls are great for small to medium-sized businesses, but other solutions are better for enterprise-sized companies."
"They need to improve the link between Meraki and Active Directory."
"We do not have account managers in our region for the solution. Some governments don't use the product since it is attached to the internet."
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is ranked 25th in Firewalls with 35 reviews while Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews. Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is rated 8.2, while Meraki MX is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall writes "Feature-rich, robust, and easy to set up". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". Barracuda CloudGen Firewall is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Azure Firewall and Sophos UTM, whereas Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Netgate pfSense. See our Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Meraki MX report.
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