We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Sophos UTM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiGate and Sophos UTM had a similar user rating regarding ease of deployment, service and support, and ROI. If pricing is a factor, Sophos UTM is a more cost-effective solution based on user reviews. In terms of features, Fortinet FortiGate users felt the interface was complex, and the reporting feature needed improvements. In contrast, Sophos UTM users felt the solution needed to do a better job at covering mobile devices.
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"The interface is very good."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"The security on offer is very good."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The initial setup was easy."
"It makes it a lot easier for us to maintain things. Prior to it, things were more difficult. This means less time on us. We can focus on other things. The recovery is more in man-hours for us than anything else."
"The scalability is good."
"The initial setup has been fine."
"The three most important features for us are web protection, web server protection, and network protection."
"It has helped by identifying threats within the company. If there are computers or servers that are compromised, then we are able to identify them right away in the system."
"What I like about Sophos UTM is that it improves my company's security. The solution is easy to set up, which I like, and it's very stable."
"The most valuable features of Sophos UTM are the ease of use, it is very user-friendly. You can understand what they implement in the new firmware, and it's easy to manage the firewalls."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"Fortinet doesn't provide multiple virtual firewalls which would facilitate end users and customers."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"Needs to improve the certificate management (ex. Let's Encrypt support)."
"VPN needs IKEv2, but it’s in the roadmap. Also, all new, cool features will only come to the new Sophos XG Firewall."
"We'd like to see them offer their services on mobile devices like tablets. I'm not sure if that's an option or not."
"We didn’t find any issues but I know there have been some in the last few years."
"Flexibility in pricing could be improved. It's more rigid in its pricing compared to its competitor: Kaspersky."
"It needs a better user interface. The one they have is not so good."
"There is absolutely no support when using AWS. If you buy the on-premise Sophos solution, you get support."
"Sophos UTM could improve if there was no limitation on users."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and Meraki MX, 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 vs. Sophos UTM report.
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I would have no doubt in recommending Fortinet. I do not know the Sophos UTM product specifically but in general, in companies, we have had unpleasant experiences with Sophos with customers. They typically declare performance values that are overestimated in the field.
We replaced Fortinet with Sophos as our public-facing UTM in 2017 & since then the ride has been extremely rough. I would not recommend Sophos for any mission-critical environment.
Fortinet is easy to manage and it include secure SDWAN as well including many features with easy to configure.
Both firewalls are easy to deploy. But the issue you will encounter when performing troubleshooting. You will not get flexibility in troubleshooting through Cli in Sophos whereas, in FortiGate, we have much more control. Besides if you are deploying a firewall on a large scale where visibility, control, performance as well as the flexibility is important it is better to go with Fortinet rather than Sophos.
I would also like to elaborate on the reporting part in FortiCloud. There is no need to pay any extras. Every box connects to ForticCoud service, and if you want reports to be greater than 7 days (meaning to be kept longer than that in their memory system) then you have to pay. In the meantime, by default Forticloud will send daily emails with reports and once a week you will get 4 to 5 reports, with lots of granular information. These reports are all in PDF with color graphics. In reality, I would be happy to send you some of the reports as in words typed herein would be more than a book. The FortiGate appliance also comes with 10 endpoint security (Forticlient) licences. So you can put this endpoint protection software to servers or clients. It also has a two-factor authentication license included. With these boxes, you can also create VDOM (Virtual Domains, totally separate).
They can afford that as the hardware, as I mentioned before (ASIC) has the power to do that. In 3 years I have had 1 spam message entering my mail server, is that telling you something??? In my first reply, I did tell you that where I work now they purchase Sophos. Well, when the antivirus is set the CPU gets up to 90%. My Fortigate CPU is 0% and peaks during attacks. And I have had quite a few. They were attempting to break into the mail server. More than 2 million attempts in less than 2 hours. Have a look at NSS Labs site. FortiGate is a Rolls Royce, you cannot compare.
Here in Australia, where I work now, the decision was to go with Sophos, ONLY ON PRICE. Yes, great brains. Now they regret that big time. FortiGate is a much more powerful device, especially when it comes to being able to handle the traffic. Most of the models handle throughput via ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) which is nothing more and less than a customer semiconductor. So, this is handled via hardware. It may be initially more difficult to implement. Now, what does "difficult" mean? To me when there is an unknown, difficult comes up till you learn. So if you make a decision on price and because "it is the easiest" to install.
I would not touch Sophos. Simple as that.
Sophos UTM is better by far. but it is more expensive
Done many installations of both Sophos and FortiGate, Sophos is the easiest to install and best in terms of features.
Reporting is free in Sophos while we need an extra subscription for FortiGate. Deep packet inspection, intrusion prevention advanced threat protection, web filtering, app control and email protection are key features of Sophos. Browsing is made safe with phishing protection and new functionality of ransomware protection. Sophos support is brilliant and community website from Sophos answers to all your questions and ease deployment.
I can’t really comment on FortiGate. We’ve been working with Sophos for years and like it’s integration with their endpoint.