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 SD-WAN function is very developed. It has SD-WAN functionality with security features in one device. We can manage from one single console SD-WAN and the security policy."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"The solution has very good threat and content filtering switches."
"It is very flexible to use."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"The features that I've known to be most valuable are both the web security features as well as the web firewall capabilities. As a partner of Sophos firewall, we have some clients and they are using Sophos firewall UTM and we are using it as well."
"The packet filtering's great. You get out what you put into it. It works great as long as you know your security and configure everything adequately. If you just pop one in and it's not configured, then it's basically wide open. It kind of depends on the admin skill, but it's an excellent product."
"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."
"The cost of the solution is very reasonable."
"Sophos is a unified solution. We have anti-virus protection, firewall rules, knotting, and DACC all in one box."
"The isolation of infected machines is a big feature. Also, the ability to detect external sources that change files on a file server is really big."
"The implementation with the AWS environment was good."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"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."
"Initially, there were issues with the wireless network as wireless access points were disappearing from the dashboard after some time."
"There can be a delay when it comes to reaching out to technical support."
"I would like them to move from the Classic Load Balancer to the Network Load Balancer. This would make it easier to do certain things with Amazon. They are able to do some enhancements with Network Load Balancer that they are unable to do with Classic Load Balancer."
"I am going to flat out say technical support is terrible. Being a Platinum level customer, I am not happy with the support."
"They could use more SSL VPN support."
"The lack of import/export functions for network and service options drives me mad."
"Anti-phishing functionality should be improved."
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.