We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and SonicWall TZ based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Users consider Meraki MX devices to be part of a comprehensive next-generation firewall solution with all the advanced security services required for today’s IT marketplace. They say it is also a robust dynamic Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool. Meraki MX offers zero-touch installation, is cloud-based, and can seamlessly integrate with most of today’s popular platforms. Many users feel SonicWall TZ can be bulky and slow and is lacking some key features.
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"The interface is very good."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"Fortinet FortiGate has many valuable features, such as IDS, and intrusion detection. It has security features that are in part with the technologies that are available in the market."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"Site to Site VPN: The device can establish a VPN connection to multiple sites in a mesh environment in seconds, and without complex VPN knowledge."
"Simple to manage."
"Point-to-point VPNs can dynamically follow IP changes with no need for static IPs."
"When you try to create an IP or when you have an alert about when a website is banned, these features are helpful."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki MX is I can manage the solution from anywhere remotely, I can throttle bandwidth, and create all rules. Additionally, it is secure for our customers."
"Very easy to use and navigate."
"Real Auto VPN with load balancer without needing a public IP. It is simple and functional."
"The VPN is quite useful for us, as well as the ATP."
"The features that we have found most valuable in SonicWall TZ are the intrusion and brute force attack prevention."
"The most valuable feature is content filtering and app control."
"The best thing about the product is the very good threat prevention output."
"We like the unified threat management for defense-in-depth. We can terminate our site-to-site and remote access VPNs with it."
"I've found the technical support to be helpful."
"It's a stable solution."
"The general feature is the antivirus policy, followed by the ransomware protection, and these are the features I was looking at."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"In general, the SD-WAN feature needs to be improved. The load sharing and load balancing of the traffic should be improved. I have had some problems with these features in the past."
"The product could incorporate tools like ThousandEyes into the system so we can see things directly."
"From the improvement perspective, we need more monitoring capabilities. We want to have full-based access visibility, such as, what is happening when something is trying to reach and it is denying. We cannot see some parts of it. The integration of active directory with this product is not very fruitful. It has some bugs or lacks in the functionality of active directory integration. We are unable to identify where exactly and whether it has really applied our policy."
"I need more UTM protection security features."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"The solution's pricing should be reduced."
"The problem is that the two licenses do not currently integrate. We have to create separate companies and do an interconnection."
"When we do API integrations with Meraki, they have always been hard as well as tedious to build. The data that we want out of the API integrations has been only recently available. Six months ago, it was hard to get someone to build something correctly or useful with Meraki APIs. Recently, they have made more data available on the API, but it is just a start. They need to do more."
"It could be made more user friendly."
"The market seems to be going to a cloud-supported, new generation of firewall products. I think that's probably going to be important to us, the next time around."
"I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"Getting support can be slow."
"The dashboard needs to be improved."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"The technology in this particular version is very old."
"In an upcoming release, SonicWall could improve by adding cloud management for all devices for free or at a nominal cost. Currently, they have a cloud management platform but is not free. We have the MySonicWall portal for purchasing from them for software updates and renewals."
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and SonicWall NSa, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, SonicWall NSa, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Meraki MX vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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