We performed a comparison between OPNsense and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Sophos XG’s single pane of glass makes it easy for users to manage the entire solution from anywhere. The solution is very light, stable, and provides excellent real-time control. Users feel OPNsense is not a good product for medium to large businesses, as it has some very limited features and needs better reporting and documentation.
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"The web tutor and automatic rules by schedule are good features."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me."
"I have found the solution has some great features overall, such as guest access capabilities, dashboards, and ease of use. There is plenty of documentation and support and it has the plugins that I needed."
"The solution is good for a basic firewall for a small business or for home use."
"OPNsense is easy to use and open source."
"The most valuable features are reporting, the Sensei plugin, and firewall capabilities."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"What I like best about OPNsense is that, as a firewall, it's pretty good. I'm quite impressed with it. I had an excellent experience with OPNsense, which helped me achieve the targets I wanted."
"The solution has high availability."
"The SL VPNs are the most valuable feature. I have a lot of systems out of the head office that need to connect to the local networks, and they all connect wirelessly via the Sophos VPN client."
"The two most valuable feature of Sophos XG is, one the option to filter according to different applications and two, the integration with the Active Directory."
"It's a product that is in continuous improvement and is following what the customer is asking for. They are taking inputs and designing new releases specifically according to the client and their needs."
"The most valuable feature is the Intercept X. It is the advanced features that are used for malware detection, and antivirus."
"All of the features are amazing, especially Sandstorm, which prevents bad traffic or downloaded files from reaching our customers' and partners' networks."
"Good security and a good interface."
"The most valuable feature is the VPN aspect."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that the license offers everything."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"We'd like more management across other integrations."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."
"Fortinet doesn't provide multiple virtual firewalls which would facilitate end users and customers."
"The solution is very expensive."
"You will need additional training before you can actually start to use it."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"The only thing that I would like to see improved is the Insight or the NetFlow analysis part. It would be good to have the possibility to dig down on the Insight platform. Right now, we can easily do only a few analyses. If this page becomes more powerful, it surely will be a well-adopted platform."
"The support for OPNsense is good because we have documents available on the internet. The support could improve a little."
"On the customer-side, because I'm a small business, I need a cheaper or free solution option."
"Given that OPNsense plays a pivotal role as a firewall, safeguarding against various threats, having a reliable backup ensures uninterrupted protection even if unforeseen events impact the primary virtual machine."
"The reporting part could be better."
"I would like better documentation concerning the provided packages and their integration."
"Their support is fairly good, and they come back to me. I've had an issue once or twice where I couldn't understand what the support person was saying because those calls were probably routed to India. They were a bit difficult to understand, but it is generally not an issue."
"There are issues with electricity with this solution."
"It's easy to use, but it's hard to configure exact settings. They need to make it easier to access advanced features."
"It could offer a DNS Filter for blocking botnet networks."
"The user interface could be better."
"I would like to see the performance improved."
"Sophos XG could improve the connectivity with Microsoft 365 or Azure Active Directory(AD). It doesn't work directly as other solutions do, such as Fortinet FortiGate. The client needs a separate AD server which is a problem."
"The solution should have the ability to be up to date with the most recent threats."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM, IPFire and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Sophos UTM. See our OPNsense vs. Sophos XG report.
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