We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Palo Alto Networks comes out on top in this comparison. It is robust, performs well, and has good support. Sophos XG does, however, do better in the Pricing and Ease of Deployment categories.
"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."
"Good load balancing feature."
"The virtual firewall feature is the most valuable. We have around 1,500 firewalls. We did not buy individual hardware, and the virtual firewalls made sense because we don't have to keep on buying the hardware. FortiGate is easier to use as compared to Checkpoint devices. It is user friendly and has a good UI. You don't need much expertise to work on this firewall. You don't need to worry much about DCLA, commands, and things like that."
"The solution is scalable."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"We have found the SSL decryption within this solution to be great; you can enable this feature and have the ability to see more of what is happening across your network."
"We have not had to replace hardware routers nor purchase additional hardware. So, that has provided a little bit of an ROI."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities."
"Compared to other firewalls from Check Point, Fortinet, and Cisco, for example, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls use the most advanced techniques. They have sandbox integration and others in the orchestrator. Palo Alto's security features are at a higher level than those of the competitors at the moment."
"Prisma Access is the most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls."
"GlobalProtect and App-ID features are very good."
"The application IDs, application controls, URL filtering, visibility, monitoring, and reporting are the most valuable features."
"The stability of the product has been good over the years."
"They really work scalability into the solution at the outset."
"The filtering is very easy to do. You can segment and create profiles for usage very easily."
"The most valuable features are its nice interfaces and configuration. The endpoint is also very good."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos XG is the VBM."
"Sophos XG is very useful, it does many things."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is flexibility."
"Overall the solution works well."
"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 solution could be more evenly structured."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"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."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"The solution could be more cost-effective."
"Maybe they could add some tools and more competing services, like servers, but that would increase the cost of the solution."
"The reporting and visibility are phenomenal, but you don't get that information out of the box. They can email reports regularly, and the functionality is all there. However, a lot of it is based on an older model for email, where customers have in-house email servers. The small and medium-sized business customers I deal with are moving toward Office 365 or some other cloud-based mail and not maintaining their own internal mail servers."
"The pricing could be improved upon."
"There has been a recent change in the graphical interface. For the monitoring part, they could have a better UI."
"From a documentation standpoint, there is room for improvement. Even Palo Alto says that their documentation is terrible."
"The user interface is a bit clumsy and not very user-friendly."
"The pricing could be improved. They need to work on the setup over the firewall, VLAN, and PPPoE."
"Could have a more simplified functionality for users."
"The reports could improve, they do not seem complete and more information could be added."
"Its price should be improved. Its features are pretty okay, but the price is the area where we have to fight more. They should do something about the price structure."
"The management console could be improved and the solution lacks good technical support."
"LAN inbound and outbound traffic requires more control."
"The time taken by Sophos XG's support team to respond to and resolve an issue is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Network security is in need of improvement."
"All of the options should be available when I renew my subscription for the year. As it is now, there are some limitations."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Netgate pfSense and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. Sophos XG report.
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Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat signatures and updates. I also appreciate that I can just import addresses and URL objects from the external server. Palo Alto has a dedicated management interface, which makes it easy to manage the device and handle the initial configuration. It has fantastic throughput and its connection speed is pretty fair, even when dealing with a high traffic load. With Palo Alto I can configure and manage with REST API integration. And Palo Alto provides deep visibility into your network activity via Application and Command Control.
Although Palo Alto has great things going for it, there are a few things I dislike about it. For example, when the CPU is 100%, the GUI can take a very long time to respond. Booting time is also time-consuming, and committing the configuration takes more time than I would like it to.
Like Palo Alto, Sophos XG is quick and easy to configure. It is compact in size, and therefore does not weigh a lot either. Similar to Palo Alto as well, it can handle heavy traffic and has a solid performance. A good thing about Sophos XG is that it supports IPsec connection with multiple vendor firewalls. However, I am not impressed with the CLI which is not so useful, and I don’t like that there is no option to import bulk address objects.
Conclusion:
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Sophos XG are both good products. However, Palo Alto has certain features I really like and that’s why I chose it. For me, Palo Alto’s dynamic address group option is a big advantage because it is a huge time saver instead of having to create address groups manually. Another biggie for me was its DNS Sinkhole feature because it is something I rely on a lot and it is very effective in blocking C2 command control traffic.