We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"The ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."
"This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI."
"The features that prevent internet connections, the filtering are the most valuable because we did not have any internet protection before."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"It can expand easily."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"I like the remote access and URL filtering features that are available on global products."
"The most valuable feature is advanced URL filtering. Its prevention capabilities and DNS security are also valuable. It pinpoints any suspicious activities and also prevents the users from doing certain things."
"The first time I came across these firewalls, what surprised me the most was their web user interface. It is complete and gives you a lot of information. You can do 80% of the things related to your network and firewall through the web UI. In some of the other devices, the UI is not as complete. App-ID is also very valuable in customer networks. When you're seeing a lot of traffic in your network, you can see in your web UI which users have the applications that are consuming the most bandwidth. You have a broad context, which is very good."
"The performance of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is the most valuable feature."
"Application control, IPS, and sandboxing towards the cloud are the most valuable features. It is a very user-friendly product with a very easy-to-use interface."
"With App-ID, we can identify exact traffic. Even if someone tries to fool the firewall with a different port number, or with the correct port number, Palo Alto is able to identify what kind of traffic it is."
"I like all the threat alerts and WildFire. I also like scanning because everything that comes into our network via customers is scanned. We're an electric company, so every one of the bills is scanned and emailed in and out of our network."
"We utilize advanced threat prevention features like web filtering and SSL decryption, which haven't caused any issues."
"This product offers great protection using the default settings."
"The main reason we went with it was the security protocols. They were more robust on this device."
"The client is easy to use and stable"
"It's very easy to use, especially compared to similar products. A lot more users use the WatchGuard appliance now than use the SonicWall appliance because of the ease of usability."
"The most valuables feature of WatchGuard Firebox are the VPNs, and web filtering where we can stop users from going to malicious sites."
"The most valuable features of this solution are live logging, rule setup and maintenance, and VPN creation."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the FireWall features. The management side of WatchGuard is quite easy because it supports two ways to manage it - by the web and the other one they call WatchGuard systems manager. I used to be familiar with WSM only, but they improved their GUI in the web browser and now it is much easier to do it within the web browser."
"It's hard to pick one feature over another. But if I had to pick one, the UTM would be the most valuable because of the notification. I get notified via email if there is any type of threat detection or alert, telling me something is wrong."
"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."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"Backup can be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"The solution doesn't support routing in virtual firewall creation, and we want that to be enabled."
"The scalability of the firewalls could be improved."
"I would like integration with Evident.io and RedLock."
"The only downside of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, in my opinion, is the relatively higher price compared to Cisco FortiGate. This is especially noticeable when deploying basic configurations and considering the cost of licenses."
"PA-220 Next-Generation Firewall would be perfect if it has spam filtering."
"I think they need to have a proper hardware version for a smaller enterprise. We had to go to a very high-end version which is very expensive. If we chose the lower-end version, it would not meet our goals. A middle-end is missing in its portfolio."
"We are not happy with Palo Alto at all. It would be better if they provided more support for the firewall. We have a few pending issues with the configuration for each application. We cannot deploy them yet due to some support-related problems in the firewall. We have deployed a few policies for DNS spoofing and DNS attacks, but we could only block a few IP addresses through the policy. That's DNS security, and we have configured a few policies for DNS spoofing and more. URL categorization and URL filtering are not yet adequately maintained. For example, if you created a few rules in the rule-based configuration and made some rules downstairs, you will lose some of them if you give access upstairs. It's not giving us a proper solution for which route it is using. We need to apply the application-based policies and URL filtering-based policies. It creates more issues because we are not getting good support from the team."
"The tool's central management system is complicated, making it challenging to manage multiple devices centrally. Individually, the firewalls are easy to use and manage. I'd like to see better central management features in the next release. They've introduced some, but I haven't tried them yet, so I can't say how effective they are. However, having a single management interface would be a big improvement."
"The level of support from WatchGuard is not as good."
"In terms of the reporting and management features — and this isn't necessarily a WatchGuard issue, this seems to be more of an industry-wide issue — you get reports, but a lot of times you don't know what you're looking at. You're so overwhelmed with the data. You're getting a lot of stuff that doesn't matter, so it takes time to parse through it, to actually get what you want to know."
"Its documentation could be improved. Sometimes, you need to search a bit longer to find what you are looking for."
"It's very hard to get information from their website, for exactly what I need to do. Sometimes I end up having to open a lot of support tickets... It's a navigational issue which makes it hard to find what I'm looking for and it's just so broad."
"The reporting is a little on the weak side. I would like to see a better reporting set and easier drill-down options."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer... The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work."
"The software in it could be a bit more friendly for an amateur user. I look at it and don't understand what half the stuff is. Looking at the interface, it is all mumbo-jumbo to me. It's not a simple interface. You have to be an IT guy to understand it. It is not for your average person to use, then walk away from it. It is much more entailed."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense and SonicWall TZ. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.