We performed a comparison between SonicWall NSa and SonicWall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: SonicWall TZ has an edge in this comparison. Unlike SonicWall NSa, its reviewers mention seeing an ROI.
"Offers good security and filtering."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"For me, the most valuable feature of SonicWall NSa is the UTM."
"The most valuable features are that it is reasonably-priced and works well."
"One of the main features is the built-in storage capacity."
"SD-WAN is a good feature."
"It's very flexible and meets our customer's needs."
"SonicWall NSa has a user-friendly firmware"
"The antivirus and items of that nature were quite helpful to have."
"The solution can scale."
"It lets me monitor in live time if someone is 'hogging' bandwidth."
"SonicWall TZ think it's a good, solid, and stable product."
"It protects against intrusion while allowing needed access."
"It does what it says it is going to do."
"Access restriction and IP whitelisting are the most valuable features."
"We are very much happy with the support."
"Content filtering and application rules are the most valuable features. It is also easy to configure."
"SonicWall TZ is a very cost-effective solution that provides good security."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"We'd like more management across other integrations."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"The features I would like to see improve are the dashboard and the UI."
"Port forwarding could use streamlining."
"SonicWall NSa's reporting could be improved."
"In terms of improvement, features like App Control do not work properly"
"There are a few areas that need improvement including the VPN, user management, and reporting."
"The thing main thing is that there's no user admin and in other firewalls, we can enable the scalable features, but SonicWall doesn't have that feature."
"You can do zero-trust networking with them, but it's not easy."
"They should consider upgrading the capabilities within the GUI."
"I would like the solution to build in more redundancy. I"
"The solution's antivirus checking could be improved so that we can have a deeper inspection of the packets."
"It would be good if Analyzer would be part of the stock license, so even if a layperson is getting the device, he or she doesn't forgets about ordering the Analyzer because it's already there."
"In terms of what needs to be improved, I would say better load balancing and data filtering."
"The solution's cost needs improvement."
"We have experienced some issues with SonicWall TZ and they are lacking some advanced features other vendors have."
"Although the pricing is good, it could always be lower. If we get to pay less, we're happier."
"I currently have two of the issues from SonicWall. One issue is that the IP is not the public IP. Sometimes it moves to an alternate source and I have to refresh the new IP then we can go on."
SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 77 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". SonicWall NSa is most compared with Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, WatchGuard Firebox and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our SonicWall NSa vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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Basically, the main difference is that the TZ series is intended for a Branch office since it has fewer ports and the speed is around 1 GB.
The NSA series has more processor power and more port where you can create subnets and zones (like DMZ). Also, it has ports with 10 Gb and a processor to support the demand.
I have read that an approximate number of users in the highest TZ series (TZ 670) is around 150 to 200 but that is just an estimate.
Hope this helps. You can get more details in SonicWall datasheets where you will find the speed, throughput and more technical specifications to select the one that fits your requirements.
In simple words,
TZ is for small businesses (less than 100, maximum 150 users).
TZ has fewer ports.
NSA is for medium and large enterprises: > 150 Users,
NSA has many ports to support large networks