We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and SonicWall NSa 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."It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"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."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"The solution is scalable."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"GitDM, like FortiGate VM, provides similar features to FortiGate appliances or cloud solutions. However, FortiGate VM is more suitable for heavy traffic and inspection compared to GitDM. Unfortunately, FortiGate VM lacks a dedicated SPU for inspection, and all features rely on CPU and RAM."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are its flexibility and scalability. This solution is available as a license, which allows us to activate it based on the specific needs of the customer. This gives us and the customer a great deal of versatility and customization options."
"The VM it's very quick for deployment. If we need to have a POC for a customer, if we don't have any hardware physically at our premises, at our store, in our office, we can download the VM from Fortinet and install all the VM to their environment in order to run it. If we have a customer that says "let's start tomorrow" we are able to do that in a way that's not possible with a hardware version."
"The performance overall is very good."
"The most valuable features are the web proxy for protection and web gateway for deployment."
"The standard features, including the filtering, are quite good. All the basic features are pretty useful for us."
"The most valuable features are network security, VLAN, network protection, and encryption are very valuable to us."
"We work in the archiving domain where a secure environment is very important. We have some special requirements regarding the security of infrastructure."
"The product is working okay. The product is working feature-wise."
"We like the features, but the main thing is from a commercial and cost perspective it is very good."
"It's very simple to use and the support is great."
"Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case."
"Sometimes I have some queries, and the SonicWall support team resolves my queries."
"SonicWall NSa's most valuable features are the ease of configuration and the GUI."
"It has good reporting, the reporting is marvelous."
"The most valuable features are flexibility, ease of setup, and it's a good product cost-wise."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"The reports are very basic."
"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"We have had some stability issues."
"I have had a data issue with physical devices that could improve."
"I have worked on some of the largest and smallest solutions that Fortinet sells and they all scale really well."
"The product has issues with integration. I would like to see better integration in future releases of the product."
"Areas for improvement would be application control and web filtering."
"The key activation is very complicated at times."
"The solution should provide more useful GUI features."
"The product does not have a good graphical interface."
"The product has a lot of bugs, actually. We are facing some issues with this product. The DPI SSL feature which is there, it is not working properly."
"The reporting and monitoring are a bit complex and should be easier in SonicWall NSa because other firewalls I have experienced have been more simple, such as Palo Alto. We are able to receive a clear view of our network. As a general user with little experience, it would be difficult for them to handle."
"When it comes to security I think all of the features are currently open to improvement."
"It only has a single power interface, which has limitations in terms of high availability."
"Having to deal with too many lower-level people in technical support means that it takes longer to resolve issues, so escalating support tickets should be faster."
"The implementation for VLANs is a little bit cumbersome. It would be good to make that a little bit easier."
"The user interface could be better."
"The anti-spam requires a specific Java version on the server side (do not update it, otherwise it will break)."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Netgate pfSense. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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