We performed a comparison between Sonicwall TZ and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Sophos XG’s single pane of glass makes it easy to manage the entire solution and it can be done anywhere. Users find it very light, stable, and it provides excellent real-time control. Users say SonicWall TZ struggles a bit with load balancing and data filtering, making it a slightly less desirable solution.
"The most valuable features are the possibility of having one fabric for switching on security."
"Advanced routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PBR). It gives you a seamless and simple integration into a large network."
"The next-generation firewall is great."
"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 most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."
"The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"They give good protection to my network and support it."
"With the main firewall routing there, we can do connectivity point-to-point. On the low bandwidth we can connect in all the branches with my corporate office."
"SonicWall TZ is stable."
"I find the security we are able to do with the policies to be valuable. The monitoring is valuable as well."
"I have found the stability of this product to be excellent."
"The performance has been very good. Overall, the solution is quite stable."
"The most common feature in the firewall, apart from that traditional firewall, would be the security services, like application control, URL filtering, Gateway Anti-Virus, and IPS protection. These are the essential features in the firewalls which I think, has to be enabled and properly used at every network infrastructure."
"SonicWall TZ think it's a good, solid, and stable product."
"The updates are helpful and add to the solution in a positive way."
"Great reporting feature and great customer support."
"One feature of Sophos XG that I found incredibly beneficial for threat prevention is its endpoint protection."
"I particularly like the visibility it provides into network traffic, allowing us to identify and address issues efficiently."
"I like the dashboard, the interface, the management console, and the remote login."
"I like their firewall and the intrusion detection feature"
"The performance of Sophos XG is generally good and it is stable."
"Content filtering and intrusion prevention are most valuable. Our customers are fully satisfied with the performance of Sophos. It has all the features that they require in a firewall."
"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."
"I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity."
"You do need some IT knowledge in order to effectively work with the solution."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more storage in the hardware for log data."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"Support for SonicWall TZ needs improvement, particularly the time it takes before you're able to speak to a support person, e.g. you have to wait for at least 30 minutes on the phone."
"Sonic Analyzer could be improved. It's difficult to manage and not very intuitive."
"The solution should provide some additional ports."
"SonicWall TZ can improve the UI application and when you create any net policies or any new policy, it will not sync or work properly."
"The reporting analytics could be improved, it is very unstable."
"User interface could be improved."
"From a support perspective, if we're talking tech support I think Silver Partners, Gold Partners, Platinum, whatever level, should have a different number to call. End users can call tech support over at SonicWall if they've paid for support as part of their AGSS or whatever services they bought. The end-user can call, or we can call, however, I don't want to be calling the same line that an end user's calling. I don't want the same response time. I need a different level of expertise."
"If the operation increases and the bandwidth consumption increases, it does not perform as per the expectations."
"The solution should have the ability to be up to date with the most recent threats."
"The product's technical support services could be better."
"The installation could be faster and is longer than that of other solutions, lasting more than a month instead of five minutes."
"It would be better if they made their own hardware like Palo Alto and Fortinet. They use their own ASICs and claim it is more secure."
"The uploading and downloading of reports should be included."
"In the Sophos XG, the SD-WAN has all the rules done separately, such as net policy routing. In the previous version, they were all in a single rule and everything was done that way. The way it is now is difficult for us because we are not used to this newer version. The firewall rules should be easier to configure and create. Everything should be done with a single click."
"While it is a secure solution, I believe it could be improved."
"The pricing has gotten much higher."
SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". SonicWall TZ is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa, WatchGuard Firebox and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, Meraki MX and Sophos UTM. See our SonicWall TZ vs. Sophos XG report.
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