We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is praised for its robust security features, including geofencing, firewalling, IPS, antivirus, and an easy-to-use interface. Sophos XG is highly regarded for its functionality, user-friendly interface, web filtering capabilities, detailed reporting, and seamless integration with other Sophos products.
Fortinet FortiGate-VM could use improvements in key activation, log management, cloud management, MFA offerings, web filter options, application inspection, GUI features, bandwidth issues, VPN connectivity, pricing concerns, performance, and quality control. Sophos XG requires improvements in antivirus features, graphical interface, logging, technical support, initial setup, configuration, functionality, sales policies, firewall upgrades, network control, data protection, bugs, user interface, integration, support, high-availability clusters, scalability, education and training resources, security features, Dynamic IP support, and specific user requests.
Service and Support: The feedback for customer service for Fortinet FortiGate-VM varies, with positive comments regarding the promptness and expertise of the support team with some negative remarks about delayed responses and challenges in accessing information efficiently. The customer service for Sophos XG receives a range of opinions, including compliments for helpful and responsive assistance, as well as complaints about unhelpful and unresponsive support and slow response times.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Fortinet FortiGate-VM is generally uncomplicated and simple, whereas for Sophos XG, it can be considered either effortless or difficult depending on the user's familiarity and technical expertise.
Pricing: The setup cost for Fortinet FortiGate-VM is affordable and less expensive compared to Palo Alto and Check Point. The pricing options for yearly or monthly licenses are flexible. Sophos XG provides a customizable pricing structure based on the needed functionality. The cost varies depending on the model, edition, and activated security modules. In general, both products are reasonably priced and provide good value for their features.
ROI: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is known for its enhanced security and stability features, whereas the Sophos XG is renowned for simplifying management processes and enhancing workflow efficiency.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is the preferred choice when compared to Sophos XG. Users appreciate Fortinet's strong security capabilities, ease of use, simple deployment, intuitive interface, and scalability. They also find features like geofencing, firewalling, IPS, antivirus, and intrusion prevention systems valuable.
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"The interface is very good."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"The product offers very good security."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are the ease of use, IPS system, application filter, web filtering, and email security. Additionally, there is a migration tool that other vendors do not provide. We only need to upload the configuration file to the tool, and it converts everything, except the passwords, and gives us the new configuration, which we can directly upload on the firewall. This migration process takes a maximum of 15 minutes."
"I have worked on some of the largest and smallest solutions that Fortinet sells and they all scale really well."
"It's a very simple solution to manage."
"I really like that it's internationally deployable."
"The ease of access and user-friendly setup is a valuable feature. Fortinet proves to be particularly straightforward to configure, offering simplicity without complexity. Moreover, visibility is easily attainable due to certain factors. Price, implementation, and budget considerations play a role. When it comes to Cisco implementation, the process tends to be more intricate, which many customers find unfavourable for their business needs."
"We use it to ensure that our network is properly protected from viruses and malware."
"The most valuable features are network security, VLAN, network protection, and encryption are very valuable to us."
"The combination of SD-WAN and VPN capabilities is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the flexibility of it, it's pretty versatile."
"The most valuable is the synchronized security between Sophos XG and Sophos endpoint because it provides a lot of visibility about unknown applications. The endpoint shares the information of unknown applications, and you can learn about those applications and create policies to allow or block those applications."
"The updates are helpful and add to the solution in a positive way."
"Over the past two years, during the COVID pandemic, the VPN has helped us a lot."
"It is a very stable solution."
"In terms of the functionality, I think it's pretty straightforward. It's easy to pick up. It's also user-friendly."
"It's a product that is in continuous improvement and is following what the customer is asking for. They are taking inputs and designing new releases specifically according to the client and their needs."
"I like it for its simplicity. It is very simple to configure and implement. It is a very good product for medium-sized organizations."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"The Web-filter in this solution is not very good."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"Support could be improved a little."
"We have encountered certain issues with the bandwidth in respect of the security layer."
"With FortiGate, we sometimes encounter bugs in various operating systems."
"We have had some stability issues."
"It needs an Application Inspection."
"In the next release, I would like to see integration capability with SIEM tools, such as QRadar, and LogRhythm."
"The product may not be as robust as Palo Alto. However, unless you are a big bank, you probably won't need it to be."
"Now they do have the ability to pop up a command line, which is nice, however, the fact that you can't do everything within the GUI is probably a problem."
"Better instructions should be provided as part of the technical support so that we can understand the functionalities. This will help us to troubleshoot faster."
"They should include fiber ports on smaller product models and the tools should be improved for scalability."
"Lacking network access control, user profiling and analytics dashboards."
"I can't use the product's application control feature, making it a disadvantage of the solution where improvements are required."
"They should improve the hardware. If they can do that, it will be a very good product."
"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."
"Everything is working as expected at this moment, but the anti-spam solution in Sophos XG needs to be improved. It needs more granular features and more stability. The anti-spam solution currently doesn't have many features, and we would like to have more features. At this moment, there is no expression filter for anti-spam. We need something to be able to filter subjects or attachments in emails based on the keyword. Sometimes, there is an issue with anti-spam, and Sophos XG suddenly stops processing incoming or outgoing emails. The only solution for this issue is to restart the appliance. Their support should be improved. It takes a long time to escalate a support case from level one to level two."
"They need to improve the SD-WAN feature."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. 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 Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and H3C SecPath Firewalls, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Sophos XG report.
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