We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, both solutions received similar ratings in all categories.
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"The most valuable features are the possibility of having one fabric for switching on security."
"Real Auto VPN with load balancer without needing a public IP. It is simple and functional."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the Meraki dashboard, which is a single pane of glass."
"It prevents us from being hacked and delivers information about who and where the attack came from."
"It's flexible, easy to configure, and easy to manage."
"It is very easy to configure."
"Very easy to use and navigate."
"Easy to administer and saves time when you have many smaller locations that you have to manage."
"The most valuable feature is that we didn't have any problems with Meraki MX."
"It's pretty simple to use. It's pretty simple to understand, and there's plenty of documentation. It does a pretty good job of what it is meant to do."
"I like that this product has very few issues."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use of the interface."
"After conducting several tests I found the antivirus is working very well. Additionally, they have a very interesting feature, DNS WatchGuard, which is checking DNS requests for phishing, among other things, and it has caught a lot of unwanted attempts and attacks."
"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."
"Regarding the reporting, I was in the Dimension server earlier today. It's very powerful. I like it. And the management features are easy to use. I like the fact that I can open up the System Manager client or I can just do it through the web if I'm making a quick change."
"WatchGuard Firebox's two-factor authentication feature is particularly useful and provides an added layer of protection."
"One of the most valuable features is the Geolocation. Because we aren't a multinational corporation, it allows me to look at things which might be suspicious to make sure that they are legitimate transactions rather than people sniffing around the network."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding FortiAnalyzer to its solution, we should not have to use another solution. FortiAnalyzer can provide more detailed information."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"It needs more available central management."
"The configuration options for firewall and IPS have limitations."
"The IPS, the Intrusion Prevention System, can be improved."
"The client-side VPN is weak. The product could be improved with deployment templates."
"The product could incorporate tools like ThousandEyes into the system so we can see things directly."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"FortiGate is cheaper than Meraki. Even the license renewal is less than Meraki."
"An area for improvement in Meraki MX is that it needs some provision, as supplying the unit through Cisco can be tedious at times, but as far as the product itself and its offerings, Meraki MX is five-star all the way."
"Management can be improved in Meraki MX."
"I would like to have a little more control over access points and the ability to see the bandwidth that is passing through a specific access point. We are not able to see that. We can see what traffic is passing through the Firebox itself, but we can't identify if it is coming from a particular access point or not."
"The data loss protection works well, but it could be easier to configure. The complexity of data loss protection makes it a more difficult feature to fully leverage. Better integration with third-party, two-factor authentication would be advantageous."
"It would be wonderful if the WatchGuard team develops nice products for threat intelligence."
"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."
"The area where I think this product can be improved is the user interface and the reporting. It can be quite difficult to find the correct logs and to actually find out what is going on. The digging can be time-consuming."
"There are a couple of things I wished that it would do, but I can't think of those off the top of my head."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
"Reporting is something you've got to set up separately. It's one of those things that you've got to put some time into. One of the options is to set up a local report server, which is what I did. It's not great. It's okay... Some of the stuff is a little complicated to get up and running. Once you do, it becomes very user-friendly and easy to work with, but I find there are some implementation headaches with some of their stuff."
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 58 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 79 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Meraki MX vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Unified Threat Management (UTM) 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.
