We performed a comparison between SonicWall NSa and SonicWall NSv 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."You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"SonicWall has USCS and anti-virus at the gateway level. Everything is filtered, and if it detects an intruder, it drops the line."
"We use SonicWall NSa for authenticating MAC (media access control) ID from the PC."
"The most valuable features of this solution are intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, and the advanced capture client, which provides live traffic analysis."
"It has good reporting, the reporting is marvelous."
"The features I found most valuable are email security and web filtering."
"The DPI-SSL is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's handy."
"It has excellent stability."
"I like this solution because we are focused on VPN and have many brands that need to link a VPN and have security, like ransomware, spyware, and basic protection."
"We purchased the AGSS Bundle (Advanced Gateway Security Suite) for the security services, such as antivirus, intrusion prevention system, and anti-spyware botnet GUI."
"One of the standout features of SonicWall is its simplicity in creating and managing rules."
"The security of this system is fantastic, including the IPS and IDS."
"The customization of firewall rules provides great value to our customers as it allows them to lock things up in the way that they desire. When it is used for internal access, with a VPN in place for remote workers, the firewalling services provided by Azure, such as the default services that can be turned on, are applied. However, the use of a software-based virtual firewall gives us greater flexibility in introducing security controls for customers who are publishing applications that are publicly accessible from the public cloud. This virtual firewall provides an additional layer of security and more extensive security control options to ensure the protection of our customers' valuable information and assets."
"The product helps improve our security."
"The solution has no additional charges and no restrictions on the number of users."
"SonicWall NSV is easy to use, and you can use it to manage the logs easily."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"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 is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."
"The cost could be lower. There could also be more flexibility for smaller companies."
"Overall, Im satisfied with SonicWall NSa, but it would be better if they could add a small terminal to each device. This would help me deal with certain issues by running a small bot onto any PC."
"The solution can be a bit expensive."
"The problem primarily with SonicWall is it's a Unix box. And it's all software, all the activities, blocking, censoring, everything has to happen in the software. If you start hitting the box with a lot of sessions it slows down and that's not what I expect from a firewall."
"When it comes to security I think all of the features are currently open to improvement."
"It is very modular and with native resources which are much lower than its competitors."
"The anti-spam requires a specific Java version on the server side (do not update it, otherwise it will break)."
"Initially, it may be difficult for some people to learn and become acquainted with it."
"It has been brought to our attention by a few customers that they are dissatisfied with the fact that our virtualized service is only offered as a subscription option on the cloud. However, it is worth noting that many other similar services are also offered through a subscription model on the cloud and not through perpetual licensing. It is unclear why these customers would have an issue with this subscription service when so many others are utilizing similar methods."
"There are limitations to bandwidth management."
"SonicWall NSV's initial setup is complicated and requires good knowledge."
"We face some challenges when we upgrade the solution."
"I would like to see the reporting opened up and have several more opportunities for automatic reports."
"SonicWall NSV's SSL VPN could increase its number of users to 100-plus users."
"An area that could be improved is the export and import settings functionality."
SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews while SonicWall NSv is ranked 35th in Firewalls with 7 reviews. SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8, while SonicWall NSv 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 NSv writes "Easy to use, stable, and the security features work well". SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, whereas SonicWall NSv is most compared with Azure Firewall, SonicWall TZ and Fortinet FortiGate-VM. See our SonicWall NSa vs. SonicWall NSv report.
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