We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and SonicWall NSa based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Meraki MX has a slight edge in this comparison. Unlike SonicWall NSa, its users report a proven ROI.
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"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."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"The simplicity of configuration is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"It's flexible, easy to configure, and easy to manage."
"It is easy to manage, which is one of the most important things for us. It is also flexible, stable, and scalable."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"Ease of management is the best thing about the solution."
"Site to Site VPN: The device can establish a VPN connection to multiple sites in a mesh environment in seconds, and without complex VPN knowledge."
"I am happy with the technical support for the solution. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"It is very easy to configure."
"The features I found most valuable are email security and web filtering."
"It's very flexible and meets our customer's needs."
"I really like the performance; there are no delays and no latency, which is a unique quality in firewalls nowadays."
"We have utilized all the features. The most valuable are the URL filtering by category, DMZ zoning, load balancing and site-to-site VPN."
"I like the solution's configuration, interfaces, and user guides."
"The DPI-SSL is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's handy."
"The prices are similar to other vendors and the support is good."
"One of the main features is the built-in storage capacity."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"The UI could be improved."
"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."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Load balancing options and ability to manage a couple of Internet connections."
"We can’t access GUI management and CLI opening features when the Internet is unavailable."
"The product doesn't support route summarization and BGP dynamic routing protocol."
"When we do API integrations with Meraki, they have always been hard as well as tedious to build. The data that we want out of the API integrations has been only recently available. Six months ago, it was hard to get someone to build something correctly or useful with Meraki APIs. Recently, they have made more data available on the API, but it is just a start. They need to do more."
"They need to improve the link between Meraki and Active Directory."
"From the improvement perspective, we need more monitoring capabilities. We want to have full-based access visibility, such as, what is happening when something is trying to reach and it is denying. We cannot see some parts of it. The integration of active directory with this product is not very fruitful. It has some bugs or lacks in the functionality of active directory integration. We are unable to identify where exactly and whether it has really applied our policy."
"We feel that Cisco provides smaller features, with fewer possibilities versus other solutions out there."
"The current lead time is longer for Meraki MX, and it needs to be improved."
"SonicWall does not support DynDNS, yet this is an important feature for smaller companies that do not have a static IP address."
"We also use the Sophos Firewall for web configuration, which we don't have in SonicWall. Only Sophos has those options. If SonicWall included that feature, that would be a benefit for us."
"The dashboard must be improved."
"The thing main thing is that there's no user admin and in other firewalls, we can enable the scalable features, but SonicWall doesn't have that feature."
"Needs a more detailed reporting feature."
"One area for improvement in SonicWall NSa is the GUI. It isn't easy to understand. The support for SonicWall NSa is mediocre, which is another area for improvement."
"The content filter needs to be improved."
"Customer support is severely lacking with very slow response times."
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 59 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. 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 SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Meraki MX vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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