We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and SonicWall SMA based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It integrates with AWS WAF, which makes it easy to deploy without changes to your infrastructure."
"F5 has many capabilities for load balancing and web application firewall features."
"One of the best features of the solution is the operating system."
"The BIG-IP’s interface is more intuitive than other GUIs. It is well structured, not overloaded, and does not have too many gimmicks."
"Users can see a remarkable performance difference from a qualitative sense."
"I have found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to be stable."
"Secure and scalable traffic management solution for applications. Good for bigger environments."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The management and the dashboard are the solution's most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is they have IT consultants that know SonicWall."
"I think they ask for a fair price."
"The solution is reliable and has good overall performance."
"This solution has many options for remote desktop and access."
"SonicWall SMA allows us to provide CML-based access to any user."
"I like the load balancing capability."
"It is faster than other security options when using remote connections."
"Reporting could be improved and configuration made easier."
"There is a need for a more modular version to concentrate on the current monolithic structure of both the virtual and hardware versions."
"Initial setup is tricky, if you do not understand the design of this product."
"They need to develop the reporting tools further."
"Right now, there are a lot of products within F5's portfolio. They acquired a couple of companies like NGINX and Volterra. Some features and technologies overlapped when this acquisition occurred. They need to refine it and come up with a single, proper solution. F5 should focus more on zero trust network access (ZTNA).They should be more focused on that framework because the industry is moving towards that. Everyone is talking about SASE and zero trust."
"The one gap I saw was that pure LBN integration is a little tricky. The insertion of F5 in LBN is a little tricky. They need to work on something, on products by which they can insert F5 in any sort of cloud environment."
"Its GUI could be a bit better. Other than that, it's already pretty good. We don't use it in a high-performance environment. So, we don't really care so much about too many features."
"The pricing model has caused some frustration. My clients implemented the solution and later wanted to upgrade the features but the pricing structure was complicated. There are other solutions with better pricing models."
"The solution could integrate better with other platforms."
"The only thing that they could try to improve is the support for enterprise customers. Normally enterprises and SMBs can create a ticket, but for enterprises, SonicWall SMA needs to provide a global view, and this is what's currently missing. It's not even a question of timing. It's a question of the global vision because currently, it's lacking. They concentrate on the topic, but not on the means and not on the global picture. In most cases, there's something wrong with the integration of SonicWall SMA with other products, so that could also be improved."
"The solution has 2FA, it will generate a token and send it to an email, but multifactor authentication is not available. I would suggest that there should be MFA integration and provided with the appliance."
"The overall menu is not very user-friendly and it could be easier."
"The problem is that when combined with what the client already has, there are two different logins and two different management systems, and these should be consolidated into a single interface."
"SonicWall SMA is difficult to use and it does not provide easy access to different parts of the network."
"The timed synchronization between the network appliance needs improvement."
"User interface could be improved."
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F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is ranked 1st in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 116 reviews while SonicWall SMA is ranked 2nd in Universal Access Gateways with 14 reviews. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is rated 8.2, while SonicWall SMA is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) writes "Helps deliver applications to users in a reliable, secure, and optimized way". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall SMA writes "It allows us to provide CML-based access to any user, but the reporting could be better". F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is most compared with Citrix NetScaler, Fortinet FortiADC, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, NGINX Plus and HAProxy, whereas SonicWall SMA is most compared with Fortinet FortiClient, Cisco SD-WAN, SonicWall Netextender, Peplink SpeedFusion and Check Point Remote Access VPN. See our F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. SonicWall SMA report.
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