We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Sophos UTM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiGate and Sophos UTM had a similar user rating regarding ease of deployment, service and support, and ROI. If pricing is a factor, Sophos UTM is a more cost-effective solution based on user reviews. In terms of features, Fortinet FortiGate users felt the interface was complex, and the reporting feature needed improvements. In contrast, Sophos UTM users felt the solution needed to do a better job at covering mobile devices.
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"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."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"Easy to use support and licensing portal as well as activation process."
"Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."
"The technical support is great."
"Advanced routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PBR). It gives you a seamless and simple integration into a large network."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"It is not an easy task to protect your web servers from the big bad internet. The Web Server Protection in this solution does it elegantly and, if configured correctly, even hides the server's base system from prying eyes."
"With over 150 firewalls in our portal, management and monitoring have never been easier."
"Good basic firewall functions with advanced firewall scanning."
"The cost of the solution is very reasonable."
"The initial configuration is straightforward thanks to the web GUI. In 30 minutes, you can have a running firewall with UTM protection enabled."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the efficiency and mail filtering module."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"It is a very good product. The threat monitoring process is the most valuable feature."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"The solution is very expensive."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"The initial setup may be difficult for those not familiar with the product."
"We had some problems with the configuration. They had provided a CloudFormation template, and we had to go several rounds to make it work."
"We'd like to see them offer their services on mobile devices like tablets. I'm not sure if that's an option or not."
"There needs to be some improvement in the IPsec VPN. There is implementation only support. I have version one. I'd be most interested in having IP version two from the protocol."
"The virus updates will always depend on new viruses that are discovered. Maybe they can send a notification or a reminder for update time."
"The solution's technical support for India needs to be improved."
"The reporting could improve by providing information on where, or from which device attacks are coming from. We are already given the country where the attack is coming from but more information would be beneficial."
"It would be nice if it had basic features, such as DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and Check Point NGFW, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Sophos UTM report.
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I would have no doubt in recommending Fortinet. I do not know the Sophos UTM product specifically but in general, in companies, we have had unpleasant experiences with Sophos with customers. They typically declare performance values that are overestimated in the field.
We replaced Fortinet with Sophos as our public-facing UTM in 2017 & since then the ride has been extremely rough. I would not recommend Sophos for any mission-critical environment.
Fortinet is easy to manage and it include secure SDWAN as well including many features with easy to configure.
Both firewalls are easy to deploy. But the issue you will encounter when performing troubleshooting. You will not get flexibility in troubleshooting through Cli in Sophos whereas, in FortiGate, we have much more control. Besides if you are deploying a firewall on a large scale where visibility, control, performance as well as the flexibility is important it is better to go with Fortinet rather than Sophos.
I would also like to elaborate on the reporting part in FortiCloud. There is no need to pay any extras. Every box connects to ForticCoud service, and if you want reports to be greater than 7 days (meaning to be kept longer than that in their memory system) then you have to pay. In the meantime, by default Forticloud will send daily emails with reports and once a week you will get 4 to 5 reports, with lots of granular information. These reports are all in PDF with color graphics. In reality, I would be happy to send you some of the reports as in words typed herein would be more than a book. The FortiGate appliance also comes with 10 endpoint security (Forticlient) licences. So you can put this endpoint protection software to servers or clients. It also has a two-factor authentication license included. With these boxes, you can also create VDOM (Virtual Domains, totally separate).
They can afford that as the hardware, as I mentioned before (ASIC) has the power to do that. In 3 years I have had 1 spam message entering my mail server, is that telling you something??? In my first reply, I did tell you that where I work now they purchase Sophos. Well, when the antivirus is set the CPU gets up to 90%. My Fortigate CPU is 0% and peaks during attacks. And I have had quite a few. They were attempting to break into the mail server. More than 2 million attempts in less than 2 hours. Have a look at NSS Labs site. FortiGate is a Rolls Royce, you cannot compare.
Here in Australia, where I work now, the decision was to go with Sophos, ONLY ON PRICE. Yes, great brains. Now they regret that big time. FortiGate is a much more powerful device, especially when it comes to being able to handle the traffic. Most of the models handle throughput via ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) which is nothing more and less than a customer semiconductor. So, this is handled via hardware. It may be initially more difficult to implement. Now, what does "difficult" mean? To me when there is an unknown, difficult comes up till you learn. So if you make a decision on price and because "it is the easiest" to install.
I would not touch Sophos. Simple as that.
Sophos UTM is better by far. but it is more expensive
Done many installations of both Sophos and FortiGate, Sophos is the easiest to install and best in terms of features.
Reporting is free in Sophos while we need an extra subscription for FortiGate. Deep packet inspection, intrusion prevention advanced threat protection, web filtering, app control and email protection are key features of Sophos. Browsing is made safe with phishing protection and new functionality of ransomware protection. Sophos support is brilliant and community website from Sophos answers to all your questions and ease deployment.
I can’t really comment on FortiGate. We’ve been working with Sophos for years and like it’s integration with their endpoint.