Compare Fortinet FortiGate vs. Sophos XG
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 58 reviews while Sophos XG which is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 9 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.6, while Sophos XG is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Gives us customizable policies, modifiable templates, and customized rules for single users". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Cisco ASA NGFW, Sophos UTM and Meraki MX Firewalls, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Sophos UTM, Fortinet FortiGate and pfSense. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Sophos XG report.
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 Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiGate vs. Sophos XG and other solutions. Updated: July 2019. 354,290 professionals have used our research since 2012. | ||||||||
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros | ||
Integration with all the other Cisco tools is valuable. We moved from a legacy firewall to the ASA with FirePOWER, increasing our Internet Edge defense dramatically. Cisco ASA NGFW significantly improves our bank. It protects any high-value products that we use from hackers, viruses, malware, and script-bots. It gives us metrics on network traffic as well as what kind of attacks we are getting from the outside. Right now, Cisco ASA NGFW has given us a lot of improvement. We are planning to move to a new facility and will be a much larger organization. The feature that I found most valuable is the overall stability of the product. The stability of Cisco ASA is excellent compared to other products on the market. Because of our customer experience as an integrator company, our clients never report any performance problems. We have a good performance reputation with Cisco ASA. I would say the Firepower module is most valuable. I'm trying more to transition to this kind firewall. I had to study a little on Palo Alto Networks equipment. There is a lot I have to learn about the difference. We have multiple secure internal networks linked with our plants. We are from a oil company, so we have multiple plant areas which need to have restricted network access. Therefore, we are using it for restricting access to the plant area. | Anti-Spam web content filterinG. This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI. This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried. The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal. We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box. The most important features with FortiGate are the web filter and application controls. We can control our internet usage and use the web filter for application purposes. It is user friendly, and has all the features you need. We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website. | Sophos XG has cybersecurity. It integrates with the antivirus software. We have found that the simplicity of the XG 210 is its most valuable feature. It has a very friendly interface like the Cyberoam iNG units, it has customizable policies, it has proper templates that you can even modify, and you can customize the rules, down to each single user. The dashboard is customizable as well. It gives you the feature of including what you need to see as soon as you open the dashboard and to remove the non-necessary stuff, which varies from one organization to the next and from one IT manager to the next. And it has a wide variety of reports as well, template and customizable reports. Valuable features include: the ease of setting up the VPN connection; the fact they have the cloud management option, so I can manage the firewall on a cloud platform from anywhere I am; the user interface is very user-friendly, so it's very easy for the administrator to make any policy changes. The most valuable feature, according to the setup we have at our work place here, is the flexibility of the system or the firmware that's running the appliance. It's so flexible, performing multiple rules with different configurations. According to the set up here, we need to implement several firewalls with different access levels, because we have a variety of users. For this requirement, it's very flexible and very easy to use. My clients gain efficiency in protecting against attacks from malware such as ransomware and hacker attacks. It also provides them efficient internet access control, and full visibility of ports, applications, and websites. Excellent product, meets most of the security needs of companies of various sizes. You can buy it without fear. |
Cons | ||
With regards to stability, we had a critical bug come out during our evaluation... not good. The product would be improved if the GUI could be brought into the 21st Century. Cisco should improve its user interface design. There is a deep learning curve to the product if you are a newcomer. There is no support here in Georgia. If something goes wrong, support is not always very helpful with the other firewalls or other products. One of my main concerns, an area that could use improvement is in adjusting the need to buy a license to enable features. Usually, the customers are satisfied, but I am going to recommend that all clients upgrade to FirePOWER management. I want Cisco to improve the feature called anti-spam. We use a Cisco only email solution, that's why we need the anti-spam on email facility. The installation and integration of Cisco ASA with FirePOWER can be improved. The management with Fortigate is easier than Cisco ASA on FirePOWER. The management side of Cisco ASA can be improved so it can be more easily configured and used. Most of the time, when I try to run Java, it is not compatible with ASA's current operating systems. | The Web-filter in this solution is not very good. FortiOS is not simple. This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels. I use the FortiGate 60D model and realized the 300Mbps bandwidth limitation. Because it is a product that offers many services, I think it could have greater bandwidth capacity. Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server. I feel that the reporting needs to be improved. 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. The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing. | The only issue that Sophos XG now needs to improve is the product's reporting capability. When I call, I have to wait at least one to two hours to reach them. Let's say I set up a rule to block users from accessing YouTube or Facebook. The rule will only block the HTTP traffic, which is non-secure traffic... The problem comes when you are trying to block, or allow, similar traffic that uses HTTPS. You have to create a certificate and import it into the users' web browsers, whatever they are using... The problem occurs when you're dealing with roaming users who use laptops and have to move between different sites that have different types of policies applied to them. You have to import all sorts of certificates from each site into their browser. Doing so will most probably conflict with something else that is totally irrelevant and cause a problem. Since Sophos took over Cyberoam, the online technical library and support library have become super messy. To get a piece of information is becoming a nightmare. They need to reorganize the online technical support and technical library. I would like the update process to be easier, to update the firmware of the boxes. I think it's much better automatically than having to do it manually: Download the file, do network discovery. I they can make the update process much more automatic that would help. It is performing well. However, the only challenges that we are facing are the effectiveness with blocking the proxy and tuneling applications, aside from proxy and similar applications. So the application filter on the product is not really performing 100%. Every now and then there are some updates that are happening on such applications, and it takes time until it gets the appropriate updates and becomes capable of capturing such applications and blocking them. A new feature I would really like to see would be some sort of an enhanced application filter with greater efficiency when it comes to the applications that can bypass firewall policies. These applications are really a nightmare. Once they are on the network and not detected, or the appliance is not really successful in capturing them and unblocking them, the bandwidth gets wasted all the time. Scalability it is a bit limited. We did a sizing exercise before the purchase. But that was just to fit our current needs. There was no room for having an option to upgrade the device. The only option that we have if we are grow in the near future, is to go for another model with higher specs, which is actually more expensive. In other words it doesn't have that modularity . It could offer a DNS Filter for blocking botnet networks. |
Pricing and Cost Advice | ||
Watch out for hidden licensing and incredibly high annual maintenance costs. We paid about $7,000 for the Cisco firewall, plus another small Cisco router and the lead switch. It was under the combined license. It's a final agreement. The cost is a big factor for us. This is why we are using it only in our restricted area. They are very much higher than their competitors in the market. Licensing is expensive compared to other solutions. Pricing is high, but it is essentially a corporate decision. The cost is a bit high compared to other solutions in the market. Cisco recently has become very expensive. The cost is a bit higher than other competitive solutions on the market. | Before choosing a piece of equipment you have to take into account the cost-benefit offered by each one. Sometimes it is not worth paying a very cheap price to have a minimum level of security. Each feature costs money, so it is important to study your needs. I would say that all things considered, the pricing is pretty good. Fortinet is reasonable in pricing and licensing. Overall, FortiGate is affordable. The licensing fee can be a little high, depending on the budget for your project. Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis. Compared to Palo Alto, which we have used in the past, pricing and licensing are okay. Setup cost may be not so low, as you expect, because it depends on different factors, but TCO for 5 years may pleasantly surprise you. The initial setup is super straight forward and as far as the licensing goes for the small product that we have, the pricing was pretty competitive. It wasn't as simple and as cheap as a SonicWall but for the service we would get it was a good price. | For licensing the XG 210, we paid approximately $3000 for three years. There are no additional fees on top of this. |
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Top Comparisons | ||
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Also Known As | ||
| Cisco ASA, Adaptive Security Appliance, ASA | FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate | |
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| Cisco | Fortinet | Sophos |
Overview  | ||
Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) is Cisco's end-to-end software solution and core operating system that powers the Cisco ASA product series. This software solution provides enterprise-level firewall capabilities for all types of ASA products, including blades, standalone appliances and virtual devices. Adaptive Security Appliance provides protection to organizations of all sizes, and allows end-users to access information securely anywhere, at any time, and through any device. Adaptive Security Appliance is also fully compatible with other key security technologies, and so provides organizations with an all-encompassing security solution. Block more threats and quickly mitigate those that do breach your defenses with the industry’s first threat-focused NGFW. | The FortiGate family of NG firewalls provides proven protection with unmatched performance across the network, from internal segments, to data centers, to cloud environments. FortiGates are available in a large range of sizes and form factors and are key components of the Fortinet Security Fabric, which enables immediate, intelligent defense against known and new threats throughout the entire network. | Sophos XG Firewall is next gen firewall that is optimized for today’s business, delivering all the protection and insights you need in a single, powerful appliance that’s easy to manage. |
Offer | ||
Free Trial Start your two week free trial. | Learn more about Fortinet FortiGate | Learn more about Sophos XG |
Sample Customers | ||
| There are more than one million Adaptive Security Appliances deployed globally. Top customers include First American Financial Corp., Genzyme, Frankfurt Airport, Hansgrohe SE, Rio Olympics, The French Laundry, Rackspace, and City of Tomorrow. | Pittsburgh Steelers, LUSH Cosmetics, NASDAQ, Verizon, Arizona State University, Levi Strauss & Co. Whitepaper and case studies here | Information Not Available |
Top Industries | ||
Financial Services Firm19% Manufacturing Company12% Comms Service Provider10% University7% Comms Service Provider22% Financial Services Firm14% Manufacturing Company11% Transportation Company8% | Comms Service Provider11% Financial Services Firm11% Healthcare Company9% Real Estate/Law Firm9% Cloud Provider20% Comms Service Provider9% Writing And Editing Position9% Manufacturing Company7% | Manufacturing Company17% Comms Service Provider14% K 12 Educational Company Or School14% Transportation Company9% |
Company Size | ||
Small Business38% Midsize Enterprise26% Large Enterprise36% Small Business41% Midsize Enterprise26% Large Enterprise33% | Small Business51% Midsize Enterprise25% Large Enterprise24% Small Business54% Midsize Enterprise32% Large Enterprise14% | Small Business50% Midsize Enterprise29% Large Enterprise21% Small Business36% Midsize Enterprise43% Large Enterprise21% |
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiGate vs. Sophos XG and other solutions. Updated: July 2019.
354,290 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See also Fortinet FortiGate Reviews, Sophos XG Reviews, and our list of Best Firewalls Companies.
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