We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Sophos XG 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 XG had similar user ratings regarding ease of deployment, service and support, and ROI. In terms of features, each software has its pros and cons. Fortinet FortiGate offers some great features, but it is a little more complex and needs better reporting. Sophos XG provides a stable, complete firewall solution, but it fails to integrate well with other products, and the SD-WAN needs improvement. Sophos XG was the better option for pricing, as they offer flexible pricing based on region.
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"The most valuable features are the possibility of having one fabric for switching on security."
"FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."
"The product is very easy to explore. It has a very good layout."
"The solution is stable. I've had very few problems with it."
"The solution seems to be very easy to use."
"The solution has very good security features, is easy to use for administrators and users, and has informative reports."
"It is a very stable solution."
"Sophos began with a basic version and evolved into something more efficient in terms of performance."
"Sophos XG Firewall is very usable, very easy to install, and very user friendly."
"The stability has been excellent."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"The product's user interface has certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Technical support can be slow to respond, which is something that should be improved."
"Sophos XG's web server protection and log viewer could improve. They should also introduce sandboxing."
"There should be web caching to improve bandwidth utilization. It should have a very good caching feature. That's because we are in a very poor continent, and the connectivity cost is very high. We have low bandwidth, and the intensive usage of bandwidth is not easy here in Africa. If they improve services for web caching, it would be better."
"It would be helpful if the solution offered some tutorial videos to help new users learn the system quickly."
"I can't use the product's application control feature, making it a disadvantage of the solution where improvements are required."
"The VPN is in need of improvement."
"They need to do more quality checks before they release firmware upgrades. Currently, a few Cyberoam firewall customers are facing some issues while upgrading the Cyberoam firmware to Sophos. After the new firmware is installed, they are seeing some performance issues, which require some bug fixes. The performance is fine after getting the required support. Customers who are already using Sophos hardware are quite satisfied with this solution. Their support should also be improved. We are facing difficulties getting support on time through email or phone."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 67 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 25 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Fined tuned web proxy, feature rich, and beneficial VPN technology". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Sophos UTM. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Sophos XG report.
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Go with Sophos XG or if you have tight budget and technical expertise then can move with pFsense.
Dear Sharif.
For 150 users any firewall will work perfectly. You can choose as per your convenience, availability, price, and better implementation partner in your region. Keep a bigger box at the central location and configure SD-WAN. SOPHOS has by default SD WAN. Make sure you have secure access to the cloud and all endpoints should have endpoint protection else only firewall will not help.
Most of the cloud service providers work on any-any rule because their responsibility is network uptime and availability. Security of your setup is your responsibility.
Manageability is better in Fortinet however features are better in SOPHOS. License bundle & ATP functions are are good in SOPHOS. Support response is good in SOPHOS but you will find less tickets in FORTINET once it is implemented as per your setup.
Overall both are good for your setup. You can choose as per convenience.
Hope this will help.. Greetings .. Ravi
In my opinion, the first point of strength is the support, and FortiGate is doing a great job in terms of support. It has numerous reference guides for configuration. The other advantage is ease of management in both the UI and CLI levels. You can use FortiGate modules to protect against web and virus attacks.
Hello Sharif,
I prefer FortiGate SDWAN Devices (FortiGate) even though we also deliver Sophos to our clients.
The decentralized FortiGate devices work as firewalls with an excellent security ecosystem. FortiGate and most other items work as Hardware units or on virtual machines.
As a Telco company we have a lot of companies working in different industries with various requirements. We can support them all with FortiGate.
Our customers prefer the security features, the stable ecosystem for life cycle management, for device/user/policy management, thread detection & prevention, intrusion prevention, sandboxing, ... the low operation effort to build a stable company network that supports the need of any customer size.
In our business, we also like that the architecture of a company network can be easily changed if the customer requirements change. From single-line sites to Data Centers with high availability and Cloud integration FortiGate can be used in any design.
The different security features that can be added by the license are powerful and integrated into the management dashboard. Updates of protection mechanisms against new threads happen automatically as soon as a new protection mechanism is available when new threads occur. The security team at Fortinet is excellent.
Greetings
Andre
Hi, XG is EOL the new series is XGS, both are excellent equipment but I prefer Fortigate, why ??? DHCP slection, leader SD-WAN, many IPSEC dynamics is possible on SOPHOS but is limit the are conflicts with many IP's dynamics you need to use DDNS, SSL tunnel for remote clients, VRF, advanced routing with OSPF and BGP ("as path"). Greetings