We performed a comparison between Hillstone T-Series and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the APIs. They are the most widely known."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"The only firewall able to monitor traffic from a CCTV network. Can detect unauthorized devices plugged into the network, which standard firewalls can't do."
"We installed Hillstone T-Series after a ransomware attack. The dashboard and user interface are very good."
"It has been stable so far."
"The GUI is easy and intuitive."
"After conducting several tests I found the antivirus is working very well. Additionally, they have a very interesting feature, DNS WatchGuard, which is checking DNS requests for phishing, among other things, and it has caught a lot of unwanted attempts and attacks."
"The most valuable feature is the NAT-ing, the IP addresses... We can direct the traffic where it needs to go. We can control the traffic."
"WatchGuard has a very easy VPN and branch office VPN setup, so we use those pretty extensively."
"The main features of the solution are the control of the site-to-site network access and the overall features."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The ports that I have assigned appear to be unattainable to outside 'mal-actors,' unless they have an address registered on the internet that this thing is expecting. That's a layer of security."
"Intrusion Prevention is my primary focus so that's what I find most useful. The why is straightforward: It's to prevent intrusion."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"Another loophole with Hillstone T-Series is that when we connect through WiFi and turn our hot spot on, all who connect through the hotspot get all the functions, and the security does not work."
"They have a very good technical support team, but I think there are some communication issues due to language differences."
"Licensing is not cheap."
"The VPN aspect of the WatchGuard Firebox is an area that could potentially benefit from improvement. We encountered difficulties while attempting to integrate Windows 11 laptops into the system, which resulted in unreliable connections. After some research, we discovered that this was primarily due to compatibility issues with Windows 11 and required a patch. However, it was still a challenge as it seemed that even when we tried to keep the laptops on Windows 10, they still exhibited the same issues as Windows 11 machines. Despite WatchGuard attributing the problem to Microsoft, we were eventually able to find a solution and all the machines are now functioning seamlessly."
"The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer... The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work."
"I haven’t dug deeply into the reporting features yet or if they are working well. However, I have generated several reports and there was too much unnecessary information, in comparison with the reporting features in the Sophos firewall. Sophos' reporting is more readable and easier to configure."
"The UI and web view aren't nice."
"A 12-hour power outage... got our batteries."
"Its documentation could be improved. Sometimes, you need to search a bit longer to find what you are looking for."
"Setup of this solution is complex, it's not plug and play."
"There could also be better reporting. For example, there should be more out-of-the-box management reports."
Hillstone T-Series is ranked 36th in Firewalls with 3 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Hillstone T-Series is rated 7.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Hillstone T-Series writes "Is stable and has a user-friendly dashboard and a good interface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Hillstone T-Series is most compared with Sangfor NGAF and Hillstone E-Series, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX.
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