We performed a comparison between SonicWall NSa and WatchGuard XTM [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"The pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"We have utilized all the features. The most valuable are the URL filtering by category, DMZ zoning, load balancing and site-to-site VPN."
"The solution has many useful features, such as content management, user management, user filtering, and domain controller connectivity mapping."
"The solution can scale."
"Our old firewall was running as HA (High Availability) on two different but identical rack mounted servers. Moving to SonicWall allowed the company to move to one unit, yet accommodate more connections because it had sixteen ports and handled fail-over better than the old firewall solution."
"It is a brilliant product. It is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) system. It has got about 11 security services that take care of your perimeter security. It takes care of any kind of cyber threats that could come in. It takes care of creating VPNs between two SonicWalls instantly and very easily. It has got spyware in it as well as a firewall. It has also got a gateway antivirus and an application firewall that can block things from outside."
"User-friendly with good security and application control."
"The firewall feature is most valuable since my work is to analyze if there is any potential attack. SonicWall NSa gives the perfect analysis."
"Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case."
"They have a reporting system which can store data over a very long period of time. Not many other firewall vendors provide a reporting system, but if they do, like Fortinet does, then you've got buy that as an additional product and that can be more than twice as expensive as the initial investment in the firewall. And without reporting over a long-term period, you're just about wasting your time."
"After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse."
"Application Control is fantastic with over 2,500 applications and the granularity that we can either allow people to view but not be able to log on to Facebook; or view it and log onto it if they're in the marketing department, but not play Facebook games. There are all sorts of different options like that. So it's highly granular."
"There is a site-to-site VPN configuration between others people."
"We have used technical support for WatchGuard many times and overall, we are satisfied with it. They are always listening and there is a good reaction time to our findings. When there are issues, they really try to resolve them."
"I like the hostwatch because I can see what traffic uses the most bandwidth and I can block that site."
"WatchGuard XTM is fairly basic. We use it as the perimeter firewall. The main point is to protect from attack software and hacking."
"Monitoring of network activity is included in the box."
"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"SonicWall NSa's reporting could be improved."
"We still get phishing emails that manage to come through from time to time."
"They are not ready for managed security services. Their Cloud GMS product is weak, barely out of beta (buggy)."
"The cost could be lower. There could also be more flexibility for smaller companies."
"The anti-spam requires a specific Java version on the server side (do not update it, otherwise it will break)."
"Customer support is severely lacking with very slow response times."
"The user interface could be better."
"The reporting and monitoring are a bit complex and should be easier in SonicWall NSa because other firewalls I have experienced have been more simple, such as Palo Alto. We are able to receive a clear view of our network. As a general user with little experience, it would be difficult for them to handle."
"I would like them to improve the product's overall protections. This would be good for all product users."
"The VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting."
"One huge issue with WatchGuard XTM is that I'm not getting reports in a readable format. Readable means, I don't want Excel online. We repeat auditing when we trigger the report or setup calendar. That functionality is what we are looking for from WatchGuard XTM here."
"Sometimes we have had issues with stability of the product."
"WatchGuard doesn't have a product that allows them to get into the data center. And that's just because there is no hardware to do the job. The software could do it, but there's no hardware that allows that to happen at the moment. So it doesn't scale as well as some other products, that's for sure."
"The initial setup is neither simple nor complex. If you know the base in networking and how the firewall works, you will be able to figure it out."
"Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer)."
"The setting policies need improvement. It needs an easier way to do static NAT and check on what policy is being used for that specific traffic."
Earn 20 points
SonicWall NSa is ranked 20th in Firewalls with 77 reviews while WatchGuard XTM [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Firewalls. SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8, while WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard XTM [EOL] writes "The multi-layer security of the products are the primary reason we use these appliances, however, the gateway wireless functionality for managing access points leaves much to be desired". SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Netgate pfSense, whereas WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is most compared with .
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