We performed a comparison between SonicWall TZ and Sophos UTM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"It is useful for protecting and segregating the internal networks from the internet. Most of our customers also use the FortiGate client to connect to their offices by using the VPN client, and of course, they usually activate the antivirus, deep inspection, and intrusion prevention services. They are also using it for web filtering and implementing various policies dealing with forwardings, NAT, etc."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"Once it's configured properly, the solution is unbreakable."
"Its user interface and simplicity are the most favorite parts for our clients. They find it stable and easy to use. Its performance is also good."
"The most valuable features are security and technical support."
"Good VPN connection."
"The most valuable feature is the protection available, and then ease of use and flexibility."
"The feature with SonicWall that I have found most valuable is that all the models have the same interface. We don't need to learn different interfaces in the smaller or bigger models."
"It lets me monitor in live time if someone is 'hogging' bandwidth."
"The feature we found most valuable in SonicWall TZ is that it is user-friendly for an administrator."
"The intrusion prevention is great, and I like dual virus scanning on the network layer because we scan it through Avira and Sophos. Web filtering is also a fantastic option for clients who want to really lock down internet access."
"It's easy to use."
"It helps us with protection, with concurrent use of the VPN."
"The UTM features are reasonably strong and the patterns are updated on a regular basis"
"Advanced protection (Sophos Sandstorm) - Protects against crypto viruses in real-time."
"Sophos UTM's best feature is SIM in the cloud, which combines the gateway solution and endpoint solution to send telemetry data to the cloud and provides full contact visibility regarding security."
"The solution's sandboxing, application center, and database engine are good."
"This is a very stable product."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"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."
"If the operation increases and the bandwidth consumption increases, it does not perform as per the expectations."
"We have been facing issues with reporting."
"I would like them to make the interface a little bit easier to use so you can find out where in the heck you're going instead of having to go to 15 different places to get something installed."
"It would be good if Analyzer would be part of the stock license, so even if a layperson is getting the device, he or she doesn't forgets about ordering the Analyzer because it's already there."
"In general, the company needs to think contingently and integrate more security options."
"There is still room for improvement, and it's not advisable even if the organization has grown."
"FortiGate has a client DNS in the firewall, but SonicWall doesn't have that. To create or configure a site-to-site VPN tunnel, we have to give a DNS name. Currently, we have to get the DNS name from a third party and then include it in SonicWall, whereas FortiGate has its own client DNS, so it provides a DNS name, and it does not require a third party. There should be a graphical option to view the network utilization and bandwidth usage."
"The dashboard needs to be improved."
"Monitoring and reporting are areas that need improvement."
"Sophos UTM's firewall is a bit weak, and some of its features lack depth compared to other products like F5."
"It is a pretty straightforward setup, but it should be some sort of documentation that takes you step-by-step to help set it up for your VPC."
"Doesn't provide antivirus for individual computers."
"In short, the UI and UX are the areas of improvement in Sophos UTM and similar solutions compared to Palo Alto."
"The application control is really bad. It needs a lot of enhancements. The traffic shaping and bandwidth control, and application control need a lot of work."
"With Sophos UTM, there is a general rule in the firewall when the country blocking can block some countries from accessing your data. In the current version, you still need to add it by putting in the IP range. This feature would be helpful for administrators and it gives them the advantage to block stuff in less time."
"Sophos should be more user-friendly, have more dashboards, and an easier implementation."
SonicWall TZ is ranked 11th in Firewalls with 19 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 29 reviews. SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Highly acceptable on a small scale, straightforward out the box installation, with a good price point". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and Fortinet FortiOS, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our SonicWall TZ vs. Sophos UTM report.
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