We performed a comparison between Sophos XGS and WatchGuard Firebox 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."Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are remote access, web filtering, and IPS."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XGS are the ease of use and powerful interface."
"Sophos XGS is profound as a firewall and security product."
"It's easy to deploy and connect."
"It's much faster than the previous firewall, so you can do the work faster."
"It's very easy to manage this solution."
"It's easy to use and user-friendly."
"The feature that I find most valuable is the synchronized security option where the endpoint talks to the firewall."
"The scalability of Sophos XGS is very good."
"Their support is excellent, and the stability is very good."
"WatchGuard has a very easy VPN and branch office VPN setup, so we use those pretty extensively."
"The most valuable features are the VPN and web blocker security."
"If you just plan to use WatchGuard Firebox in your office and not publicly, then it is okay to purchase it. With WatchGuard Firebox, you can manage your users and permissions while also taking care of the basic setup phase in your office."
"From my experience with their customer service team, I would say that they seem quite knowledgeable and fairly quick to respond."
"WatchGuard Firebox's two-factor authentication feature is particularly useful and provides an added layer of protection."
"The most valuables feature of WatchGuard Firebox are the VPNs, and web filtering where we can stop users from going to malicious sites."
"It provides us with Layer 2 and Layer 3 security."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."
"I could not configure sFlow from the FortiGate graphical user interface. I realized that the sFlow configuration is available only from the CLI, and discovered that sFlow is not supported on virtual interfaces, such as VDOM links, IPsec, or GRE."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"I recommend Sophos increase the user capacity of the firewall by 1.5 times. For example, say the firewall can accommodate 1,000 users now, then it should handle a load of 1,500 users."
"We'd always like the solution to be a bit less in terms of cost."
"What could be improved in Sophos XGS is its connectivity with Azure AD. It's best if it could work directly without using any servers locally, or in the data center, and this functionality should be made available in this product."
"Sophos' technical support has degraded in the last couple of years. They seem to need to ask a lot of questions, even with simple problems, and take a long time to provide solutions."
"Sophos configurations are a bit complex."
"In the new release 19, there should be the implementation of a cloud service that you can use to set up the IPSec tunnels, and the SD-WAN from the WAN dashboard, and then you can push that configuration out to every firewall that you have."
"The solution could be easier to manage and configure."
"The first time a person sets it up, they will need training."
"Last year, I had an issue with one of the Fireboxes going down. It was overheated, because my server room became overheated and this fried it."
"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."
"The area where I think this product can be improved is the user interface and the reporting. It can be quite difficult to find the correct logs and to actually find out what is going on. The digging can be time-consuming."
"The way Secure Sign-On authentication is happening needs to be improved. When the Secure Sign-On portal is turned on, anybody who comes into the campus, whether he or she is a staff member or a guest, has to go past the initial portal. One of the shortcomings is the username. It shouldn't allow permutations or combinations with upper or lower cases. For example, when there is a username abc, it shouldn't allow ABC or Abc. It should not allow the same username, but currently, two separate people can go in. Therefore, its authentication or validation should be improved, and the case sensitiveness should be picked up. If I have restricted someone to two devices, they shouldn't be able to use different combinations of the same username and get into the third or fourth device. It shouldn't allow different combinations of alphabets to be used to log in."
"I would like to see more simplified management of the firewall... It's a complicated system to use."
"We were able to take from an older configuration, build a new one quickly, and get it up and running, which didn't take long, but there was some pain around it."
"The drawbacks are just sometimes not having the technical information that we need in order to easily make connections with all of our Internet-based clients."
"An area for improvement is that when we use a web administration link, there is no security."
Sophos XGS is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 58 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Sophos XGS is rated 8.0, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Sophos XGS writes "Highly stable, scalable, and priced well". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, Netgate pfSense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Meraki MX, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Check Point NGFW. See our Sophos XGS vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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