WatchGuard Firebox Previous Solutions

PA
Administrator at Sulbana Oy

I have used some SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) products and some Cisco products. But very little. Because most of the time, I use WatchGuard Firebox.

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GT
Director of Information Technology at a recreational facilities/services company with 201-500 employees

WatchGuard was already installed here when I came onboard and that was one of the reasons I got hired. I'd had experience with WatchGuard before and I knew about the product and I could support it. They brought me in for that. And now, over the last four years, I've gone through and upgraded the hardware. The hardware was older hardware, it was out of date, so I went through an upgrade and got it back on a maintenance plan.

In working with our WatchGuard vendor, they're the ones who emphasized that we should be getting off of Remote Desktop Protocol from Microsoft because it was being hacked so badly. They're the ones who said that WatchGuard has this SSL VPN and it's free, so they just configured it and away we went.

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SR
President and Owner at Peak Communication Systems, Inc.

We see cases where several of our clients are switching from a different firewall to WatchGuard. With Cisco, it depends on who's supporting it. SonicWall seems to give us a bit more problems when it comes to interfacing with IP telephone devices or if we're doing SIP trunking.

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Buyer's Guide
WatchGuard Firebox
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about WatchGuard Firebox. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IP
Country Head at LS Systems Philippines

WatchGuard's offerings are invaluable and I believe they provide superior security solutions compared to Barracuda and Juniper. WatchGuard's products are versatile and suitable for a wide range of organizations from small to large, yet they may not be fully recognized in the enterprise sector due to messaging and marketing strategies that focus on small to medium-sized environments.

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it_user976371 - PeerSpot reviewer
Operations Manager at DLL Technologies

I used a Sophos firewall that was already installed when we took over the account. The Sophos Web GUI is not that easy to navigate and completely different from most of the other firewalls out there. We switched because I professionally feel that the WatchGuard security products are superior over most of the other brands out there and their Web GUI is extremely easy to navigate and use. 

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JG
IT Manager at WTS Media (Wholesale Tape & Supply)

It was so long ago, but I used some PC-based proxies at the time. So there was something before this solution, but my first, actual, dedicated appliance was WatchGuard.

It might be that we purchased this back in the late '90s, because our previous solutions were back during the dial-up age. It wasn't until we started getting always-on internet in the late '90s or early 2000s that we looked at a firewall. Someone suggested WatchGuard.

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Ronald Lewis - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Invest Barbados

We used Check Point previously.

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RA
Network Administrator at PT Lautan Luas Tbk

Fortinet is faster to configure and access policies than WatchGuard.

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JB
IT Manager at a engineering company with 11-50 employees

We didn't have anything like this before, so it's not necessarily saving me time, but it did add a whole other level of security to our network, which we really appreciate.

We had a small-business Cisco basic solution. They called it a security router, but it was just a small device that sat on the shelf and which mostly provided internet access. It had very simple firewall controls: two or three check-boxes to do basic filtering. So we did have something, but it was nowhere near the level of the WatchGuard.

We switched to WatchGuard because we did not have a UTM device like we do with WatchGuard. We needed to upgrade the old device because it wasn't performing well anyway. I suggested that we needed something more appropriate, or with more layers of security than what our other small, entry-level device was offering. We did review solutions from a few other firewall vendors and WatchGuard offered, in my opinion, the best protection for the cost.

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JW
IT Manager at Horizon Forest Products LP

We had a third-party MPLS network that managed all of the cloud-based software but it was very expensive. It was similar in effect, but it was a third-party, as opposed to WatchGuard which is self-managed. The main reason we switched was the pricing.

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PG
Owner at a construction company with 51-200 employees

I had an inexpensive perimeter device, a $100 Linksys product. Behind that, I had DNS, DHCP, NTP, print servers, and my domain management. I use Samba for that. I just used whatever firewall was there.

I switched to WatchGuard because I was experimenting with this VAR—he's a friend—to see if I could take what I've done and to get to know some of his tags and put some sort of a service agreement on my infrastructure, through his resources. We talked about it and they were seemingly interested. They do documentation or I might bring them in to do some of the coding projects I suffer with.

My experience has been, in my unique situation, that when I end up bringing somebody in from a third-party, it's more work to train them. You're training somebody from a VAR and they are going to charge $150 an hour or so. That's a pretty healthy investment. The training would take a lot of my time. If I take that time and just solve my problem on my own, I get a two-for-one. I don't have to pay for it outside the company.

But that's why I was bringing in this WatchGuard device in my particular situation. I was just experimenting and seeing if I could find a guy at this VAR whom I felt was worth investing more in, and having him be a third-party to maintain my system if it goes down or I get hit by a bus.

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FC
IT Director at Wise Ally Holdings Limited

There was no application control in our old solution and we wanted to reduce the risk of being attacked from outside. So we looked for a UTM model and the cost-benefit of the WatchGuard Firebox was one of the best.

I did a little bit marketing research locally and listened to recommendations from some partners in Hong Kong.

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MA
Technical & Pre-Sales Manager at GateLock

Quite some time ago, I had experience with Sophos products as a distributor in Egypt.

I also have experience with products by Fortinet. I have been evaluating Fortinet because they are one of our competitors.

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HA
IT Manager at Yamazen Inc

We were using Cisco Professional Services whenever we had to tweak our IP forms or QoS and those advanced types of changes. The outside consultants were costing us money. With WatchGuard we can do the setup by ourselves. We tried it and found we could do it.

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ZR
Lead IT Systems Engineer/Solutions Architect at Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council

We used Palo Alto before WatchGuard Firebox, and the reason we switched was because of some failures in the Palo Alto firewall.

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SM
Global Head ICT (CITP & MIE) at The Aga Khan Academies

We had Cisco ASA Firewall. It was a very simple firewall.

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HC
Enterprise Architect at a wellness & fitness company with 10,001+ employees

I had been using SonicWall for about ten years. I got a little frustrated with them at around the time that Dell purchased them. The WatchGuard UI is easier to manage and easier to work through. I ultimately became dissatisfied with the service and ongoing costs of the SonicWall devices.

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GH
Network Administrator at a retailer

We have always been using Cisco. They decided that WatchGuard would be beneficial to keep because it's GUI and it's a lot easier to work with than other products, especially for junior admins.

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JG
Network Administrator at Peace Bridge

We switched from WatchGuard's previous model due to age of hardware. We went from something that was seven or eight years old to something from the last year or two.

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JR
Woodworker at Creative Woodworking NW

I used Ubiquity. I switched because it was not stable and it would not provide a lot of the services that I needed.

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RM
Sr. Systems Administrator at a individual & family service with 201-500 employees

I moved from FortiGate. The reasons i switched include price - WatchGuard is a lot more cost-effective than FortiGate - and complexity. FortiGate is very complicated, had little documentation which relied heavily on cookbooks, and a lot of command-line required to get some common things to work. WatchGuard is very well-documented and everything fits within their configuration. Nothing that I've encountered has to be done through the command line. And when your subscription expires on the WatchGuard, it will still pass traffic, if you configure it to. FortiGate will only allow one connection out. 

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AH
IT Manager at a performing arts with 51-200 employees

We used SonicWall Next or Dell. 

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JJ
IT Specialist at Art Students League

We were looking for a solution. The engineer that I had knew of WatchGuard and thought it was probably a good idea, and that was the whole strategy. He had worked with it before and he was the lead engineer when we implemented it. He was right about WatchGuard, it is a good product.

We were using Ciscos. They were aged and out of date. They were pretty well done. Our options were to get new Ciscos and get them configured. Of course the deployment and hardware were expensive. And the maintenance or the management, in the long run, was much more expensive.

With the WatchGuard, the initial hardware was less expensive. And the implementation, because it didn't require as much training, was much less expensive. And the management is much less. When I say "much less," I'm talking about 25 percent of the cost of what the similar Cisco would be.

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MS
Ingénieur - Traitement des eaux /Mécanique de procédé at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The company used Fortinet before using WatchGuard Firebox, though I don't have information on which Fortinet product and why the company switched to WatchGuard Firebox.

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Matthew Cooper - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Network Administrator at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

Previously, we used FortiGate. FortiGate is a much more mature product. I feel like FortiGate is a lot easier to work with. Firebox, you're able to achieve the same outcomes, but it can be a lot more complicated to do so.

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DE
Network Administrator at Niedersächsischer Turner-Bund e.V.

Before using WatchGuard, we had a Linux server with iptables. We switched to Firebox because it is much easier to administrate. It has real boxes with a graphical interface, instead of command line administration.

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JM
IT Director at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees

I moved here in 2013 and the company was using the WatchGuard at that point.

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RP
IT Manager at INSULATION DISTRIBUTORS, INC

Previously, I built a Linux box.

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EK
ICT Manager at a maritime company with 11-50 employees

I don't have any comparison to make with a solution that's on the same level as WatchGuard Firebox. We had some experience with all of the Cisco firewalls, but they didn't have the same level of security that we have with our existing firewall. Those were quite old, so I cannot really compare that old technology with something that is so new. 

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RM
Owner / CEO at Midwest Technology Specialists LLC.

The complexity of configuring a Sonic Wall, for example, is much, much greater than that of a WatchGuard. Identical tasks can be completed in a WatchGuard in a fraction of the time as a SonicWall. When comparing similar models, the performance of Meraki is far inferior to the WatchGuard. Its capabilities are inferior to WatchGuard. It's a simple cloud interface. Meraki's simple cloud interface is probably more appropriate for a less experienced engineer. FortiGate lacks some advanced features that WatchGuard has, but my predominant issue with FortiGate is that when all the unified threat management utilities are enabled, performance on FortiGate is inferior. Although it has capabilities, when fully enabled it does not perform as well as WatchGuard.

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JR
Network Administrator at Advanced Software Designs

We tried a software-based solution. I don't even remember what it was now.

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MA
Technical & Pre-Sales Manager at GateLock

As I work as a services provider, I have used many different solutions. I find WatchGuard Firebox provides very good value. as you find in the following points "Not everything":-

1. Configuration migration between boxes.

2. More flexible while applying traffic management.

3. Best performance.

4. Security layers and its dependencies.

5. Protocol oriented.

6. Rapid deploy feature that it let you make a total configuration remotely for a box on its default factory mode.

7. total protection for inbound and outbound traffic by applying the policies with a deep understanding of the traffic. 

8. The DNS security and how it stops the malicious DNS requests on the scale of network security and its endpoint for mobile users to apply the same while they are outside the environment.

9. SD-WAN feature and how it deals with lines quality by its Jitter, loss, and latency.

10. The exception for sites, ports, and IPs, it has a huge variety and you can do it at many levels. Before the policies starting already in the default threat protection, Or in the global settings but after the policies starting to scan then you can avoid all of that per policy per protection type which is meaning that you can expect something from geolocation or WebBlocker or APT Blocker, etc...

11. there are some other features in the box Access Portal, Application Control, APT Blocker, Botnet Detection, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Gateway AntiVirus, DNSWatch, Geolocation, IntelligentAV, Intrusion Prevention Service (IPS), Reputation Enabled Defense (RED), spamBlocker, Threat Detection and Response, and WebBlocker.

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JL
Information Technology Specialist at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees

We were just using on system firewalls. We were getting to the point where we needed to consider a network-based solution of a physical firewall. WatchGuard came highly recommended from our consultants when we partnered with POA.

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MS
I.T. Co-ordinator at National Lotteries Control Board

I don't have a lot of experience with other firewalls. There was a Cisco Certified office that I was exposed to before we moved to the WatchGuard Firebox. It felt like the WatchGuard was a lot easier to use, and easier to set up than the Certified Office device.

The primary reason that we went with Firebox was its cost. It is very economical and it provided us with all the security functions that we were looking for at the time. And the throughput was more than what we required, so it was a very cost-effective device to deploy on our network.

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AS
Network Administrator at Abona Deutschland GmbH

Before Firebox we used a Sophos firewall. We switched because the WatchGuard firewall offers a broad set of features and parameters that were lacking in the Sophos firewall. Additionally, the WatchGuard solution was cheaper.

WatchGuard has a comprehensive antivirus system included in the firewall and that was important for us. Sophos’ antivirus features were weak, in comparison.

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TS
Computer Programmer at Crestwood Inc

WatchGuard was pretty much our first solution like this. We did not use anything else before it.

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AR
Owner at Thermioninc.com

I've had WatchGuard ever since I put my network together. All I've used is WatchGuard.

They were discontinuing support for the last one that I had. Therefore, I had to upgrade to the M200.

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MD
COO/CTO at a pharma/biotech company with 11-50 employees

I previously used FortiGate. I moved from the FortiGate brand on account of when you turn on all of the FortiGate capabilities (80-C & 90-D), the protection is active but your data speeds drop significantly.  We had a Verizon FiOS fiber optic true gigabit subscription.  I noticed data rate drops as our 3rd party support team also noticed.  Upon system review, the function of the reduced data speeds was the Fortigate capacity.  We were literally locking up where we couldn't communicate. So, I went with the WatchGuard XTM T-70.

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FB
Infrastructure Administrator at CFA-INSTA

We previously used Cisco but there came a time when we needed to move to a more updated product. 

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RL
Technical Consultant at Rainbow Security

I have experience with Check Point UTM, and I find that this application has approximately the same functionality, but it is cheaper.

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SS
Technical Support at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

We switched because WatchGuard is cheaper. An old product that we previously sold was quite expensive, especially the security renewal after every year, but WatchGuard offered quite a competitive price and in a bundle that was much easier to understand. Cyberoam, for example, was quite complex to set up under licensing. Cyberoam was bought by Sophos. So we switched to WatchGuard for the price.

The main highlight is price. The client has quite a tight budget so we can offer much more with WatchGuard.

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GH
VP at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We didn't have a previous solution. It's always been a Firebox.

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GS
Network Engineer at Vanderburgh Police Department

We used Cisco previously. Cisco didn't have the features that I needed, like the proxies. A Cisco box would probably do that now, but back then they wouldn't. So we switched to WatchGuard.

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GP
System Analyst at a transportation company

As far as I know, WatchGuard is the only one that our company has used. We like the product enough. We're buying another appliance because our support ran out on one of our boxes. We're continuing to buy WatchGuard stuff because it does what we need it to do, it's priced reasonably well, and we like the support and usability.

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PE
CFO at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

We previously used Juniper and SonicWall.

Switched at the time because we had IT personnel working for us with WatchGuard expertise and preference.

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Surjith Cs - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr.System Administrator at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

I previously used FortiGate.

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JP
Principal at a consumer goods company with 1-10 employees

We did not have a wireless solution before Firebox. The main reason we went with it was the security protocols. They were more robust on this device.

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LP
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

We have a regional office in Hong Kong, and our director and the owner of the company lives there. He prefers this solution so both companies can have the same product. That makes it great for negotiation and troubleshooting.

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SS
Technical Support at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

We used an older model of the WatchGuard solution, the T50 e-series, but we have replaced it. We received a discount on a bigger unit from Fortinet. However, we recently sold a WatchGuard M200 and I had the opportunity to use the product. Comparing what I see now to what it was before, there are a lot of good changes. Not so many in the GUI, so there is familiarity there, but I think that it is faster now.

My customer for this solution did not previously have a firewall. It was just an open internet router.

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Buyer's Guide
WatchGuard Firebox
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about WatchGuard Firebox. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.