We performed a comparison between OPNsense 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."Advanced routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PBR). It gives you a seamless and simple integration into a large network."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"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."
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."
"URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me."
"The most valuable features are reporting, the Sensei plugin, and firewall capabilities."
"It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"I have found the solution has some great features overall, such as guest access capabilities, dashboards, and ease of use. There is plenty of documentation and support and it has the plugins that I needed."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"The most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility."
"OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
"The initial setup was easy."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is reporting, it is flexible. I can monitor the end user's devices, even when they are not on my network. It has good drill-down capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the simple-to-use interface."
"It is a stable product... I rate the solution's technical support a nine out of ten...The initial setup is quite easy because they have all the information on their website."
"The most valuable features of Sophos UTM are the ease of use, it is very user-friendly. You can understand what they implement in the new firmware, and it's easy to manage the firewalls."
"It helped to connect our satellite offices to the main Amazon infrastructure in a circular way."
"With Sophos, we have not had any incidents this year. The security provided has been good. It has proven to be okay for our needs."
"Scaling out cannot be easier, as there are many migration paths."
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet."
"The cloud features and integration could be improved."
"Compared to some other products, the DLP is not at par for the moment."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"The reporting in Fortinet FortiGate could improve. Customers are having to purchase additional reporting components. When I have used the Sophos solution it is a complete solution, in Fortinet FortiGate you have to use additional tools to have the features needed."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"On the customer-side, because I'm a small business, I need a cheaper or free solution option."
"When using the solution at the beginning was difficult. There was a steep learning curve."
"The only thing that I would like to see improved is the Insight or the NetFlow analysis part. It would be good to have the possibility to dig down on the Insight platform. Right now, we can easily do only a few analyses. If this page becomes more powerful, it surely will be a well-adopted platform."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"You will need additional training before you can actually start to use it."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"The solution is not scalable."
"It does have built-in policies, which enable you to disable USB devices, etc. It would be nice if they had more policies because there are not that many of them."
"Sophos should be more user-friendly, have more dashboards, and an easier implementation."
"Finding information about Sophos’ sizing guidelines can actually be difficult. Also, Sophos does not make it clear what they mean by “users” when you are sizing a firewall, which then leads to undersized implementations."
"The memory and processing were problematic. The interface could be better."
"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."
"They could use more SSL VPN support."
"Stay away from the wireless models, since you cannot put them in HA. They start to give you some weird issues once you start getting into multiple SSIDs and networks."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, IPFire and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall and Untangle NG Firewall. See our OPNsense vs. Sophos UTM report.
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