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Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vs WatchGuard Firebox comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
589
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Bitdefender GravityZone Ext...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (29th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (12th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (27th)
WatchGuard Firebox
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
131
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (12th), Firewalls (10th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (6th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Application Control (4th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch
A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service
I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.
reviewer2165952 - PeerSpot reviewer
Company Advisor
Automated protection has reduced our management time and keeps all client environments consistently secure
Reporting in Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) could be improved. It has some reporting in it, but it's a little cumbersome to work with, so the reporting that is there could be improved. The analytics dashboards of Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) are quite useful, and they are nice in that we can see an overview very quickly and drill down into specific issues or specific clients. The dashboards are quite good, though it would be nice if we had the same with automated reports. It would be much more useful for us to have that via email or having a report. The only downside that we find is that the product is a little bit slow.
PS
CEO at ajuntament del Prat
Network protection has improved with stronger VPN connectivity but administration remains complex
Deploying WatchGuard Firebox was quite easy, but we have had some problems regarding the VPN and the administration of the tool and the two firewalls that we have. When comparing WatchGuard Firebox with our previous solution, Palo Alto, we have had some problems in administration because of the tools. I think that they have some aspects in their system that are cloud-provided, but they also have an on-premise solution, which makes this combination good. Although I should say that when compared to Palo Alto, we have taken a step backwards. In general, I would rate WatchGuard Firebox around 6-7; it is a good firewall, but they lack good administration tools. We experience many problems with the performance and administration tools on the web, including several issues with VPNs.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution effectively controls browsing traffic."
"We are using this solution to filter communication to and from the website or our site, and we also use it to create a VPN connection for all of our sites in the world."
"Their interface is very easy to use, it is without bugs."
"The most effective features for threat prevention are the IPS, content filter, and SD-WAN capabilities."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) 's most valuable features are reporting and filtering."
"The key features include SD-WAN, firewall use, intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, and application control."
"The ECC management and the GUI that offers single interface management are the most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate."
"The threat detection rates are exceptionally good, better than most of the competition."
"The best thing about Bitdefender is that it has got top-notch features and it is not tied to specific countries like some other antivirus tools."
"The best features in the product, as a reseller, are the integrated SOC; integration with a SOC is one of the advantages."
"I find Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus to be a pretty good solution for the mid-level market, specifically for organizations with up to two hundred and fifty users."
"The product is easy to use."
"I find Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus to be a pretty good solution for the mid-level market, specifically for organizations with up to two hundred fifty users. I like that it is an averagely priced solution. It also has a straightforward installation that can be completed within three to five minutes. Its technical support is also good enough."
"Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus is highly stable."
"We are using Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus for the threat protection and security of our network."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the correlation of logs from different devices."
"The most valuables feature of WatchGuard Firebox are the VPNs, and web filtering where we can stop users from going to malicious sites."
"The solution has increased productivity with our outside salespeople being able to connect into their computers and use those remotely."
"One of the most valuable features is the Geolocation. Because we aren't a multinational corporation, it allows me to look at things which might be suspicious to make sure that they are legitimate transactions rather than people sniffing around the network."
"I have far less (50-75%) less admin time trying to figure out why our system is so slow; that's gone."
"WatchGuard Firebox provides benefits in terms of security, time saving, resource saving, and cost savings."
"WatchGuard does what it says it does; definitely use it if you want to block applications."
 

Cons

"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"The licensing model and pricing need improvement."
"We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction."
"In my opinion, Fortinet FortiGate could be improved by making the appliance smaller than what we have here, as it is pretty big."
"In their IPS Web Security Gateway, the reporting functions need to be a little bit more user-friendly for how to get the reports from it."
"The system can slow down when inspections are carried out."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"I would like automatic issue fixing for users without needing to physically open the PC. I'd prefer updates and fixes from the cloud to avoid headaches and save time."
"Some customers would like additional features that aren't available through the current GravityZone platform. Some feedback has been about the deletion of other software not going smoothly during the installation of Bitdefender, particularly the removal of previous software like Sophos."
"The solution seems to be pretty amateur for an EDR solution, and it should be more in sync in terms of features, with solutions such as FireEye and SentinelOne."
"Adding a feature like Data Loss Prevention would be beneficial."
"Detection and response is a disadvantage that could be improved."
"Reporting in Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) could be improved."
"The solution seems to be pretty amateur for an EDR solution, and it should be more in sync in terms of features, with solutions such as FireEye and SentinelOne."
"Some customers would like additional features that aren't available through the current GravityZone platform."
"The pricing could be improved. It is definitely one of the more expensive products, though you can't really compare it to Ubiquiti or SonicWall."
"The solution isn't what I would consider feature-rich."
"The software base, the management piece that goes onto a server, is not as user-friendly as I would like."
"An area for improvement is that when we use a web administration link, there is no security."
"There is a problem with the RAM - it's eating up resources. The RAM utilization sometimes reaches up to 80% - 95%, and what we do is just restart the firewall."
"They could expand the amount of applications that are on the list, but it's pretty intensive anyway, so it's pretty good."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say their web blocker feature; it is still quite a confusing setup, especially when you want to filter out a particular category for granularity."
"A 12-hour power outage... got our batteries."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think that the pricing is fair."
"Its price is good."
"I think price-wise, the solution is totally reasonable since it has many products to serve, starting from small homes to massive scale sites."
"It is too expensive for us. My organization is very small, and we have a total of ten users. We have three internal users and seven external users. The FortiGate 100D series is too expensive for renewing the licenses."
"Fortinet FortiGate allows you to purchase licenses for hardware and software."
"There is a subscription-based model to use Fortinet FortiGate. We pay annually for the solution along with the support. If you want to have all the updates, and security patches you will need to renew your support."
"The solution is cheap."
"Compared to other firewall products, it's a little cheaper in terms of pricing."
"Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus is pretty average, meaning it's not cheaper, but it's pretty good. It has average pricing."
"We have purchased licenses for the use of Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus. The price of the solution is reasonable but could be better."
"We don't have any other costs other than the licensing stuff."
"It is an entry-level product, so the price is cheap."
"I usually tell people that it's really affordable as well, particularly compared to Cisco."
"It costs me about $800 a year."
"We pay about $3,500 every three years."
"WatchGuard had a very competitive price. It was only 10 to 20 percent more than a single instance device but with that extra cost it provided a second load balancing device... unlike other brands whose method of hardware and software licensing would have doubled our cost."
"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."
"The pricing was in line with everyone else; maybe slightly higher."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Construction Company
13%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business364
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise190
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business95
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus?
The pricing and licensing of Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is reasonable. We moved fr...
What needs improvement with Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus?
Reporting in Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) could be improved. It has some reporting i...
What is your primary use case for Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus?
Our customers typically use Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) primarily as an antivirus s...
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We are providing our services to all WatchGuard customers in the region.
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We just use it as a secondary WiFi device. We're a small office and we needed to set up a WiFi device for a few of ou...
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We're a hospital and we use it for developing our incoming and outgoing policies, and we also use it for VPN.
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
GravityZone Ultra Plus
WatchGuard Threat Detection and Response, WatchGuard Application Control, WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention, WatchGuard Gateway AntiVirus, WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
Archdiocese, Northstar, SeSa, W&W Informatik, Yamaha Motor Europe
Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence
Find out what your peers are saying about Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vs. WatchGuard Firebox and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.