Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs KerioControl comparison

Cisco and GFI are both solutions in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category. Cisco is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.5, while GFI is ranked #13 with an average rating of 9.0. Cisco holds a 3.0% mindshare in ID, compared to GFI’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of GFI users who would recommend it.

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Read 20 Cisco Sourcefire SNORT reviews

2,373 Views
2,017 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

KerioControl

Read 58 KerioControl reviews

7,552 Views
2,341 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

KerioControl

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and KerioControl are network security solutions. KerioControl has the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and value despite SNORT's pricing and support advantages.

Features: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT features advanced threat detection, real-time traffic analysis, and open-source intrusion protection. KerioControl includes firewall capabilities, VPN support, and content filtering, focusing on integrated security management.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could benefit from a simplified deployment process, improved user interface, and enhanced customer support. KerioControl might enhance its malware protection, expand its reporting features, and improve its scalability options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT requires substantial technical expertise for deployment, appealing to knowledgeable network professionals. In contrast, KerioControl offers ease of deployment with straightforward configurations and is praised for accessible and supportive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is attractive for budget-conscious businesses due to its lower initial cost but might have hidden management expenses. KerioControl's higher initial price is offset by its all-in-one suite, offering great ROI with its simplified setup and comprehensive functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. KerioControl Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. KerioControl

August 2026

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Helped 909,725 peers since 2012

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

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

12th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

KerioControl

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

13th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Firewalls (27th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KerioControl is 3.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT	3.0%
KerioControl	3.0%
Other	94.0%

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2772102

Cloud Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Logging and customizable rules have helped improve threat monitoring and detection

The logging is mainly what I consider one of the best features with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. Being able to log and store it in a file allows you to push it to a centralized repository. The logging and reporting help improve incident response. You should always be logging threats, any sort of misconfiguration, and anything that could be an issue. It's important to at least log and monitor it. The basic rules provide a good baseline in assessing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT's ability in providing real-time analytics for threat detection, but as a professional, you should look to constantly modify that baseline. They provide extensive customizability so you can define your own rules. The customizability allows it to be adaptable in protecting against diverse network threats to the constant change.

Read full review

Constantnos Achilleos

Product manger at Asbis Mediteranean

Leveraging geo-tagging and web filtering for enhanced network security

The solution is used for site-to-site VPN connections and it is valued for its cost efficiency and easy connectivity. It is especially beneficial for multi-site VPNs and is used in about fifteen different components KerioControl has provided a financial benefit as it allows purchasing one license…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is rather easy to use."

"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."

"It has a huge rate of protection. It's has a low level of positives and a huge rate of threat protection. It's easy to deploy and easy to implement. It has an incredible price rate compared to similar solutions."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."

"Users have access to intelligent security automation as one of the features, which can easily automate your event impact assessment so your IPS policy tuning can be done as well as your network behavior analysis, and you can do real-time contextual awareness with correlation of events created on your applications, user devices, operating systems, or vulnerabilities, with all of this real-time data captured including your apps and port scans."

"There are a lot of features that I really appreciate with Firepower, which is why I advise most of my customers to go with Firepower."

"If you compare it to other vendors, the technical support from Cisco is excellent."

"The solution is stable."

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT pros

"It works well as it is, and I don't have a problem with how it works."

"With Kerio, everything is just a bit more cohesive; everything fits together, and with Kerio, of course, everything is already there."

"Kerio Control can be scaled easily."

"The firewall and the content filtering options are valuable."

"The flexibility of the system, the capacity to provide the right level of security, and the ability to be integrated into different kinds of infrastructures are the most valuable features."

"In terms of the comprehensiveness of the security features, it does a great job of laying out what it does. It's fairly easy to edit and research. Some of the features were turned on by our IT company and I was able to easily find other features on my own by searching for videos on the internet. I've been able to block certain websites, and content filter, as well as manage some of our bandwidth because we live stream on Sunday. I'm able to dedicate bandwidth for the encoder that goes to the internet. It always has enough bandwidth, no matter how many people are on the network. That's really helpful."

"Its support is very good, and it is stable product."

"I use Kerio Control for user statistics, intrusion detection and prevention (IPS), web filtering, etc."

More KerioControl pros

Cons

"The initial setup is a little difficult compared to other products in the market. It depends on the environment. If we are doing any migration, it might take months in a brown-field environment."

"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."

"The price of this solution could be improved."

"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."

"The utopia is to see everything from one dashboard, but sometimes that's not very possible."

"The customization of the rules can be simplified."

"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."

"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT cons

"One area that confused me a bit when I was building my current network. I use VLANs to have separate functionality on the network, and the appliance I got was the WiFi model, but I discovered that you can't assign WiFi channels to the VLAN. So, you can have WiFi, but its own subnet. You can't run that over the VLAN. Effectively, I can't use the WiFi facility in the appliance and had to purchase a separate web that supports VLANs. In the end, I had to go to GFI support. They confirmed this is just a limited functionality of that device, as it is a low-end device. I don't know if any of their high-end models have a better facility or not."

"There's also room for improvement in the Traffic Rules. We define networks to use a specific outgoing interface, say VSAT, shore, or marine WiFi, which is okay. But then all we have is a checkbox that says "Use other internet interfaces if this one is unavailable." What we would prefer would be to have a priority list. So if VSAT is unavailable, try to use 4G, etc. We haven't really found a reliable way of doing that in the current release."

"Kerio Control could improve by having higher availability and adding a mobile VPN channel. These additions are needed. The VPN is working fine on the Kerio Control but there needs to be a VPN client on the mobile phones, both for iOS and Android. This would be very good for us."

"The one thing that did put me off of the solution was that, after they were taken over by GFI, the licensing and a few other items have gotten very complicated."

"Technical support is not the best. As an example, this past weekend I had an issue; it took me four days to get a hold of their support team, and I'm a premium client."

"The trial duration of the product should be extended."

"Kerio Control has just improved on their biggest problem, which was to introduce better support for high-availability requirements in production."

"My experience with the solutions technical support is fine but they could be faster in responding."

More KerioControl cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know the exact amount, but most of the time when I go to a company with a proposition, they will say, "This thing that you are selling is good, but it's expensive. Why don't you propose something like FortiGate, Check Point, or Palo Alto?" Cisco device are expensive compared to other devices."

"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."

"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."

"We have a three-year license for this solution."

"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."

"The price of Kerio Control could be better, it is a bit overpriced compared to other solutions."

"Search and compare."

"Its initial cost is less as compared to other products. It becomes a bit costly when you pay for the products that you don't use. We paid for almost all the products through subscription, but we are using only a few products. We use EndPointSecurity, Kerio Connect, WebMonitor, and LanGuard. We don't use the rest of the products."

"The price of the solution is reasonable. For additional costs, you can add on more features such as antivirus."

"It's pretty expensive in licensing costs, especially if you use the product longer than one or two years. The licensing costs are still high, which I don't think is reasonable for a product like this."

"The biggest advice that I could probably give people is when you buy the solution be prepared to either buy the unlimited license or buy more licenses than you think. Each user license gives you one employee and each a user gives you five devices. In the world nowadays where everybody has a cellphone, tablet, desktop, and laptop, that's four devices. You still get one more device per person. That covers your servers and back-ends."

"Licensing is easier with Kerio Control. With FortiGate, we realized the licensing is really hectic, because if you skip one year, you have to back pay that year. If you skip two years, you have to back pay two years. With Kerio Control, if a license expires, one year later you can just reactivate and go on."

"KerioControl's pricing is reasonable. The license for KerioControl is annual. It's difficult to specify an exact cost since it varies depending on the number of users and additional software combined with it. For example, a basic box might cover 25 users, but licenses can be purchased starting from 10 users."

More KerioControl pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Construction Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	44
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?

If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five. There are some other tools in the market that are more expensive than Cisco. There are no additional c...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?

I have not had much experience with the community-driven rule set while utilizing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. I don't have experience with recognizing zero-day vulnerabilities, but based on my knowledg...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?

Endpoint protection is the main use case. The main aspect involves specifying different rules, and when network traffic hits these rules, it will try to block the traffic or at least log the traffi...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for KerioControl?

KerioControl offers good pricing as one license covers all features needed without extra payment. The price for the product is rated as ten out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with KerioControl?

Regarding KerioControl's application awareness and control feature, I have not used it much.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for KerioControl?

With KerioControl, we usually use them for site-to-site VPNs for most of our clients. With multiple offices, we use KerioControl as our solution.

See all answers

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Compared 8% of the time

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Sophos UTM vs KerioControl

Compared 7% of the time

OPNsense vs KerioControl

Compared 7% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs KerioControl

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

August 2026

Download Cisco Sourcefire SNORT product report

Buyer's Guide

KerioControl

August 2026

Download KerioControl product report

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT

No data available

Overview

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is a versatile cybersecurity tool offering threat detection, scalability, and integration with Cisco tools. It is recognized for ease of configuration and comprehensive protection, making it suitable for intrusion prevention and firewall applications.

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT provides advanced malware protection and integrates seamlessly with Cisco products. It enables automatic IPS tuning, real-time visibility, and intelligent security automation, which together enhance network security. Users benefit from its URL filtering, email spam elimination, and it delivers low false positives. Though highly effective, feedback highlights a desire for improvements in stability, dashboard effectiveness, traffic blocking customizations, and integration with Cisco DNA Center. Cost concerns and calls for cloud-based deployments also emerge in user feedback. Technical support and performance are also discussed, with VPN configuration posing challenges.

What are the key features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?

Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates network threats efficiently.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing network demands.
Cisco Integration: Works smoothly with existing Cisco infrastructure.
Advanced Malware Protection: Provides comprehensive security against sophisticated threats.
Real-Time Visibility: Offers live insights into network activity.
Automatic IPS Tuning: Adjusts security policies dynamically.

What benefits can be found in user reviews?

Ease of Configuration: Streamlined setup process.
Comprehensive Protection: Low false positive rates ensuring broader security.
Robust Support: Access to extensive Cisco support network.

Organizations primarily deploy Cisco Sourcefire SNORT for network security in sectors like finance and healthcare. Used extensively in data centers with Cisco Firepower, it provides intrusion prevention, URL filtering, and VPN security. Pre-configured settings make it practical for on-premises deployment, ensuring secure user-to-server and server-to-server interactions.

Cisco

KerioControl is a comprehensive network security solution integrating firewall, antivirus, and VPN in an easy-to-use interface for small to medium businesses seeking robust protection.

KerioControl offers a blend of essential security features wrapped in a user-friendly graphical interface that enables effective network management. It supports firewall protection, intrusion detection, real-time monitoring, and flexible VPN capabilities ensuring high reliability and productivity. Despite being suitable for small to medium enterprises, improvements could enhance its overall performance, such as better GUI updates, stronger connectivity, and advanced VPN functionality. Common uses include unified threat management, bandwidth management, remote access, and web filtering.

What are the important features of KerioControl?

Ease of Use: Intuitive interface for effortless security management.
Firewall and VPN Integration: Combines essential security tools seamlessly.
Real-time Monitoring: Offers constant insight into network activities.
Intrusion Detection: Advanced system for prevention and alerts.
Bandwidth Management: Efficient allocation for optimized network usage.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Cost Savings: Economical security solution for smaller businesses.
Productivity Gains: Simplified management increases operational efficiency.
Enhanced Security: Comprehensive coverage with antivirus and malware protection.
Remote Access: Streamlined management of multiple sites and networks.

KerioControl is effectively implemented in industries needing strong security measures, supporting small to medium businesses in sectors like IT services, retail, and education. It's particularly well-suited for companies requiring efficient threat management and convenient internet service management across various sites.

GFI

Sample Customers

CareCore, City of Biel, Dimension Data, LightEdge, Lone Star College System, National Rugby League, Port Aventura, Smart City Networks, Telecom Italia, The Department of Education in Western Australia

Triton Technical, McDonald's

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. KerioControl

August 2026

Free Report: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. KerioControl

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