Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs WatchGuard Firebox comparison

Cisco and WatchGuard are both solutions in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category. Cisco is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.7, while WatchGuard is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.6. Additionally, 95% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of WatchGuard users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 5, 2025

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and WatchGuard Firebox are competing network security solutions. WatchGuard Firebox tends to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and straightforward deployment.

Features: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT provides robust intrusion prevention, including deep packet inspection and open-source flexibility. WatchGuard Firebox offers user-friendly firewall management, advanced threat detection, and seamless integration options.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could enhance its user interface for easier management and improve hardware integration. WatchGuard Firebox might focus on reducing costs and offering more advanced customization features. Both could expand their documentation for better user guidance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WatchGuard Firebox is known for straightforward deployment and strong customer service support. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT requires technical expertise for setup but provides cost-effective customer service options.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is noted for low initial setup costs and delivers value through open-source capabilities. WatchGuard Firebox requires a higher upfront investment but offers significant ROI via its comprehensive features and ease of use.

To learn more, read our detailed Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

July 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

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.

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Jack Poon

Treasury Specialist at Dah Sing Bank

Offers ease of setup and good documentation

When it comes to the product's deployment phase, we have a lot of vendor support. We have a lot of skills here in Hong Kong. Our company doesn't find any problem deploying Cisco solutions. The solution is deployed on an on-premises version. Speaking about the time required to deploy the solution, I would say that we have quite a lot of previous experience with deploying Cisco products. We have our company's standard design document, which we need to follow. We have a standard testing procedure for all those features. We just take out some appropriate parts and then compile them into one document for an individual project. It is actually quite easy for us to do the documentation, so it just takes one or two hours, and we can do the implementation because all the materials and testing procedures are already in our company standard documents, so it is not that difficult for us.

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Rajesh Makwana

Regional Pre-Sales Engineer at Roundrobin Tech

Efficient bandwidth management and secure network access with a strong firewall

The primary use case of the Firebox mainly revolves around bandwidth management, unnecessary web blocking, application control, and protection against brute force attacks. It is also implemented for load balancing, SD-WAN, and branch-to-branch connectivity from one location to another. We also use…

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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

"Fortinet FortiGate is quite popular in my region, so we are implementing Fortinet FortiGate firewalls. Fortinet FortiGate is the best option on the market when it comes to firewalls. It's straightforward to deploy and has good stability and performance."

"Fortinet FortiGate positively provides my clients' organizations with a high return on investment."

"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."

"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use."

"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."

"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."

"It can expand easily."

"Fortinet FortiGate provides superior protection compared to other firewalls, with high processing capabilities."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

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

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

"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."

"I like most of Cisco's features, like malware detection and URL filtering."

"The URL filtering is very good and you can create a group for customized URLs."

"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 tool's most valuable feature is threat detection, which is important because we have multiple layers not only in Cisco."

"Solid intrusion detection and prevention that scales easily in very large environments."

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT pros

"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is its ease of use."

"I recommend Firebox since this device will not let anyone down."

"Zero-trust and threat-hunting services are most valuable."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of use of the interface."

"The analytics are important because if there is an abnormality then it provides that information to us."

"I find that their tech support is excellent. And as a reseller, my relationship with my point of contact is also strong. WatchGuard does a good job of maintaining that."

"We have witnessed an ROI as it has helped with security measures."

"The most valuable feature is the GUI, especially the real-time bandwidth usage report. Also, its integration with WiFi access points is nice."

More WatchGuard Firebox pros

Cons

"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."

"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."

"The support is inadequate. The support staff I have dealt with lately are very rude. Some support staff are not up-to-speed with the technology. They basically read a script."

"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."

"Improvements for Fortinet FortiGate could be made by making it easier to implement on networks and simpler to add users and accounts that utilize this solution. That's basically the only challenge that I see."

"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."

"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."

"In my case, the 101F is not scalable. I faced problems with scalability related to memory. When we hit 100% memory usage, it stops the internet connection, so we need to control the traffic. We cannot increase the memory."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

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

"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."

"The customization of the rules can be simplified."

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

"Performance needs improvement."

"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that. Whenever I go to the technical community with an issue, they will usually say that it is not there yet, but the technical team are working on it. The issues are not insolvable. I think they should just keep working on the product to make sure that the product can become very stable. The technical support is great. I appreciate that. We have a lot of communities supporting Firepower now, so you can find help for whatever issue you have."

"The cloud can be improved."

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

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT cons

"One area for improvement is the limitation in the product portfolio compared to competitors like Fortinet, which offers a broader portfolio including Authentication, VPNs, FortiMail, Sandbox, and Email Security."

"Multi properties could be added to the solution in the future to make it better."

"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."

"The website must provide more information on the product."

"I would like to see more training become available for us."

"What could be improved in WatchGuard Application Control is its price. It could be cheaper. You always want the best price for any solution, but for security products, pricing is usually on the higher side."

"The interface is not the best."

"One other shortcoming is that there is no backup for it. We really haven't figured out how we might solve that problem. We may want to put a duplicate in... With WatchGuard, we just have the one box. If that were to fail, we'd probably be really hurting."

More WatchGuard Firebox cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet FortiGate has different licensing models, depending on what you're going to do. Services included would depend on the license model. Licenses can be renewed annually."

"It's very competitive."

"For the performance that we get, the price is reasonable. There are cheaper options, but they may not deliver the same kind of performance that we want. For the performance they provide, the price is acceptable."

"Fortinet has more device options that are affordable for small businesses than Palo Alto, and its enterprise-level models are also cheaper. Palo Alto also has a separate license for VPN connections and SD-WAN, but FortiGate offers these features standard."

"The price depends on the size of the company. From the beginning, you just want to know the internet bandwidths, speed, and the number of users to be able to offer the right product and model. They have a lot of products in FortiGate according to the size of the company, like 200D and 300D."

"It is somewhat expensive compared to other solutions such as Sophos."

"I would say that all things considered, the pricing is pretty good."

"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable for an SME."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

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

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

"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."

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

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

"It has a very good price. It is not the most expensive one, and it is also not the cheapest one. It is just spot-on in terms of price."

"We had a trade-in offer at the end of our first three-year term. As a result, we pretty much got a free device by buying the three-year subscription. It was around $3,000 for the three-years."

"It is an entry-level product, so the price is cheap."

"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."

"I find the solution to be very affordable."

"The price of WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service is pretty reasonable compared to similar solutions."

"WatchGuard Firebox is a cheap solution."

"It is not expensive. Other products like Fortinet and Check Point are of the same price."

More WatchGuard Firebox pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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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...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?

The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet.

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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 t...

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What needs improvement with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?

Cisco offers the Cisco DNA Center, which is a source that provides crucial information for us to monitor performance,...

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What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?

We are providing our services to all WatchGuard customers in the region.

See all answers

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...

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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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 12% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Fortinet FortiGate IPS vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 21% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 19% of the time

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 18% of the time

Trend Micro TippingPoint Threat Protection System vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 9% of the time

ExtremeCloud IQ vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 8% of the time

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT Competitors

OPNsense vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 6% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 5% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 5% of the time

Sophos XG vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 5% of the time

Sophos UTM vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 4% of the time

More WatchGuard Firebox Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

August 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

August 2025

Download Cisco Sourcefire SNORT product report

Buyer's Guide

WatchGuard Firebox

July 2025

Download WatchGuard Firebox product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

Sourcefire SNORT

WatchGuard Threat Detection and Response, WatchGuard Application Control, WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention, WatchGuard Gateway AntiVirus, WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Fortinet

Snort is an open-source, rule-based, intrusion detection and prevention system. It combines the benefits of signature-, protocol-, and anomaly-based inspection methods to deliver flexible protection from malware attacks. Snort gained notoriety for being able to accurately detect threats at high speeds.

Cisco

WatchGuard Firebox is a high-performance firewall known for its ease of setup, offering robust security with layered protection and centralized management capabilities.

WatchGuard Firebox stands out for its intuitive management and high throughput, addressing security needs with features like VPN, web filtering, and threat detection. Its centralized control and reporting abilities, along with Active Directory integration, make it popular among varied organizations. Its user-friendly interface and ongoing updates enhance usability and reliability. However, there's a call for better cloud-based administration, scalability, and improved integration with third-party vendors.

What are the key features of WatchGuard Firebox?

Ease of Setup: Quick and straightforward installation process.
GUI: User-friendly graphical interface for simplified navigation.
VPN Features: Secure and efficient virtual private network management.
Web Filtering: Advanced filtering for safer browsing experiences.
Threat Detection: Proactive monitoring and detection of cyber threats.

What benefits or ROI should be evaluated?

Centralized Control: Streamlined management from a single point.
High Throughput: Efficient data handling and processing capacity.
Stable Performance: Consistent and reliable operational functionality.
Active Directory Integration: Seamless connection with user directories.
Customer Service: Strong support service for customer inquiries.

WatchGuard Firebox is implemented across industries to secure internet gateways and protect data in multi-site businesses. Its applications span from Unified Threat Management (UTM) and intrusion prevention to compliance support in business environments requiring secure connectivity through VPNs.

WatchGuard

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

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

Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence

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July 2025

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