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ESET Inspect 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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
ESET Inspect
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
49th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WatchGuard Firebox
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
143
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (12th), Firewalls (11th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (7th), Application Control (4th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ESET Inspect is 1.0%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WatchGuard Firebox is 1.4%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
WatchGuard Firebox1.4%
ESET Inspect1.0%
Other93.8%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
Cees Van Den Haak - PeerSpot reviewer
ICT Manager at Bouwbedrijf de Vries en Verburg BV
A product with an easy setup phase that helps manage attacks and vulnerabilities
The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that you can manage and react to vulnerabilities and attacks on all the workstations or laptops. You can put certain workstations and isolation. With ESET PROTECT, you see only one machine that is protected, but with ESET Inspect, you see all the machines that are protected in an environment.
reviewer2805000 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Administrator at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Centralized security management has improved VPN reliability and simplified daily operations
WatchGuard Firebox is a strong and reliable platform overall, but there are a few areas where improvements could make the experience even better. One area is the user interface and navigation in some management tools. While the platform is powerful, certain configurations and troubleshooting workflows can feel less intuitive compared to some newer cloud-native firewall platforms. Another point is reporting and log analysis. Although the logging features are very useful, deeper analytics and more customizable reporting dashboards would make security monitoring much more effective. Firmware upgrades and policy synchronization can sometimes require careful planning to avoid security interruptions. Overall, the core security and VPN functionality are very solid, but improving usability, reporting, and automation would make the platform even stronger. One area that could be improved is the learning curve for new administrators. While experienced engineers can work with the platform effectively, some advanced networking and security configurations can be a bit complex for junior technicians. More guided configuration workflows, smarter recommendations, and simplified troubleshooting tools would make onboarding easier. Another improvement would be more flexible reporting customization for executive-level and client-facing reports.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There has been a significant reduction of approximately 70% to 80% in our internal MTTR and MTTD metrics, now around five to eight minutes whereas previously it was hours, which has helped tremendously."
"Since using Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, our MTTR has reduced, which means the mean time to resolve any ticket has been reduced."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks saves time in various ways, although the user interface is fairly standard."
"One of the main benefits of the solution is its intelligence to correlate the events into an incident."
"But overall, when we speak about security and protection, they are one of the top providers."
"The live terminal is probably the best thing ever. It gives you the access to get straight onto any machine."
"Cortex XDR is stable, offering high quality and reliable performance."
"What I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is that it is a comprehensive solution that contains everything the organization may need when using endpoints."
"ESET Enterprise Inspector's most valuable feature is EDR."
"Rules are the most valuable feature of ESET Inspect. They are created through XML language, and they track and filter events from endpoints. If the event matches the rule, the rule is triggered. Exceptions are the second most valuable feature because it gives you the power to filter false positives in large numbers. The third most valuable feature is the Learning mode that facilitates making exceptions for known processes with a good reputation."
"Scalability-wise, it is a very good solution."
"The rules are the best and most useful features."
"ESET Enterprise Inspector's greatest asset lies in its user-friendly interface, which allows for easy navigation and thorough analysis of incidents."
"I find the multilayered endpoint security the most valuable feature."
"The product's most valuable features are its performance and stability."
"This solution is easy to install, setup and monitor."
"All of the features have been valuable. There's nothing on my M270 that I'm not using. If you have remote access, you can see how many users are coming from the outside world to be connected to the systems, through the virus systems that we have behind the firewall, in order to gain access to their files and do their work. We can also see how long they stay online and whether these connections are closed forcefully or for any other reasons, such as a glitch or some kind of misbehavior, to see if internet traffic is optimized and if that particular traffic is under company policies, concerning which websites were visited."
"WatchGuard does what it says it does; definitely use it if you want to block applications."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"On a scale of one to 10, I would rate the technical support of the WatchGuard Firebox a 10."
"Intrusion Prevention is my primary focus so that's what I find most useful. The why is straightforward: It's to prevent intrusion."
"If you just plan to use WatchGuard Firebox in your office and not publicly, then it is okay to purchase it. With WatchGuard Firebox, you can manage your users and permissions while also taking care of the basic setup phase in your office."
"Hands down, it's one of the best firewalls I have ever worked with."
"Basically, we have received a good return on investment."
 

Cons

"The only issues that we have are, one the cost, two the dashboard is not very intuitive, even though you can drill down within the dashboard, we usually have to gather information from other sources to determine locations and if its a false positive."
"The solution should offer more dashboards and they should be better customized."
"It automatically detects security issues. It should be able to protect our network devices while operating autonomously."
"It is not easy to sell Cortex XDR, not because it isn't a good tool. Its marketing needs to be improved."
"The setup is quite easy. We had appropriate support from the manager. One thing that was missing was the integration part."
"It would be better if they could educate the customers more. Some sort of seminars and roadshows will help educate the customers and show what the product can do. The price could be better. It would also help if they had a team for deployment and support."
"I would like to see some additional features related to email protection included."
"I would rate it an 8 rather than a 10 mainly because there is still room to improve the user experience around complex investigations, including alert tuning and third-party integration."
"The solution could improve the consumption of resources. The RAM and CPU usage increases during usage which can cause issues. We have three separate services and it would be beneficial if all were executed from one agent limiting the over usage of system resources."
"It may be difficult for a first-time customer to understand all of the functions that are available to him."
"The product is complex to configure, and there are too many errors that are not errors, making it an area that can be considered for improvement."
"One area that needs improvement for the product is ransomware protection, which does not offer complete security."
"It is not a stable product. We were disappointed in the stability of this product in comparison to McAffee."
"The platform's price could be better."
"Every vendor is working on making the job of SOC analysts easier, with fewer false positives and more precise detections. ESET uses LiveGrid technology that provides feedback on the reputation of files and operations. It's hard to eliminate all of the false positives, but hopefully, we'll see some improvement with the advances in AI."
"They need to stop the VLAN limitation. They have a VLAN limitation on the size of their boxes. It is the worst thing ever. They basically sell their boxes by the size and the number of VLANs it can handle, which is a real issue. You spend a couple of thousand dollars for a firewall, and you can only do 30 VLANs, which is extremely silly, as a matter of fact. It would be really great to have something for easier mass rule changes. It also needs a drag-and-drop function so that you don't have to constantly duplicate firewall rules. It would be nice to have such a feature because you got one WatchGuard, and you want to mirror its config and change a couple of things in another one and move some things around. It is not as easy as you would necessarily think. It is kind of expensive, and its pricing can be a little better for sure."
"While the management of interfaces is straightforward, certain advanced configurations can become complex in large deployments, as it mainly targets small to mid-cap industries."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"The solution needs to improve its accessibility."
"The reporting isn't so good. If they worked to improve this aspect of the solution, it would be much stronger."
"It's very hard to get information from their website, for exactly what I need to do. Sometimes I end up having to open a lot of support tickets... It's a navigational issue which makes it hard to find what I'm looking for and it's just so broad."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"This is an expensive solution."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"Every customer has to pay for a license because it doesn't work with what you get from a managed services provider."
"The pricing and licensing are the big issue now, in my opinion. If the price was less than other companies, or a one-time charge for service was available, I think there would be more users of this solution."
"The platform's licensing is affordable and straightforward."
"This is true in the case of licensing, we do not have the most expensive products, and we don't have the cheapest product, it's somewhere in the middle. Perhaps a little higher from the middle, but we are known for what we provide to our customers, and they are pleased."
"I feel it is a very expensive product."
"The platform is expensive; it could be cheaper."
"I usually tell people that it's really affordable as well, particularly compared to Cisco."
"It is an entry-level product, so the price is cheap."
"Each one, for the primary unit, was $8,600 and the High Availability unit was $2,000. That's with three years of subscription and support and the Total Security Suite."
"The price of the WatchGuard Firebox is reasonable."
"It's an affordable tool"
"As per my knowledge, the product is more affordable than alternatives."
"I find the solution to be very affordable."
"Their price point worked, which is the reason why we stayed with WatchGuard."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business104
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

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Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
ESET Enterprise Inspector
WatchGuard Threat Detection and Response, WatchGuard Application Control, WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention, WatchGuard Gateway AntiVirus, WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Mitsubishi Motors, Allianz Suisse, Cannon, T-Mobile
Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence
Find out what your peers are saying about ESET Inspect vs. WatchGuard Firebox and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.