We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is praised for its robust security features, including geofencing, firewalling, IPS, antivirus, and an easy-to-use interface. Sophos XG is highly regarded for its functionality, user-friendly interface, web filtering capabilities, detailed reporting, and seamless integration with other Sophos products.
Fortinet FortiGate-VM could use improvements in key activation, log management, cloud management, MFA offerings, web filter options, application inspection, GUI features, bandwidth issues, VPN connectivity, pricing concerns, performance, and quality control. Sophos XG requires improvements in antivirus features, graphical interface, logging, technical support, initial setup, configuration, functionality, sales policies, firewall upgrades, network control, data protection, bugs, user interface, integration, support, high-availability clusters, scalability, education and training resources, security features, Dynamic IP support, and specific user requests.
Service and Support: The feedback for customer service for Fortinet FortiGate-VM varies, with positive comments regarding the promptness and expertise of the support team with some negative remarks about delayed responses and challenges in accessing information efficiently. The customer service for Sophos XG receives a range of opinions, including compliments for helpful and responsive assistance, as well as complaints about unhelpful and unresponsive support and slow response times.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Fortinet FortiGate-VM is generally uncomplicated and simple, whereas for Sophos XG, it can be considered either effortless or difficult depending on the user's familiarity and technical expertise.
Pricing: The setup cost for Fortinet FortiGate-VM is affordable and less expensive compared to Palo Alto and Check Point. The pricing options for yearly or monthly licenses are flexible. Sophos XG provides a customizable pricing structure based on the needed functionality. The cost varies depending on the model, edition, and activated security modules. In general, both products are reasonably priced and provide good value for their features.
ROI: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is known for its enhanced security and stability features, whereas the Sophos XG is renowned for simplifying management processes and enhancing workflow efficiency.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is the preferred choice when compared to Sophos XG. Users appreciate Fortinet's strong security capabilities, ease of use, simple deployment, intuitive interface, and scalability. They also find features like geofencing, firewalling, IPS, antivirus, and intrusion prevention systems valuable.
"The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"The product offers very good security."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"Fortinet FortiGate has many valuable features, such as IDS, and intrusion detection. It has security features that are in part with the technologies that are available in the market."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"The best part about FortiGate-VM is its strong security."
"The initial setup is very user-friendly."
"Technical support has been super responsive and dedicated to getting any challenges resolved."
"The most valuable features are the web proxy for protection and web gateway for deployment."
"The EPM bundle is a good feature."
"The solution is stable."
"The customer care center of Fortinet is good. For all the requests that we have done, they work as fast as possible, so this is a good point for Fortinet."
"The user interface, stability, and scalability are the most valuable features."
"Dashboard is easy to use and the reporting offers a lot of detail."
"It is very easy to use. You can configure and monitor everything from one unique dashboard."
"The most valuable features are its nice interfaces and configuration. The endpoint is also very good."
"So far, I'm happy that they have recently added a firewall role, so I feel a little more comfortable with the security. The threat management is good."
"The stability of Sophos XG is good, it has good performance."
"Sophos offers great disk encryption, anti protection, and the interface is very user-friendly."
"The antivirus features are valuable."
"The web application firewall reverse proxy is very good."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"It needs an Application Inspection."
"Improvements are needed for the responsive UI and JIT traffic reporting."
"The product may not be as robust as Palo Alto. However, unless you are a big bank, you probably won't need it to be."
"Not a ten because I think that Cisco is better."
"There should be integration with an active directory — with Microsoft."
"The reporting is not as good as it is with other firewalls and it should be improved."
"There should be a bit more automation."
"The solution can improve by adding separate interfaces for proxy and flow-based usage."
"The support engineers of the product are not very tech-savvy, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Everything is working as expected at this moment, but the anti-spam solution in Sophos XG needs to be improved. It needs more granular features and more stability. The anti-spam solution currently doesn't have many features, and we would like to have more features. At this moment, there is no expression filter for anti-spam. We need something to be able to filter subjects or attachments in emails based on the keyword. Sometimes, there is an issue with anti-spam, and Sophos XG suddenly stops processing incoming or outgoing emails. The only solution for this issue is to restart the appliance. Their support should be improved. It takes a long time to escalate a support case from level one to level two."
"The initial setup, specifically when activating the license, is a nightmare and is quite difficult."
"The reports could improve, they do not seem complete and more information could be added."
"Sophos needs improvements made to the console, such as host entry or defining rules directly from it."
"Sophos XG does not have the ability to disconnect a user."
"In feature releases of the solution, I would like there to be an increase in the detection capability."
"For the standard end user, self-based training is necessary. When you get into the Sophos XG firewall and try to start creating NAT rules, it can be a little cumbersome for a novice. It's pretty easy once you know how to do it, but it will be hard for anybody who doesn't have experience."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Sophos UTM, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. Sophos XG report.
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