We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate vs SonicWall NSa based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Fortinet FortiGate has the winning edge in this comparison. Customers are more satisfied with Fortinet FortiGate’s scalability, robust features, and ROI.
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, as it is with other Fortinet products."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"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."
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"I like this solution because we are focused on VPN and have many brands that need to link a VPN and have security, like ransomware, spyware, and basic protection."
"Setup is easy. Anyone with basic firewall experience can do it."
"We have utilized all the features. The most valuable are the URL filtering by category, DMZ zoning, load balancing and site-to-site VPN."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the GUI pre-filtering and the ATP (advanced threat protection)."
"This product has kept us safe and we haven't had any breaches."
"It's very simple to use and the support is great."
"Deep packet inspection and intelligent application control are the most valuable features. It is a very updated solution. It is very current as compared to other brands and vendors."
"The most valuable features to us are the security services which is a critical factor in our deployment. Today we need to have all the security services enabled because firewalls are not enough."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"The cloud features and integration could be improved."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"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."
"A room for improvement in SonicWall NSa is the log server because it could be more user-friendly compared to Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks. My company has many rule sets up for review, so sometimes, my team needs to use Excel for filtering, but the UI cannot support the Excel function."
"The stability is not there. The features are there, but they are not stable. They need to improve on this product because I feel that they have launched this product without much R&D."
"In terms of improvement, features like App Control do not work properly"
"One issue with the solution is that no authorization or authentication features exist."
"This product is unable to secure access to endpoints for our external employees."
"We're not particularly fond of the way it generally performs. We are finding ourselves rebooting often. There are freeze-ups and that kind of thing. The stability needs to improve exponentially."
"The thing main thing is that there's no user admin and in other firewalls, we can enable the scalable features, but SonicWall doesn't have that feature."
"The user interface could be better."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 20th in Firewalls with 77 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and Palo Alto Networks WildFire, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Netgate pfSense. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
