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.
"I have experience with URL filtering, and it is very good for URL filtering. You can filter URLs based on the categories, and it does a good job. It can also do deep packet inspection."
"I like the IPS feature, it is the most valuable."
"The Packet Tracer is a really good tool. If someone calls because they're having problems, you can easily create fake traffic without having to do an extended packet capture. You can see, straight away, if there's a firewall rule allowing that traffic in the direction you're trying to troubleshoot."
"Cisco tech is always good and helpful. I would rate them as 10 out of 10."
"One of the nice things about Firepower is that you can set it to discover the environment. If that is happening, then Firepower is learning about every device, software operating system, and application running inside or across your environment. Then, you can leverage the discovery intelligence to get Firepower to select the most appropriate intrusion prevention rules to use for your environment rather than picking one of the base policies that might have 50,000 IPS rules in it, which can put a lot of overhead on your firewall. If you choose the recommendations, as long as you update them regularly, you might be able to get your rule set down to only 1,000 or 1,500, which is a significant reduction in a base rule set. This means that the firewall will give you better performance because there are less rules being checked unnecessarily. That is really useful."
"The high-availability and remote VPN features are most valuable."
"One of the best features is the ease of use. It's also easy to teach new engineers to use the ASA CLI."
"I like that Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is reliable. Support is also good."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"SonicWall has USCS and anti-virus at the gateway level. Everything is filtered, and if it detects an intruder, it drops the line."
"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."
"Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case."
"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."
"SonicWall NSa has a user-friendly firmware"
"The most valuable features of this solution are the GUI pre-filtering and the ATP (advanced threat protection)."
"Easy to scale solution that provides advanced threat protection. Their technical support is very good, very knowledgeable, and easy to reach."
"We can do the hosting and security all under one box. The UTM is a good feature."
"Setting firewall network rules should be more straightforward with a clearer graphical representation. The rule-setting method seems old-fashioned. The firewall and network rules are separate from the Firepower and web access rules."
"The configuration in Firepower Management Center is very slow. Deployment takes two to three minutes. You spend a lot of time on modifications. Whereas, in FortiGate, you press a button, and it takes one second."
"Cisco is not cheap, however, it is worth investing in these technologies."
"There is limited data storage on the appliance itself. So, you need to ship it out elsewhere in order for you to store it. The only point of consideration is around that area, basically limited storage on the machine and appliance. Consider logging it elsewhere or pushing it out to a SIEM to get better controls and manipulation over the data to generate additional metrics and visibility."
"The change-deployment time can always be improved. Even at 50 seconds, it's longer than some of its competitors. I would challenge Cisco to continue to improve in that area."
"Maybe the dashboard could be a bit better."
"They need to do an overhaul of the management console."
"They should work on making it a little more intuitive for users and not quite as complex. Still, it's a good product."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"The cost could be lower. There could also be more flexibility for smaller companies."
"The implementation for VLANs is a little bit cumbersome. It would be good to make that a little bit easier."
"In terms of improvement, features like App Control do not work properly"
"The content ID needs to be improved."
"An area for improvement would be SonicWall NSa's integration with antiviruses."
"I would like to have a built-in vulnerability scanner in the firewall. It would be great to have such functionality. Its price could also be better. It would also be good to have a local warehouse. It doesn't get damaged a lot, but if a customer needs a replacement, currently, it has to come from Miami or Mexico, which can take a few days. It would be better if they have a local warehouse from where we can just pick replacements and quickly solve a client's needs in terms of replacing equipment. It would be great to have it locally instead of waiting for it from Mexico or the USA."
"Overall, Im satisfied with SonicWall NSa, but it would be better if they could add a small terminal to each device. This would help me deal with certain issues by running a small bot onto any PC."
"I'd like to see integration with Microsoft 365 for authentication."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 92 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "SSL proxy makes URL filtering easier because the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Easy to scale advanced threat protection solution with knowledgeable technical support, but has occasional bugs". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with pfSense, Sophos XG, Check Point NGFW, Meraki MX and Stormshield Network Security, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, WatchGuard Firebox and pfSense. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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