We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and SonicWall TZ based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, SonicWall TZ outperforms Fortinet FortiGate in several key areas, including more satisfaction with features, service, and support and fewer complaints on pricing.
"Provides good integrations and reporting."
"The deep packet inspection is useful, but the most useful feature is application awareness. You can filter on the app rather than on a static TCP port."
"The main thing that I love the most is its policy and objects. Whenever I try to give access to a user, I can create an object via group creation in the object fields. This way, I am not able to enter a user in the policy repeatedly."
"The most valuable feature is the Intrusion Prevention System."
"A good intrusion prevention system and filtering."
"IPS and Snort are very important because they also differentiate Cisco from other vendors and competitors."
"Since the product is stable, we do not have to spend additional money to buy other firewalls. Once deployed, we can use the product for a long time. Thus, it is cost effective."
"With Cisco, there are a lot of features such as the network map. Cisco builds the whole network map of the machines you have behind your firewall and gives you insight into the vulnerabilities and attributes that the host has. Checkpoint and Fortinet don't have that functionality directly on the firewall."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"It is useful for protecting and segregating the internal networks from the internet. Most of our customers also use the FortiGate client to connect to their offices by using the VPN client, and of course, they usually activate the antivirus, deep inspection, and intrusion prevention services. They are also using it for web filtering and implementing various policies dealing with forwardings, NAT, etc."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"The most useful functionality of Fortinet FortiGate is the user interface, multiple engines, and their cloud with the latest integrations. Additionally, the Security Fabric tool is very good."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"The most valuable features are unified threat management which provides security intelligence and the VPN for both site-to-site and remote access."
"It protects against intrusion while allowing needed access."
"We like their interface very much. It's pretty easy to use."
"Offers the right amount of control without being incredibly convoluted and frustrating."
"Good site categorization and application controls."
"The installation is straightforward and took approximately 30 minutes."
"SonicWall TZ is very user-friendly and has network MAC binding. Additionally, the firewall works well."
"The site-to-site VPN connections, content filtering, and in our current remote working situation, SSL VPN remote desktop connectivity are the most valuable features."
"The ability to better integrate with other tools would be an improvement."
"I would like it to have faster deployment times. A typical deployment could take two to three minutes. Sometimes, it depends on the situation. It is better than it was in the past, but it could always use improvement."
"The reporting and other features are nice, but there is an issue with applying the configuration. That part needs some improvement."
"FlexConfig is there as a bridge for features that are not yet natively integrated into Firepower. It is a way of allowing you to be able to configure things that wouldn't otherwise be possible until the development team can add them into Firepower's native capability. There is still some work that needs to be done around FlexConfig. There are still quite a few complex things, like policy-based routing, that have to be done in FlexConfig, and it doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes, there are some glitches. It is recommended that you configure FlexConfig policies with Cisco TAC. It would be good to see Cisco accelerate some of those configurations that you can only do in FlexConfig into the platform, so that they are there natively."
"My team tells me that other solutions such as Fortinet and Palo Alto are easier to implement."
"I think they need to review their whole UI because it feels like it was created by a whole bunch of different teams of developers who didn't fully talk to each other. The net policy screen is just a mess. It should look like the firewall policy screen, and they should both act the same, but they don't. I feel like it's two different buildings or programming, who don't talk to each other, and that really annoys me."
"The visibility for VPN is one big part. The policy administration could be improved in terms of customizations and flexibility for changing it to our needs."
"Deploying configurations takes longer than it should."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"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."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"Backup can be improved."
"Needs more robust self-help documentation along with examples and things to watch out for."
"There is a point I don't like about SonicWall in the past and now. Most of the destinations we look at when we're detecting some user using too much bandwidth or something like that, SonicWall just gave us destination IP address, instead of the full qualified domain name. I think that's the most important part that is still missing. I think that's the most important for us."
"The reporting analytics could be improved, it is very unstable."
"The technology in this particular version is very old."
"Sonic Analyzer could be improved. It's difficult to manage and not very intuitive."
"You need to be a certificate holder to set it up and configure it. It's really important because it looks easy, but it is complex. You need to have the knowledge and experience. But this is normal for technical products. It's not a product for regular user. It's for technical people. You need to have skills."
"The interface and technical support are probably the two most important things that I would like SonicWall to improve."
"The solution should provide some additional ports."
More Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall Pricing and Cost Advice →
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 166 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 14th in Firewalls with 37 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "Stable, easy to set up, and offers good ROI". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Multifeatured firewall solution with a user-friendly interface, high availability, scalability, and stability". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with pfSense, Cisco ASA Firewall, Sophos XG, Check Point NGFW and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco ASA Firewall, pfSense and SonicWall NSa. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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