We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate and Sophos UTM 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 and Sophos UTM had a similar user rating regarding ease of deployment, service and support, and ROI. If pricing is a factor, Sophos UTM is a more cost-effective solution based on user reviews. In terms of features, Fortinet FortiGate users felt the interface was complex, and the reporting feature needed improvements. In contrast, Sophos UTM users felt the solution needed to do a better job at covering mobile devices.
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"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."
"It's very easy to configure."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"Sophos UTM has a good user interface and granular security controls."
"Sophos integrates seamlessly, and we don't even feel it is running in the background."
"The management suite is easy and the agent is easy to develop."
"I like the web filtering options."
"So far, the solution has been problem-free."
"The firewall itself is very strong and provides great security."
"The initial setup was easy."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the simple-to-use interface."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"Its customer service could be better."
"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."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"I didn't like it much. It suits only small businesses. It isn't scalable and reliable. There is a very critical issue with the power supply."
"Last year, Sophos had some major internal management changes that negatively impacted their support."
"The initial setup was straightforward. The full deployment takes approximately two days which could be simplified to reduce the time. The major part of the process is the configuration and the policy setup."
"The support could be better."
"The classification segregation of applications lacks sufficient definition."
"I would like some features that are available in other brands. For example, I sometimes a person is using too much bandwidth, and it isn't easy to find this information in Sophos. Also, we have to switch connections manually when we are using a VPN and lose the MPLS connection. It isn't automatic."
"Sophos UTM sometimes falls short in high-availability environments. They used to launch firmware that didn't work very well in a high-availability environment."
"The virus updates will always depend on new viruses that are discovered. Maybe they can send a notification or a reminder for update time."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 108 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 39 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "Efficient, user-friendly, and affordable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and SonicWall NSa, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Sophos UTM report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
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.
I would have no doubt in recommending Fortinet. I do not know the Sophos UTM product specifically but in general, in companies, we have had unpleasant experiences with Sophos with customers. They typically declare performance values that are overestimated in the field.
We replaced Fortinet with Sophos as our public-facing UTM in 2017 & since then the ride has been extremely rough. I would not recommend Sophos for any mission-critical environment.
Fortinet is easy to manage and it include secure SDWAN as well including many features with easy to configure.
Both firewalls are easy to deploy. But the issue you will encounter when performing troubleshooting. You will not get flexibility in troubleshooting through Cli in Sophos whereas, in FortiGate, we have much more control. Besides if you are deploying a firewall on a large scale where visibility, control, performance as well as the flexibility is important it is better to go with Fortinet rather than Sophos.
I would also like to elaborate on the reporting part in FortiCloud. There is no need to pay any extras. Every box connects to ForticCoud service, and if you want reports to be greater than 7 days (meaning to be kept longer than that in their memory system) then you have to pay. In the meantime, by default Forticloud will send daily emails with reports and once a week you will get 4 to 5 reports, with lots of granular information. These reports are all in PDF with color graphics. In reality, I would be happy to send you some of the reports as in words typed herein would be more than a book. The FortiGate appliance also comes with 10 endpoint security (Forticlient) licences. So you can put this endpoint protection software to servers or clients. It also has a two-factor authentication license included. With these boxes, you can also create VDOM (Virtual Domains, totally separate).
They can afford that as the hardware, as I mentioned before (ASIC) has the power to do that. In 3 years I have had 1 spam message entering my mail server, is that telling you something??? In my first reply, I did tell you that where I work now they purchase Sophos. Well, when the antivirus is set the CPU gets up to 90%. My Fortigate CPU is 0% and peaks during attacks. And I have had quite a few. They were attempting to break into the mail server. More than 2 million attempts in less than 2 hours. Have a look at NSS Labs site. FortiGate is a Rolls Royce, you cannot compare.
Here in Australia, where I work now, the decision was to go with Sophos, ONLY ON PRICE. Yes, great brains. Now they regret that big time. FortiGate is a much more powerful device, especially when it comes to being able to handle the traffic. Most of the models handle throughput via ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) which is nothing more and less than a customer semiconductor. So, this is handled via hardware. It may be initially more difficult to implement. Now, what does "difficult" mean? To me when there is an unknown, difficult comes up till you learn. So if you make a decision on price and because "it is the easiest" to install.
I would not touch Sophos. Simple as that.
Sophos UTM is better by far. but it is more expensive
Done many installations of both Sophos and FortiGate, Sophos is the easiest to install and best in terms of features.
Reporting is free in Sophos while we need an extra subscription for FortiGate. Deep packet inspection, intrusion prevention advanced threat protection, web filtering, app control and email protection are key features of Sophos. Browsing is made safe with phishing protection and new functionality of ransomware protection. Sophos support is brilliant and community website from Sophos answers to all your questions and ease deployment.
I can’t really comment on FortiGate. We’ve been working with Sophos for years and like it’s integration with their endpoint.