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IPFire vs Sophos UTM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IPFire
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (28th)
Sophos UTM
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

AE
Chief Technology Officer at Agileware Limited
Firewall deployment has secured mission-critical public apps and simplifies Linux-based management
The best features IPFire offers include its very intuitive nature because, even though it has a Linux back-end, in terms of configuration, it has a very rich GUI interface. The GUI and configuration features of IPFire have made my work easier and more efficient because their positioning and the sequence with which I follow is easy. In terms of all the processes, what you need to do at first and the next thing that you need to do is clear. The GUI is well arranged in sequential order, so you can follow that from whatever you want to do until you get the target objective. IPFire includes features with a very robust and rich community that is very much valid in terms of content. IPFire has positively impacted my organization by giving us some mileage. At least, a lot of organizations now know that we have a solution that can deliver the same value.
Bashir Bashir - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Vegol
Firewall management has become simpler and now provides real-time visibility and bandwidth control
The features I have found most valuable in Sophos UTM are that it is much easier to configure, I appreciate the reporting side of it, and the rules are very straightforward to work with. Sophos UTM's real-time insights into network health help my organization because I get real-time reports on what is happening on my network, what is trying to access me, the destination, and all that. I can then be reactive or proactive, and for zero-day, I think it is beneficial because it can learn what my network does. If anything goes outside what it expects, it sends a report on Sophos Central, so I find zero-day makes my work a bit easier. The use of Sophos UTM's intuitive management console has impacted my security policy enforcement in that it is much easier to configure; I configure with information rather than with presumptions.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I would rate the stability as ten out of ten for IPFire."
"Regarding IPFire's AI capabilities, I think they are quite focused; in all the deployments I have done, I have not had any incidents or breaches."
"IPFire has prevented any kind of hacking and enables us to comply with customer requirements."
"I would recommend UTM over XG because it's easier to manage."
"​The initial configuration is straightforward thanks to the web GUI. In 30 minutes, you can have a running firewall with UTM protection enabled.​"
"The solution can scale."
"The most valuable features of the solution are application filtering and web filtering."
"It is not an easy task to protect your web servers from the big bad internet. The Web Server Protection in this solution does it elegantly and, if configured correctly, even hides the server's base system from prying eyes."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the efficiency and mail filtering module."
"If you want an easy to manage, and powerful firewall then take look at Sophos UTM."
"The Sophos solution provides a branch to head office distributed network for a construction company across New Zealand, and the reliability of the equipment makes it possible to provide stable connections and is easy to implement and support."
 

Cons

"The graphical interface could be much better."
"Accessing the internet was a bit complicated."
"I would rate IPFire 8 out of 10 because I do not think there is any solution anywhere in the world that is 100 percent efficient."
"Although Sophos UTM is a good product, other products have more flexibility with their pricing."
"They could definitely improve on the support, especially in other countries."
"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."
"Technical support used to be good but it's lagging a bit now. Support staff was better trained and more efficient than they are now."
"The product could be simplified and made more self-explanatory."
"It is a pretty straightforward setup, but it should be some sort of documentation that takes you step-by-step to help set it up for your VPC."
"The scalability of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Sophos UTM's firewall is a bit weak, and some of its features lack depth compared to other products like F5."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I rate the product's price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The price of the license for Sophos UTM is approximately $5,500. The solution is less expensive than competitors."
"The price is comparable to other products of this kind."
"Sometimes more is less, meaning if you want more than three features, take the FullGuard licence."
"For under 50 users, MSP licensing is profitable."
"Both the technical and cost aspects are feasible since it is possible to obtain and use the device as a PnP solution."
"Sophos UTM is moderately priced, but it could be improved."
"We purchased the appliance with five years onsite support and licenses."
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Comparison Review

it_user216600 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Consultant with 51-200 employees
Jan 3, 2016
Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate
I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
21%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
8%
Government
7%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business75
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IPFire?
The graphical interface could be much better.
What is your primary use case for IPFire?
I use IPFire ( /products/ipfire-reviews ) to protect my home.
What advice do you have for others considering IPFire?
Sometimes configuring IPFire is challenging. Overall, I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite good. The most valuable features for me are their web and email filtering. I wou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos UTM?
The pricing for Sophos UTM is reasonable; I do not have an issue with it, though I was considering RED because I have different sites I wanted to connect, and instead of doing site-to-site, the RED...
What needs improvement with Sophos UTM?
I would like to improve Sophos UTM in that there is software I use that goes deeper in the reporting on usage. There is software called Fastvue that breaks down everything in the firewall and whate...
 

Comparisons

 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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