We performed a comparison between KerioControl and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"Good load balancing feature."
"The routing of the multiple internet physical routers I have is the most valuable feature of this solution. Instead of me physically unplugging a cable from one router to the server, if one connection goes down, it automatically switches for me. So I can have all three of them plugged in. If one goes down, it just picks up the other one automatically. There's no physical cable swapping."
"Its support is very good, and it is stable product."
"The statistic feature enables us to better use bandwidth management. We monitored the use by mobile, type of application, department, and by users. The bandwidth was solid. Our internet speed is optimized for our research."
"Kerio Control is easy to use and provides the ability to deliver customized solutions."
"Kerio Control can be scaled easily."
"The most valuable feature is the reliability of VPN capabilities. The VPN has been very reliable and secure. The security has been very good and the VPN connections are reliable in that they stay up. We don't have a lot of problems with downtime and that type of thing."
"The stability of Kerio Control is good."
"The ease of use in the GUI itself is the most valuable feature. The GUI is really the best part of it. We like the traffic rules so we can control who can get to what. It's easy to determine the flow of the traffic itself so we aren't having to guess through command lines and reading out basically command-driven output. It's just a very easy-to-use interface. The interface is the best part of the product."
"This product offers great protection using the default settings."
"The solution simplifies my business. Normally, for administration, we are using NetApp System Manager on Window since it's easy to create new policies. In a short amount of time, you can create new policies based on new requirements. For example, in the last few months, many requirements changed due to the coronavirus, adding the use of new services, like Office 365, and eLearning tools, like Zoom."
"Because we bought two firewalls... we need a central place to manage the policies and deploy them to both devices. It's good that it provides a system management console that is able to manipulate and manage policies in one place and deploy them to different locations."
"The ports that I have assigned appear to be unattainable to outside 'mal-actors,' unless they have an address registered on the internet that this thing is expecting. That's a layer of security."
"The main reason we went with it was the security protocols. They were more robust on this device."
"The most valuable features of this solution are live logging, rule setup and maintenance, and VPN creation."
"There are no problems with the technical support. If a problem occurs it gets resolved immediately with our technical support partners."
"The client is easy to use and stable"
"The cloud features can be improved."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"The support system could be improved."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"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."
"The antivirus seemed to be a bit laggy on the connection so I disconnected that. It's definitely good. The only issue we've had with any sort of cyber attack seemed to be coming from a couple of distinct locations, people trying to get into known ports on remote desktops and stuff like that. The fact that we can block all that traffic is just great. It simplifies it."
"The filtering on the unlicensed version of Kerio Control is inefficient - you have to add each website manually, which isn't feasible."
"If you have to dive deeper into the firewall or any other features, then you really have to read up a bit about how to set it up properly. Some of my colleagues, in the beginning, jumped in and made a bunch of rules but then it got really messy. If Kerio had a template or guidelines for best practices, at the beginning, that would really help. With Kerio Control it's basically 'find out for yourself.'"
"Filtering of pages and greater personalization in services need improvement."
"There were certain things I didn't know about it, but I've always been able to just contact our IT company. They've been able to walk me through certain things. It was quite a monumental task to set up a public site. Support really had to help me with setting up the VLANs and walk me through it. It was not possible for me to figure that out on my own, but that's what they're here for. That could have been a little bit easier laid out."
"I can no longer renew my subscription directly with GFI but we have to go through third-party resellers like CDW. The first time I did it with CDW. I went to CDW and it was almost like they didn't even know anything. They didn't know what package I was supposed to get. Then after I got it, it took almost five days to get everything working."
"The one thing that did put me off of the solution was that, after they were taken over by GFI, the licensing and a few other items have gotten very complicated."
"Their support is getting better but still needs improvement."
"I would like to see the devices made more flexible by adding modules to increase the ports that we can use."
"This is a great product and offers great protection but they don't hear the customers' needs. They don't make improvements as per the customers' requests."
"The only downside is that it is missing an API, that you can use to easily collect information from it."
"Reporting is something you've got to set up separately. It's one of those things that you've got to put some time into. One of the options is to set up a local report server, which is what I did. It's not great. It's okay... Some of the stuff is a little complicated to get up and running. Once you do, it becomes very user-friendly and easy to work with, but I find there are some implementation headaches with some of their stuff."
"Some of the configuration options are somewhat confusing."
"Sometimes I would like to copy a rule set from one box to another box in a direct way. This is a feature that is not present at the moment in WatchGuard."
"There is room for improvement on the education side, regarding what does what, rather than just throwing it at a person and assuming they know everything about it. A lot of times, you have to call WatchGuard support to get the solution that will work, rather than their just having it published so that you can fix the problem on your own."
"An area for improvement is that when we use a web administration link, there is no security."
KerioControl is ranked 28th in Firewalls with 54 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 77 reviews. KerioControl is rated 8.0, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of KerioControl writes "With VPN, any of our guys can log in to the system and effectively be on board; helps with our customers all over the world". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Rock-solid stability and easy to change the model". KerioControl is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM and Splunk User Behavior Analytics, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Meraki MX and SonicWall TZ. See our KerioControl vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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