KerioControl vs Sophos UTM comparison

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between KerioControl and Sophos UTM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed KerioControl vs. Sophos UTM Report (Updated: June 2024).

Buyer's Guide

KerioControl vs. Sophos UTM

June 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 793,295 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Unified Threat Management (UTM) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 169.0%, down from 215.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KerioControl is 8.2%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos UTM is 20.1%, up from 15.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

Unique Categories:

Firewalls

22.6%

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions

19.7%

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

1.9%

No other categories found

Featured Reviews

Viraj Fernandopulle

General Manager Group IT at DART GLOBAL LOGISTICS PTE. LTD.

Mar 7, 2024

Includes built-in APIs, is easy to deploy, and provides good insight into our network

FortiGate offers visibility into the types, brands, versions, and users of connected devices. This visibility is crucial for our industrial devices, as their reliable operation is essential to our business. Fortinet Security Fabric empowers us to comply with regulations, governance, and compliance requirements across regions like the US and Europe, ensuring smooth operations for our global business. FortiGate's built-in APIs enable us to integrate with the vendors of our choice. Fortinet's FortiGate is easy to deploy in our environment thanks to its well-written and easy-to-follow documentation. FortiGate is a highly benchmarked product that improves efficiency and adds value to our organization. Although we don't see a benefit overnight, we gradually see the benefits of FortiGate over the years. It has provided a lot of insight into our organization's activities. FortiGate significantly helped reduce the risk of cyberattacks that could disrupt our production. This has protected us against financial losses. Fortinet has its management suite so it helps to centralize the management of network and security operations in our company. This helps us easily manage the issues and solutions that are required. Fortinet FortiGate provides us with actionable data to inform our decisions about the most appropriate course of action. It delivers insights into resource consumption and compromised hosts, helping us identify the source of unauthorized login attempts. This comprehensive view allows us to understand what's entering our network. Fortinet Security Fabric improved security across our industrial control systems. Fortinet FortiGate helped reduce our mean time to remediate. Fortinet FortiGate helped to mature our approach to cybersecurity for protecting our industrial equipment. The level of detail we can see regarding incoming traffic and ongoing activities is quite high. This detailed visibility extends to host configuration and other such aspects, providing us with valuable insights. As a result, Fortinet can provide a clear understanding of how to manage our network and quickly mitigate any issues that may arise.

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Chris Kershner

CEO at Professional Project Managers

Jul 2, 2020

The comprehensiveness of the security feature is exceptional but speed needs improvement

The VPN is the most valuable feature. We filter out outgoing NAT packets by port. So we locked down incoming and outgoing packets with the Kerio software. It's a lot less money than our FortiGate solutions that we installed, for instance. The value in it is money savings and flexibility. Kerio is a lot clearer to set up to do particular things, whereas when I do it on a Cisco or a FortiGate I have to go fight with it per week sometimes to do something I can do in 20 minutes on Kerio. For the money, the comprehensiveness of the security feature is exceptional. The next level of security is the sandbox and FortiGate charges me $120,000 a year for that sandbox. I don't see that as something that Kerio would ever be adding. The next step is a big, drastic step up in company size. So for medium and small businesses, I think Kerio is about as good as I can get. It gives us everything we need in one product for our small-size business. For medium to small businesses, the firewall and intrusion detection features are very well priced and just excellent. The functionality for the amount that we're paying for them is excellent. The malware and antivirus features are okay. I add stuff on top of Kerio, I have Malwarebytes. So I would give it an okay. Malwarebytes still catches quite a bit that Kerio doesn't. I used the content filtering a little bit and it works alright. I've got a hundred VPNs at the University of New Mexico. I don't put it anywhere else though, so I don't know. I don't really have any kind of input on that, I suppose. Their graphical user interface that allows me to open up particular ports to particular internal IPs with one external IP is very flexible and easy to use. It is also much clearer than when I go into my larger systems with two competitors, Cisco and FortiGate. Kerio enables me to use one external IP address to cut it into multiples server solutions based on different port numbers. It saves them money if my customers are creative enough to use those features.

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M.K. Goyal

Asst General Manager(C&IT) at NMDC Ltd

Jan 11, 2019

It improved bandwidth utilization and provided link load balancing features for internet and intranet lease lines

Initially, there were problems of wireless access points not getting detected and lease lines were getting disconnected after one hour. Sophos replaced the appliance, but the issue was not resolved . The matter got escalated to their international support and the issue was identified as a bug where long distance fiber connections are used over single mode fiber. The patch was shipped by Sophos with a promise to fix the issue in the next release. Now, the appliance is working fine. The issue of wireless access points was due to some compatibility issues with the D-Link switch. I provided the Cisco 2900 series switches to connect to the wireless access points by creating a separate wireless LAN port on the firewall.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The reporting and monitoring are very good."

"The GUI is good."

"Easy to use support and licensing portal as well as activation process."

"The solution is stable."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration."

"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."

"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."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The solution has an app manager and a portal where you can maintain all your Keri products. It is a firewall that includes antivirus and anti-malware, which adds security. The VPNs, both site-to-site and client VPNs, are pretty easy to set up."

"All of the features of Kerio Control are equally good. Most valuable to us are the firewall rules, the intrusion detection system, and IP address features."

"When one of the employees of my customers is using the VPN Client, I have created for them that they will always get a message. When the VPN Client connects to Kerio Control from the outside, they will get an email so they know when they are connected and when they are disconnected what is happening to their network."

"I am impressed with the tool's firewall filtering capacity."

"The flexibility of the system, the capacity to provide the right level of security, and the ability to be integrated into different kinds of infrastructures are the most valuable features."

"The top features are ones that we're not using yet but we soon will be because we've just had broadband upgraded in Australia. We've got something called the National Broadband Network, which is forced onto you, so you have to take it when it arrives. We'll be trying the high availability out soon. We tried that with some load balancing, it didn't quite work as we expected, but I think that was more of a configuration thing rather than a product thing."

"The installation is straightforward."

"The stability of Kerio Control is good."

More KerioControl pros

"The platform's most valuable features include the integrated multifactor authentication (OTP) for VPNs, which enhances security, and the flexible and intuitive firewall policy settings that simplify management."

"Sophos has a single pane of glass which allows me to manage all my VPCs from a single instance, managing all my firewall from one place."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"Has great security features and does a good job of protecting the network."

"This is a very stable product."

"We use Sophos UTM as our main firewall with all its features included. Mainly, it controls all of our network perimeter security: firewall, IDS/IPS, and web application firewall (including VoIP)."

"The cost of the solution is very reasonable."

"The solution is stable."

More Sophos UTM pros

Cons

"Web security solutions can be improved."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."

"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."

"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."

"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."

"The cloud features can be improved."

"Technical support needs to be improved."

"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"Kerio Control has just improved on their biggest problem, which was to introduce better support for high-availability requirements in production."

"One area that confused me a bit when I was building my current network. I use VLANs to have separate functionality on the network, and the appliance I got was the WiFi model, but I discovered that you can't assign WiFi channels to the VLAN. So, you can have WiFi, but its own subnet. You can't run that over the VLAN. Effectively, I can't use the WiFi facility in the appliance and had to purchase a separate web that supports VLANs. In the end, I had to go to GFI support. They confirmed this is just a limited functionality of that device, as it is a low-end device. I don't know if any of their high-end models have a better facility or not."

"I would like to be able to automatically send email from Kerio Control and have it tell me what my external IPs are, because on one of my lines I have a fixed IP address and on the other it is variable. If there were a permanent way for me to figure out, "Okay, my current external VPN and my firm IP is this," it would help. I need to know the IP address to connect with the VPN and, at the moment, one of the lines sometimes changes its IP address without me knowing it. It's a hassle to figure out what it is."

"I would like to be able to inspect https packets for the purpose of virus scanning."

"Kerio Control could improve content filtering."

"I would like to see geo-IP filtering added to the filtering rules. Incorporating these rules would be very beneficial if you have different ideas or reasons to filter, such as communication to the email server or specific websites."

"Improvements are needed to the Next Generation Firewall Protection, specifically with user-level protection."

"My experience with the solutions technical support is fine but they could be faster in responding."

More KerioControl cons

"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."

"Monitoring and reporting are areas that need improvement."

"Sophos should be more user-friendly, have more dashboards, and an easier implementation."

"The reporting could be a lot better."

"Stay away from the wireless models, since you cannot put them in HA. They start to give you some weird issues once you start getting into multiple SSIDs and networks."

"The support could be better."

"We need a better VPN client for the customers."

"The scalability of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

More Sophos UTM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an inexpensive solution."

"Fortinet FortiGate's price can be reduced."

"Each feature costs money, so it is important to study your needs."

"The license for Fortinet FortiGate is affordable in my country."

"In terms of the market, it's not a cheap product, but it's cost-effective."

"Fortinet FortiGate as a less expensive solution than Palo Alto."

"Other firewalls are more expensive than Fortinet FortiGate, such as the Azure firewall."

"They are very competitive, but we like to have the factory warranty taken care of."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"Licensing is easier with Kerio Control. With FortiGate, we realized the licensing is really hectic, because if you skip one year, you have to back pay that year. If you skip two years, you have to back pay two years. With Kerio Control, if a license expires, one year later you can just reactivate and go on."

"It's too expensive. The license, in the last year or so, has gone up by over a £100. We're almost being out-priced by the annual license at the minute."

"On the low-end device that I use, it has unlimited IP addresses. So, they have a subscription model where, on the higher models, you pay X dollars for 10 IP addresses. Then, if you want any more, you have to pay more on the model. On the low-end model, it has unlimited IP addresses, because if you have too many users, the thing will just slow you down and stop working. At some point, you need to say, "Okay, I've grown to a point where performance is impacted. I need to get some bigger hardware." If I get to that stage, I will possibly look at using one of the virtual appliances and putting it on some bigger hardware."

"The price of the solution is reasonable. For additional costs, you can add on more features such as antivirus."

"I think it is a bit on the pricey side, but it's okay. I've got 50 licenses which I think is $250 a year or something like that."

"Its licensing is yearly. You renew every year. Its price is all-inclusive."

"KerioControl's pricing is reasonable. The license for KerioControl is annual. It's difficult to specify an exact cost since it varies depending on the number of users and additional software combined with it. For example, a basic box might cover 25 users, but licenses can be purchased starting from 10 users."

"I pay approximately $50 for the solution on an annual basis."

More KerioControl pricing and cost advice

"The AWS Marketplace product should be a better fit, but it is a little pricier."

"Sophos offers free training when selling their products from within the partner portal."

"Both the technical and cost aspects are feasible since it is possible to obtain and use the device as a PnP solution."

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace is pretty straightforward. Because were entirely on AWS and don't have anything anywhere else. It made the most sense for us as a one stop shop."

"The product pricing and licensing are higher, but they offer good value for the features and stability provided."

"For under 50 users, MSP licensing is profitable."

"The pricing is pretty reasonable. I don't think that it is overly expensive."

"Sophos UTM is moderately priced, but it could be improved."

More Sophos UTM pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user216600

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

24%

Media Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

18%

Government

Educational Organization

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

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What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about KerioControl?

The solution provides feasibility regarding cyber privacy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for KerioControl?

KerioControl's pricing is reasonable. The license for KerioControl is annual. It's difficult to specify an exact cost...

See all answers

What needs improvement with KerioControl?

I would like to see geo-IP filtering added to the filtering rules. Incorporating these rules would be very beneficial...

See all answers

What Is The Biggest Difference Between Sophos UTM and Sophos XG?

The Sophos UTM is a UTM and Sophos XG is the NGFW. First, you must know about the difference between a UTM and NGFW. ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Sophos UTM?

The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the endpoint protection feature.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos UTM?

You cannot really say that the solution is expensive, given the protection it gives.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 12% of the time

Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 7% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Netgate pfSense vs KerioControl

Compared 39% of the time

OPNsense vs KerioControl

Compared 9% of the time

Sophos XG vs KerioControl

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs KerioControl

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs KerioControl

Compared 3% of the time

More KerioControl Competitors

Netgate pfSense vs Sophos UTM

Compared 17% of the time

Sophos XG vs Sophos UTM

Compared 15% of the time

OPNsense vs Sophos UTM

Compared 13% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Sophos UTM

Compared 6% of the time

Sophos XGS vs Sophos UTM

Compared 2% of the time

More Sophos UTM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

July 2024

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

KerioControl

July 2024

Download KerioControl product report

Buyer's Guide

Sophos UTM

June 2024

Download Sophos UTM product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate

No data available

Astaro

Learn More

Fortinet

GFI

Sophos

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate enhances network security, prevents unauthorized access, and offers robust firewall protection. Valued features include advanced threat protection, reliable performance, and a user-friendly interface. It improves efficiency, streamlines processes, and boosts collaboration, providing valuable insights for informed decision-making and growth.

Kerio Control is a popular security product for small and medium-sized businesses. It is a next-generation firewall that provides unified threat management without complexity. Kerio Control provides advanced anti-virus protection and industry-leading web and content application filtering, and has a secure VPN.

With Kerio Control you can:

Preserve the integrity of your network.
Manage bandwidth to streamline traffic flows.
Improve productivity with filtering capabilities.

Kerio Control Features

Some of Kerio Control’s most valuable features include:

High availability, deployment flexibility, deep packet inspection, advanced routing, usage reporting, quick administering, intrusion detection and prevention (IPS), gateway anti-virus, VPN, web and content application filtering, and centralized administration with MyKerio.

Kerio Control Benefits

Eliminate downtime risks: Because Kerio Control offers high availability and failover protection, you can eliminate the risk and cost of connectivity or threat protection downtime.
Detailed reports: Kerio Control makes it easy to view individual users’ internet activity through detailed reports.
Traffic monitoring: Traffic monitoring allows you to manage bandwidth and makes it possible for you to control access to streaming video and peer-to-peer networks.
Server protection: Using Kerio Control’s advanced networking routing and deep packet inspection, you can protect servers.
Easily create policies: With Kerio Control, you can create both inbound and outbound traffic policies, and can also restrict communication by specific URLs, applications, traffic type, content category, or even time of day.
Snort-based analysis: Kerio Control gives you the ability to add a transparent layer of intrusion prevention with snort-based analysis along with a database of rule and blacklisted IP addresses that is regularly refreshed.
Optionally integrated anti-virus: WIth this feature, you can prevent viruses, Trojans, or spyware from entering your networks.

Reviews from Real Users

Here is some feedback from some of our users who are currently using the solution:

PeerSpot user Brian C., Senior Technology Specialist, VP at Unified Technology Solutions, writes "It is very comprehensive and simple. It has all the active protections. It's updated. We love that you can set how often it is updated so you can work on what is right for you. A large company with a lot of bandwidth can update the virus definitions and security definitions hourly, if they want. A smaller site that's remote, where maybe updating the definitions will eat into the bandwidth, we can schedule those more to go later at night. It's very flexible and works for us in all types of situations. This is great because then we don't have to learn seven different products to be able to work with seven different scenarios."

Andy D., IT Manager at Flare Technologies, praises how easy it is to use and says, "One thing we use quite a lot, as well, is the DHCP Server, because we do a lot of work where all our devices need to have static IP addresses. Rather than going around and configuring every box, we do it all through DHCP reservations. It's easier. We've got a record of it. We can manipulate it if we need to change something or change some hardware. It's all easy. Even guys who are not used to using it can pick it up quite quickly."

Sophos UTM is a unified threat management platform designed to protect your businesses from known and emerging malware including viruses, rootkits and spyware. The solution provides a complete network security package with everything your organization needs in a single modular appliance.

Sophos UTM Features

Sophos UTM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Web and Email Filtering
General Management
Network Protection
Network Routing and Services
Advanced Threat Protection
Authentication
Email Encryption and DLP
Web Policy
End-User Portal
VPN IPsec Client, VPN SSL Client, and Clientless VPN
Web Application Firewall Protection
UTM Endpoint Protection and Management
SEC Endpoint Integration
Logging and Reporting

Sophos UTM Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Sophos UTM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Simplifies your IT security without the complexity of multiple point solutions
Intuitive interface to help you quickly create policies to control security risks
Provides clear, detailed reports to give you the insight you need to improve your network performance and protection
Complete control to block, allow, shape and prioritize applications
Two-factor authentication with one-time password (OTP)
Integrated wireless controller
Allows you to connect remote offices with easy VPN and Wi-Fi

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Sophos UTM solution.

PeerSpot user Dana B., Network Administrator at a manufacturing company, says “The web and email filtering are the two biggest and most valuable aspects of the solution for us. The solution overall has just been a good, cost-effective solution for us. The solution offers a lot of functionality. The solution scales well. We've found the technical support to be helpful. The stability and performance are quite good.”

A Technical Director at a security firm mentions, "Sophos SG UTM had all the basic functionality that you needed. It is user-friendly and easy to manage for any integrator."

Marek M., Senior Network Engineer at a computer software company, comments, “Sophos UTM is the simplest of these products to set up. If you follow the instructions using the wizard, which is just a few steps, then you will have a firewall to protect you and your customer.”

A Software Sales Manager at a tech services company explains, “The overall visibility of the console is what I find most valuable, plus it's very user-friendly. It can be integrated with other solutions such as SOAR, SIEM, etc., even when you have an existing firewall. I really like that the console can be integrated. You'll see everything on the same window, and the single window feature of the machine is so good. These are the features I really like.”

James D., IT Manager at Manual Workers Union, states, “The fact that it's on the cloud means we don't have to administer it on our network or deal with a physical machine, which saves us money. The solution has many great features. From the console, we can start different scannings on different machines. We enjoy the centralized reporting part of it. The initial setup is simple. We enjoy its general stability. The solution can scale. So far, the solution has been problem-free.”

Sample Customers

1. Amazon Web Services 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Cisco 5. Dell 6. HP 7. Oracle 8. Verizon 9. AT&T 10. T-Mobile 11. Sprint 12. Vodafone 13. Orange 14. BT Group 15. Telstra 16. Deutsche Telekom 17. Comcast 18. Time Warner Cable 19. CenturyLink 20. NTT Communications 21. Tata Communications 22. SoftBank 23. China Mobile 24. Singtel 25. Telus 26. Rogers Communications 27. Bell Canada 28. Telkom Indonesia 29. Telkom South Africa 30. Telmex 31. Telia Company 32. Telkom Kenya

Triton Technical, McDonald's

One Housing Group

Buyer's Guide

KerioControl vs. Sophos UTM

June 2024

Free Report: KerioControl vs. Sophos UTM

Find out what your peers are saying about KerioControl vs. Sophos UTM and other solutions. Updated: June 2024.

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