McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] vs SonicWall NSa comparison

McAfee and SonicWall are both solutions in the Firewalls category. Additionally, 75% of McAfee users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of SonicWall users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] and SonicWall NSa based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Firewalls

May 2026

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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

Fortinet FortiGate

Featured Reviews

Mageshwaran S

Solution Architect at airtel

Enables customers to manage security effortlessly with intuitive features and easy integration

In terms of improvements for Fortinet FortiGate, they could offer evaluation licenses, as compared to Meraki, which provides a 90-day evaluation. In Fortinet FortiGate, they do not provide standard evaluation licenses; instead, we need to request them from the OEM through the account manager for POCs. If we want to conduct a demo, we need to work with real hardware. In comparison to Cisco, we have DCloud, which helps with providing demos to customers, but in Meraki, I need to reach out to them, book a lab, and they need to provide all the hardware. I need remote access and L3 engineers to program it; only then can I offer a real-time demo to the customer.

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reviewer999975

Computer Technician at a leisure / travel company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We cannot find resources to help us configure it, so most of the time the virus still goes on our computer and McAfee doesn't detect it

It's pretty easy to use on a daily basis, but there are no other features because it's hard to configure on the server. On the endpoint it's really easy to push. It's hard to configure on the server, though. It's hard to find resources to help us configure it, and there is not much online help that you can find. Most of the time, we were looking at the forums, and we needed to go very deep to find what we were looking for. It was hard, and McAfee was not really helpful when we were trying to get the product to work perfectly. This is why are changing it.

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Mahendra Basera

Sr.Engineer at Akara Capital Advisor Pvt. Ltd.

Automated breach prevention has protected critical workloads and keeps external attacks blocked

I am familiar with SonicWall TZ. I have done a POC of TZ but I have not worked extensively with it. I have worked with the 2600 firewall and then the 3600. These are the models which we have worked with.SonicWall NSa was an on-premises solution. The two firewalls which were in production, in the data center and on the LAN side, were both on-premises solutions. We had a pre-decided budget under which we would purchase the firewall. All parameters including security, high availability, and budget concerns were covered with SonicWall NSa being implemented at that time. SonicWall NSa is a user-friendly product that is easy to configure, and it is easy for network personnel and firewall administrators to work with. Even the L1 team captured and learned this firewall effectively, helping us resolve all parameters related to high availability firewalls within budget-friendly costs. I rate this review a nine out of ten.

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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 performance is very good and the solution is simple to manage."

"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"

"We have found the product to be scalable."

"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing, and the customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."

"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."

"Fortinet scores very high against security threats when you compare it with Check Point and Palo Alto."

"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."

"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"We have 10 offices throughout Brazil, and now they are all connected by using the VPN feature of the firewall."

"ROI: It's good."

"It does give certain protection for everything that is well configured on our McAfee server. We have good protection with it. If we could find a feature and make it work, it would work perfectly, there would be no bugs, and it would be really good."

"For managing multiple MFE firewalls it is incredibly handy, convenient, and it is easy to use the product with McAfee Control Centre."

"It's a very functional and stable product if you're looking for a Layer 7 firewall with reputation filtering and encrypted traffic inspection."

"SD-WAN is a good feature."

"The most valuable features are that it is reasonably-priced and works well."

"The solution is very stable, it's an excellent product for an SMB, and the filtering is excellent."

"The most valuable features are flexibility, ease of setup, and it's a good product cost-wise."

"SonicWall has all the usual functions, like LAN configurations, security features, word filters, etc., but it also has the CFS agent, which isn't available in any other firewall. Reporting port support is also there."

"My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing SonicWall NSA is that they have to be very clear about what it is that they're looking for."

"It is a brilliant product. It is a Unified Threat Management (UTM) system. It has got about 11 security services that take care of your perimeter security. It takes care of any kind of cyber threats that could come in. It takes care of creating VPNs between two SonicWalls instantly and very easily. It has got spyware in it as well as a firewall. It has also got a gateway antivirus and an application firewall that can block things from outside."

"It is a very stable solution."

More SonicWall NSa pros

Cons

"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."

"Overall, the integration could be better."

"More advanced AI capabilities would be beneficial in future updates."

"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."

"The initial setup is medium complex and takes between five days and a week."

"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."

"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."

"The reports provided by the equipment could be more detailed, and not so dependent on the FortiAnalyzer."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"Administration of the firewall is a little confusing for end users."

"Migrating from v7 to v8 of McAfee Firewall Enterprise, in many cases, involves you having to completely re-write all of your previous McAfee Firewall Enterprise v7 policies due to the difference in the way the interfaces are named in the product going from v7 to v8."

"Customer support and AV are both lacking and are really hard to come to you when the product is installed. Those are the two major points that they need to work on."

"The hardware is not stable and we have faced many stability issues."

"HA configuration is a bit difficult for the first time."

"It is not scalable. If your enterprise is growing hard then you have to buy another, bigger product. Maybe if you use it virtually it is more scalable."

"I'd like to see integration with Microsoft 365 for authentication."

"The product that we have is not scalable."

"The cost could be lower. There could also be more flexibility for smaller companies."

"Overall, Im satisfied with SonicWall NSa, but it would be better if they could add a small terminal to each device. This would help me deal with certain issues by running a small bot onto any PC."

"Having to deal with too many lower-level people in technical support means that it takes longer to resolve issues, so escalating support tickets should be faster."

"Sometimes, the GUI is extremely annoying and you need to implement external tools for better network monitoring."

"One area for improvement in SonicWall NSa is the GUI. It isn't easy to understand. The support for SonicWall NSa is mediocre, which is another area for improvement."

More SonicWall NSa cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If the customer is looking for SD-WAN, it comes free with FortiGate."

"Work through partners for the best pricing."

"There is a need to pay for a license for the product."

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall costs our company around $12000 per year."

"Fortinet FortiGate IPS' licensing is quite simple to understand."

"The price of FortiGate is comparable to that of most other firewall solutions and is more affordable than Cisco."

"Its licenses cost the same for different subscription plans."

"As far as I'm aware, in our case, it's just a yearly pricing arrangement with no additional licensing costs."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"SonicWall is not an expensive solution."

"While I don't know the exact amount off the top of my head, I would estimate the licensing package was about $15,000 to $20,000 a year."

"SonicWall still is only a dollar or Euro per gigabit. This means, of the IPsec, it's the cheapest solution."

"NSa is not expensive, not high. It's at a moderate or medium level."

"In our evaluation, we found that the costs of deploying the solution, and also purchasing the hardware and licenses, were very attractive."

"The pricing and value are good."

"Its price is okay."

"Normally, when we buy any product, we buy it with a five-year service built into it. Later on, depending on the growth of the organization, we go for a new one or an upgrade."

More SonicWall NSa pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

No data available

Construction Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	370
Midsize Enterprise	138
Large Enterprise	195

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	56
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	24

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall NSa?

I am overall satisfied with everything, including the price.

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What needs improvement with SonicWall NSa?

The CPU configuration for SonicWall NSa, based on my experience, is average. It should be increased somewhat because ...

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What is your primary use case for SonicWall NSa?

We have SonicWall NSa models including NSA 2600, NSA 3600, and 6600 firewalls in our environment.We have used the Dee...

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Comparisons

Sophos Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 13% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

Check Point Cloud Firewall (formerly CloudGuard Network Security) vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 1% of the time

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Cisco Secure Firewall vs McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL]

Compared 18% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL]

Compared 15% of the time

Trellix Network Detection and Response vs McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL]

Compared 10% of the time

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Cisco Meraki MX vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 9% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 6% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 6% of the time

OPNsense vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 6% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs SonicWall NSa

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

June 2026

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Firewalls

May 2026

McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] report

Download McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

SonicWall NSa

May 2026

Download SonicWall NSa product report

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

Firewall Enterprise MFE, Intel Security Firewall Enterprise MFE

NSA 250M, NSA 2600, NSA 3600, NSA 4600, NSA 5600, Dell SonicWALL NSA

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate is a versatile network security tool offering features like VPN, firewall, web filtering, intrusion prevention, and scalability. It is known for its performance and integration with other Fortinet products, making it a preferred choice for robust cybersecurity.

Fortinet FortiGate stands out as a comprehensive cybersecurity solution with strong performance and ease of configuration. It delivers unified threat management, integrating features such as dynamic routing, SD-WAN support, and centralized management. Despite its strengths, improvements in the web interface's stability, pricing structures, and reporting capabilities are needed. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and automation advancements to enhance the experience further. These enhancements, alongside improvements in bandwidth management and the reduction of licensing costs, are points of interest for users looking to capitalize on FortiGate's extensive capabilities.

What are Fortinet FortiGate's key features?

VPN: Ensures secure remote connections.
Firewall: Protects against unauthorized access.
Web Filtering: Blocks malicious sites and content.
Application Control: Manages and controls applications.
Intrusion Prevention: Detects and prevents vulnerabilities.
SSL Inspection: Enhances security by inspecting encrypted traffic.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Fortinet FortiGate?

Affordability: Offers cost-effective security solutions.
Reliability: Known for consistent and stable performance.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other Fortinet products.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides broad threat protection capabilities.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries as a primary firewall system for securing internet gateways and safeguarding data centers. It supports businesses in achieving SD-WAN integration and enhances cybersecurity by providing essential features like antivirus, web filtering, and application control. Enterprises utilize FortiGate for securing remote connections and ensuring compliance with security standards, making it adaptable for different network sizes and industries.

Fortinet

McAfee Firewall Enterprise defends critical assets, such as regulated data repositories (customer, financial, and healthcare data), email and web servers, extranets, and data centers. This proxy-based firewall also offers application visibility and deep application controls for defense, delivers strong policy-based controls, blocks the latest threats, and eliminates unwanted traffic.

McAfee

SonicWall NSa stands out for its advanced security features, easy management, and cost-effectiveness, making it effective for businesses seeking robust network protection and efficient management.

Renowned for its comprehensive security mechanisms, SonicWall NSa provides a user-centric interface with enhanced VPN capabilities and content filtering. Features like deep packet inspection, application control, and site-to-site VPN ensure that it meets complex business needs. Its scalability is supported by SD-WAN functionality and unified threat management services. However, enhancements in firmware reliability, VPN scalability, and reporting tools are needed to fully optimize its potential for smaller businesses. Improved integration with AI and better threat detection will further enhance its robust security offering.

What are SonicWall NSa's most important features?

Deep Packet Inspection: Identifies threats through thorough traffic analysis.
Application Control: Manages and controls application activity for network efficiency.
Site-to-Site VPN: Creates secure connections between different office locations.
Automated Breach Prevention: Proactively blocks security threats.
Scalability with SD-WAN: Adapts to growing network demands with controlled traffic across multiple sites.

What benefits or ROI should users recognize?

User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies management tasks with straightforward operation.
Cost-Effective Throughput: Delivers high performance at a competitive price, ensuring value for investment.
Reliable Performance: Provides consistent security and operational efficiency.
Single-Pane Management: Facilitates integrated and cohesive network oversight.
Comprehensive UTM Services: Offers extensive security coverage suitable for business requirements.

In industries like education, industry, and government, SonicWall NSa plays a key role in safeguarding networks against potential cyber threats. Service providers and integrators deploy it for efficient firewalling, VPN management, bandwidth monitoring, and intrusion prevention. Its flexibility attends to needs from small businesses seeking secure internet access to large enterprises requiring thorough connectivity controls.

SonicWall

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

French Ministry of Education, RWTH Aachen, Avency, Cegedim, Cobweb, Intel Security, Cemex Mauser, R_sler Oberfl_chentechnik

Orange County Rescue Mission, First Source, Michaels & Taylor, Green Clinic Health System, Aspire Chiltern Skills and Enterprise Centre, UnitedStack, Faith Lutheran College Redlands, Celtic Manor Resort, Star Kay White, Air Works, Unimat Life, NHS Yorkshire and Humber Commissioning Support (YHCS), Hutt City Council, Mato Grosso do Sul, Nspyre

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Sophos and others in Firewalls. Updated: May 2026.

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