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Menlo Secure vs Sophos Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

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

Menlo Secure
Ranking in Firewalls
54th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (25th), ZTNA (27th), Cloud Security Remediation (6th)
Sophos Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Menlo Secure is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Firewall is 5.9%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sophos Firewall5.9%
Menlo Secure0.4%
Other93.7%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2701794 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.
Ashutosh Jha - PeerSpot reviewer
Project engineer at IT Solution india private limited
Robust protection has blocked external threats and provides clear visibility into user activity
Sophos Firewall offers multiple features, including IPS, IDS, ATP, NDR, XOps, web protection, application protection, web server protection, and many more. Out of all those features, I find web protection and application protection to be very helpful and valuable in my daily work. Sophos Firewall has positively impacted my organization by preventing outside threats, allowing me to easily monitor my users, and configuring any rule for any user regarding what they need to use and what I am restricting for the particular user. I can share that it has improved productivity because if anyone could ransom my network, they could demand money to decrypt the files, thus saving us money, time, and providing reliability.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools prior to implementing them had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged."
"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."
"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."
"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."
"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."
"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."
"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."
"Either you have access to something or don't have access to it, and if you do, we can ensure, 100 percent of the time, that there is nothing malicious that is going to impact our system in any way."
"For the past seven years, we haven't had any issues with the hardware or software."
"The ROI has been satisfactory."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XGS are a set of functionalities that are quite commendable, they call it synchronized security, where all the solutions share defense lines with each other."
"The product is very easy to use, and we enjoy the ability for it to fit into our high-level security framework, giving us some separation from being on Microsoft tasks and allowing us to achieve a high level of security without needing a big team."
"The heartbeat system, the reporting management, and the electoral control that is achieved when the Sophos XGS is integrated with the Sophos endpoint is great."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that the license offers everything."
"Now, version 18 does some stuff that some of my older firewalls used to out of the box, so that in itself was more of a nicety and makes things a lot easier."
"I like the dashboard, the interface, the management console, and the remote login."
 

Cons

"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."
"The user monitoring could still be improved."
"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."
"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."
"The Sophos support is bad. It needs to be improved."
"The GUI and support could be better. I think there are other products that we are going to deploy instead of Sophos."
"Their account manager and support in Africa are not so good."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"We'd always like the solution to be a bit less in terms of cost."
"I would like to see a history of the monthly bandwidth utilization, the bandwidth consumption for a period of time."
"The solution's technical support is not the best."
"There can be lag time when updating an operating policy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."
"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."
"This is a budget-friendly product with reasonable pricing."
"Its price is fair. It is cheaper and way better than others."
"It is very expensive."
"The price of Sophos XGS is less than competitors worldwide. However, in Turkey the solution is expensive."
"The solution is priced well."
"The Sophos pricing, in general, is better than SonicWall, Fortinet, WatchGuard, or anybody else."
"The license for Sophos XGS is for three years, paid on a yearly basis. Everything is included with the license; there are no additional fees."
"I live in Bolivia and the price of Sophos XGS is high. However, they have adjusted their price a little over the past while but the price could still be less expensive to be affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business210
Midsize Enterprise61
Large Enterprise53
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which mak...
What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic access, and by doing it that way, it has multiple use cases. For example, it man...
What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some of these functions, people typically choose another technology for those specifi...
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 the firewalls change every 5 to 7 years as stated but you really do need to upg...
Which is better - Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls or Sophos XG?
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat signatures and updates. I also appreciate that I can just import addresses and URL...
What are the main differences in features between Sophos XG and FortiGate 80F?
Hi Arvind P , The Sophos XG firewall has a number of models right from XG86 to XG135w under the 1U Desktop Form Factor. The Sophos XG appliance that offers a direct competition to the Fortigate 80...
 

Also Known As

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
Sophos XG, Sophos XGS
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Menlo Secure vs. Sophos Firewall and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.