We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and SonicWall NSa based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Meraki MX has a slight edge in this comparison. Unlike SonicWall NSa, its users report a proven ROI.
"Good load balancing feature."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"Advanced routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PBR). It gives you a seamless and simple integration into a large network."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"It prevents us from being hacked and delivers information about who and where the attack came from."
"Both the scalability and the scalability are great with Meraki MX."
"To me, the analytics feature is one of the most valuable in Meraki MX. I also find that it has good usability as it's cloud-based. Another valuable feature of Meraki MX is that it's simple to use and it's user-friendly."
"WAN optimization is the best feature of the solution."
"MX is easy to manage, configure and install."
"I love the simplicity of Meraki MX — specifically, the simplicity of the dashboard."
"It is easy to manage, which is one of the most important things for us. It is also flexible, stable, and scalable."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is its ability to work like any other firewall."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the GUI pre-filtering and the ATP (advanced threat protection)."
"SonicWall has USCS and anti-virus at the gateway level. Everything is filtered, and if it detects an intruder, it drops the line."
"User friendly and intuitive."
"The basic firewall rules of the solution are great."
"The solution has many useful features, such as content management, user management, user filtering, and domain controller connectivity mapping."
"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."
"SonicWall's technical support is very good."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"MX can only be managed via a web interface, but I'm accustomed to using a CLI or a graphical interface. I would also like to see more reporting features. It doesn't provide enough information for me to know precisely about some clients."
"The client-side VPN is weak. The product could be improved with deployment templates."
"It is very expensive."
"The only stability issue is in Content Filtering. Sometimes we need to report these types of issues to Cisco support."
"The solution's pricing should be reduced."
"We could have more reporting options and the ability to send alarms to the administrator."
"You can only have one tunnel in the whole infrastructure — one tunnel with one device."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"It only has a single power interface, which has limitations in terms of high availability."
"The stability is not there. The features are there, but they are not stable. They need to improve on this product because I feel that they have launched this product without much R&D."
"I'd like to see integration with Microsoft 365 for authentication."
"Potential improvement around the associated VPN cost"
"After-sales support and hands-on training facilities are not available in my country."
"The problem primarily with SonicWall is it's a Unix box. And it's all software, all the activities, blocking, censoring, everything has to happen in the software. If you start hitting the box with a lot of sessions it slows down and that's not what I expect from a firewall."
"SonicWall NSa doesn't have a proxy. It also needs a quota management feature in specific scenarios where you must limit user bandwidth for a particular day."
"Vendor support needs improvement. The frequency of time and support should be increased."
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 20th in Firewalls with 76 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Meraki MX vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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