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MetaDefender Drive vs WatchGuard Firebox comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
592
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
MetaDefender Drive
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (61st)
WatchGuard Firebox
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (11th), Firewalls (12th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (7th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (16th), Application Control (5th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Unified security and sd-wan have improved uptime and cut wan costs for multi-site branches
Users report stability issues in certain versions, which requires regular updates. Real-world attacks have also highlighted the need for urgent patching of vulnerabilities.Fortinet FortiGate, while a powerful and feature-rich web firewall, could improve in areas like firmware stability, documentation, and ease of use. The learning curve can be steep for some users. For beginners, support quality can vary, and frequent updates with occasional vulnerabilities call for careful patch management. However, once Fortinet FortiGate is configured, it remains highly reliable and efficient. Customer support needs improvement, as I find it very slow, with reports from other users reflecting that customer support is inadequate.
Jasmit Singh Juneja - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO & Technology Specialist at Karman Infotech Private Limited
Advanced threat scanning has strengthened endpoint security but reporting and hardware reliability still need improvement
The multi-scanning engines feature helps to manage threats effectively.MetaDefender Drive has the same multi-scanning platform as the Opswat endpoint and MFP. The difference is that you will not get as many antimalware engines compared to other solutions, but the main functionality of MetaDefender Drive is to detect threats from your endpoint.Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) works on endpoints, but people typically do not use it for data at rest since the data is not in transit and remains on the asset. It is difficult to define a policy or determine what to sanitize and what not to sanitize. Overall, MetaDefender Drive is widely used for threat prevention with multi-scanning and vulnerability scanning.
PS
CEO at ajuntament del Prat
Network protection has improved with stronger VPN connectivity but administration remains complex
Deploying WatchGuard Firebox was quite easy, but we have had some problems regarding the VPN and the administration of the tool and the two firewalls that we have. When comparing WatchGuard Firebox with our previous solution, Palo Alto, we have had some problems in administration because of the tools. I think that they have some aspects in their system that are cloud-provided, but they also have an on-premise solution, which makes this combination good. Although I should say that when compared to Palo Alto, we have taken a step backwards. In general, I would rate WatchGuard Firebox around 6-7; it is a good firewall, but they lack good administration tools. We experience many problems with the performance and administration tools on the web, including several issues with VPNs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly; we are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering, and the firewall is powerful."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"Fortinet FortiGate has been a Perimeter Security which defends our network from Internet attackers, armed with zero-day exploits of common Internet services like HTTP and SMTP."
"The value is the capability of having multiple services with one unique license, not having the limitation per user licensing schema, like other vendors."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"The solution provides an easy way to filter information and the Fortinet lab is a great place to discover new things."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"FortiGate is easier to use as compared to Checkpoint devices; it is user friendly and has a good UI, so you don't need much expertise to work on this firewall and you don't need to worry much about DCLA, commands, and things like that."
"MetaDefender Drive is beneficial for organizations where vendors need to be prevented from supply chain attacks."
"We use the on-premises deployment model. It's a great product."
"I like WatchGuard's network segmentation features. It's easy to configure user policies."
"We have received a good return on investment."
"Zero-trust and threat-hunting services are most valuable."
"It's pretty simple to understand when you want to do any diagnostics on your network. If you want to go in and see what packages are having trouble getting through, what's being held, stalled, etc., it's very easy to use in that way."
"I like intrusion detection the most."
"What I found most valuable in WatchGuard Firebox is that it's a functional platform that works, and each of its features works well."
"It's user-friendly. And if you are using a WatchGuard device and you want to test that side of the software, it's quite easy to get the license to test it."
 

Cons

"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"The solution could improve by having some additional features, such as IBS and better cloud administration."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels."
"Improvements could be made when companies expand and need better equipment and more licenses."
"Support could be improved."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"MetaDefender Drive is not particularly stable."
"We would like to see granular notification settings and more advanced filtering in traffic monitoring."
"Like any other firewall, if it goes down, it's going to cause problems but these don't go down."
"Its graphical user interface could be improved because not everybody is technical."
"The drawbacks are just sometimes not having the technical information that we need in order to easily make connections with all of our Internet-based clients."
"The solution isn't what I would consider feature-rich."
"They are working on cloud-based options. However, they do not have the options fully functional in their solution at this time."
"This product needs to be fully integrated with the firewall."
"The solution is lacking a professional website, they should be updated more often."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was probably about $2,500 per firewall. It was all included. It included support, services, threat management software, and 24/7 FortiCare on it. Cisco products are more expensive."
"It's a very full-featured and it's priced well solution."
"Its pricing is competitive with other solutions."
"If you compare the price of Fortinet FortiGate IPS to other firewalls, Check Point is priced very high followed by Palo Alto and Sophos. Fortinet FortiGate IPS price is more reasonable."
"Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"For the performance that we get, the price is reasonable. There are cheaper options, but they may not deliver the same kind of performance that we want. For the performance they provide, the price is acceptable."
"While slightly more affordable than competitors, it remains relatively expensive due to its inclusive subscription."
Information not available
"Despite the fact that there is always room for improvement, the current pricing of the solution is still lower compared to its competitors."
"I usually tell people that it's really affordable as well, particularly compared to Cisco."
"Cheap."
"Very competitive pricing regarding throughput compared to other alternatives."
"The licensing can be a one-time purchase unless you need the extra services for example twenty-four seven support."
"WatchGuard offers competitive pricing with attractive margins, benefiting both the company and its partners."
"As per my knowledge, the product is more affordable than alternatives."
"The primary reason that we went with Firebox was its cost. It is very economical and it provided us with all the security functions that we were looking for at the time. And the throughput was more than what we required, so it was a very cost-effective device to deploy on our network."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
No data available
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business366
Midsize Enterprise136
Large Enterprise193
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business101
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise15
 

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...
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...
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 ...
What needs improvement with MetaDefender Drive?
MetaDefender Drive needs to be more flexible for reporting and administrative purposes. While the operation is straig...
What is your primary use case for MetaDefender Drive?
MetaDefender Drive's main use case is to scan endpoints for threats with multi-scanning and vulnerability detection a...
What advice do you have for others considering MetaDefender Drive?
MetaDefender Drive is a hardware device designed for scanning laptops and assets at rest for threats, not for file tr...
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We are providing our services to all WatchGuard customers in the region.
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We just use it as a secondary WiFi device. We're a small office and we needed to set up a WiFi device for a few of ou...
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We're a hospital and we use it for developing our incoming and outgoing policies, and we also use it for VPN.
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
WatchGuard Threat Detection and Response, WatchGuard Application Control, WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention, WatchGuard Gateway AntiVirus, WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service
 

Overview

 

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
Sophos, IBM, American express, bmc, DISA
Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, SentinelOne, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Anti-Malware Tools. Updated: April 2026.
892,487 professionals have used our research since 2012.