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Smoothwall Firewall 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

Smoothwall Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
45th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 November 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Smoothwall Firewall is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Firewall is 5.6%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sophos Firewall5.6%
Smoothwall Firewall0.4%
Other94.0%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Himanshu-Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at Qualic
Offers good scalability and monitoring features
There is room for improvement in the UI. They can improve it by making it so that everything is in one place, so we don't have to jump around to different pages. For example, if we're creating a rule, we should be able to do everything on the same page. Just a drop-down thing or something. This would improve productivity.
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

"It was easy to initially deploy it."
"The performance is good."
"The most significant aspect is the protection it offers."
"I like their firewall and the intrusion detection feature."
"Sophos XGS is a stable solution, and it has a very good operating system."
"Everything about the product is okay; I cannot single out anything specifically, as the firewall is working perfectly, the endpoint is helping me greatly, and people have been able to work from home using the VPN."
"One feature of Sophos XG that I found incredibly beneficial for threat prevention is its endpoint protection."
"The VPN is the best feature."
"The firewall functionality and unified threat management are the most useful features."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the UI. They can improve it by making it so that everything is in one place, so we don't have to jump around to different pages."
"We'd always like the solution to be a bit less in terms of cost."
"Sophos XGS should improve its customer service and educate its implementation partner."
"However, as far as infrastructure is concerned, if I have to apply this as a device in my data center or at any critical point, this device fails to perform."
"I am struggling with the licensing model of Sophos XG because we don't have a license. Our licenses expired and we're not supposed to renew the licenses at this time."
"The time taken by Sophos XG's support team to respond to and resolve an issue is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"When it comes to improvements that the vendor can make, we see that the cloud integration for managing all the firewalls is essentially a replacement of the on-prem version we had and is not sufficiently mature."
"It's easy to use, but it's harder to configure when you want detailed settings. They need to make it easier to access advanced features."
"Fortinet surpasses Sophos in terms of support, particularly with its comprehensive five-one feature console."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"There is an annual licensing fee to use Sophos XGS. It is an expensive solution."
"We paid for our licensing for three years, upfront, and there are no costs in addition to the standard fees."
"A central firewall on the cloud with a cluster might be 70,000 to 80,000 euros for a three-year license."
"We pay for two licenses for the use of Sophos XG annually and it is a flat fee. We do not have everyone going through both of the Sophos XG firewalls a the same time and the Sophos XG on Microsoft Azure is only accessible from the VPN."
"There are additional costs involved apart from the licenses."
"It is roughly around $4,000."
"There is a license required for this solution that is priced well and all the features are included."
"The price is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
University
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

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

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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 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

No data available
Sophos XG, Sophos XGS
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Cisco, Netgate and others in Firewalls. Updated: October 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.