No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

SonicWall Mobile Connect vs SonicWall Netextender comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024

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

SonicWall Mobile Connect
Ranking in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonicWall Netextender
Ranking in Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
10th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Enterprise Infrastructure VPN category, the mindshare of SonicWall Mobile Connect is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonicWall Netextender is 2.7%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SonicWall Netextender2.7%
SonicWall Mobile Connect1.2%
Other96.1%
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
 

Featured Reviews

Rich Darress - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Operating Officer at Darress Tech
A straightforward tool with high adoption rate due to its user-friendliness
SonicWall Mobile Connect’s marketing efforts are commendable; they may not be perceived as the most secure player compared to Fortinet or Meraki. SonicWall Mobile Connect should focus on positioning itself as a strong contender in the mid-market segment to improve its standing. Many high-end engineers dismiss it in favor of Fortinet or Meraki, often due to a lack of firsthand experience.
Rich Darress - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Operating Officer at Darress Tech
Has provided secure remote access to multiple client networks with consistent performance
When buying the appliance itself, there is one downside that isn't exclusive to SonicWall. When you apply all the security settings, many people have one gig connections for internet ISP. If you're bringing in a one gig connection, you have to have a more robust SonicWall to handle that throughput with all your security settings turned on. It gets pretty pricey upfront if you're bringing in a one gig connection. If the customer starts with a two, three, four, or 500 meg connection and has a small unit, they have to replace the whole box when upgrading to a gig, so scalability there is atrocious. However, this issue exists with pretty much any appliance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of use is great. It's pretty easy for users to get on the tablet or whatever and select the bookmark they need and just take it over."
"The ease of use is great; it's pretty easy for users to get on the tablet or whatever and select the bookmark they need and just take it over."
"I can say that it's stable and the performance is acceptable."
"The technical support is fine."
"The solution offers multiple OS support."
"The solution benefits IT managers in backend programming. The ease of configuring and securing it while ensuring security measures is crucial. The tool is easy in terms of user experience. It is straightforward."
"This is a stable and reliable solution."
"It can support multifactor authentication. Also, it is a very basic application."
"When we started to change from IPsec-type clients that were predominantly built right into the firewalls to this approach or deployment style for SSL VPN, the amount of time that our techs spent helping people with VPN issues was probably cut by more than half."
"The product is very cost-effective; for the price-sensitive market, this is a very good product for an SSL VPN solution."
"The best feature is that employees can connect to our LAN, and have access to our network from home."
"It's a stable tool that does what it is supposed to do."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"NetExtender works very well. I never had an issue with it, and it has been working well for me. In terms of management, you have good control over the destination. You can use NetExtender to set the policy and the static route for a client. You can modify it based on what your client needs or can access. You have good control over routing."
"The most valuable feature for the Netextender is the ease with which we can integrate it with SAML."
 

Cons

"Licensing includes things that my customers don't need."
"Licensing includes things that my customers don't need."
"Technical support can always get better. Any time you have to call in for any certain thing, it can be difficult."
"The solution would be improved if SonicWall would also offer it as a cloud-based service. I would also like to see it include multiple cloud integration."
"Lacks multiple cloud integration."
"SonicWall Mobile Connect’s marketing efforts are commendable; they may not be perceived as the most secure player compared to Fortinet or Meraki. SonicWall Mobile Connect should focus on positioning itself as a strong contender in the mid-market segment to improve its standing. Many high-end engineers dismiss it in favor of Fortinet or Meraki, often due to a lack of firsthand experience."
"Technical support can always get better. Any time you have to call in for any certain thing, it can be difficult."
"Right now, you have to load each license on to an appliance. You can't pool across multiple appliances."
"Some companies provide a VPN client for free, but you have to pay for NetExtender."
"Right now, you have to load each license on to an appliance. You can't pool across multiple appliances. So, you end up having to do a lot of administrative work to recover if an internet provider goes down, and you cannot leverage it as easily into a DR solution."
"I am rolling out the new Netextender because I am having some issues with the older version."
"The product does not work well."
"They need to rewrite the software to make it a usable product."
"The solution takes more bandwidth these days and it would be helpful if that was reduced."
"The initial setup of SonicWall Netextender is straightforward. The only issue we encountered was with relocating the VPN appliance. If we needed to move it from an on-premise to an on-cloud architecture, we had to start over and redeploy it from scratch. Unfortunately, it is not portable and any changes to its physical location often result in the need for a fresh deployment to ensure everything functions properly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is cheap itself, not too costly."
"Compared to others, it is cheaper. When we compare it with Palo Alto, Check Point, or Fortinet, it is a little cheaper."
"Cost wise, it would be a few hundred dollars for the base appliance with the first five clients. Then from there, your cost per seat depends on how many you're getting. It's a one-time cost, and then you have a few hundred dollars a year for the maintenance contract once you get the one-time seat costs out of the way."
"After a certain number of users, you require extra licensing."
"The solution has a pretty good price."
"You have to pay for its license. There are some other companies that provide a VPN client for free. When you buy NetExtender, its license is available for one, three, or five years."
"The price of SonicWall Netextender is reasonable. Whether it's a small shop with only five users or a larger operation with 130 users, we have received no complaints or objections regarding cost from any of the clients we are looking to deploy it with."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Infrastructure VPN solutions are best for your needs.
896,467 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall Netextender?
The pricing for my experience with the setup cost and licensing of SonicWall Netextender is fair. The Netextender itself has no cost. It's the SSL licensing that is attached to the SonicWall. It us...
What needs improvement with SonicWall Netextender?
SonicWall Netextender has not helped with compliance, as it is not applicable for what I'm doing. I've put several feature requests in over the years and they've implemented them all, so it current...
What is your primary use case for SonicWall Netextender?
Getting to local resources on a customer's network is my main use case with SonicWall Netextender or SonicWall SSL-VPN. As a managed service provider, all my customers have SonicWalls and I get int...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about SonicWall Mobile Connect vs. SonicWall Netextender and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,467 professionals have used our research since 2012.