We performed a comparison between SonicWall NSA and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Sophos XG’s single pane of glass makes it easy for users to manage the entire solution from anywhere. The solution is very light, stable, and provides excellent real-time control. Many users have experienced stability issues with SonicWall NSa. They feel it can be a bit buggy, resulting in occasional freeze-ups and downtime. The solution does not scale easily.
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"SD-WAN is a good feature."
"The most valuable features to us are the security services which is a critical factor in our deployment. Today we need to have all the security services enabled because firewalls are not enough."
"Sometimes I have some queries, and the SonicWall support team resolves my queries."
"Easy to scale solution that provides advanced threat protection. Their technical support is very good, very knowledgeable, and easy to reach."
"I like that SonicWall NSa is a stable product. It's also a scalable product."
"Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case."
"SonicWall's sales support is much better than other vendors'."
"SonicWall's technical support is very good."
"The features that I have found most valuable are first the Web Filter and the Web Application Firewall SD-Wan on Version 18. Additionally, RED Tunnels allows a Sophos vital to speak to another Sophos vital in headquarters."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos XG is the VBM."
"The stability of Sophos XG is very good. However, there have been some issues with other weaker models because they are limited in hardware in resources."
"The firewall functionality and unified threat management are the most useful features."
"We can configure rules with the user, traffic, etc., making it a very versatile solution for our network."
"The most valuable features are its nice interfaces and configuration. The endpoint is also very good."
"One of the most valuable features is the VPN."
"The stability of Sophos XG is good, it has good performance."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"The cost could be lower. There could also be more flexibility for smaller companies."
"Competitors provide SSL encryption licenses for free, whereas SonicWall only provides two licenses by default, but you have to pay for the rest of the licenses."
"The user interface could be better."
"Customer support is severely lacking with very slow response times."
"The security standards for space and point of view should be improved so that the solution deploys in critical areas."
"The thing main thing is that there's no user admin and in other firewalls, we can enable the scalable features, but SonicWall doesn't have that feature."
"The dynamics needs to be improved. The solution is not very compatible compared to the market products."
"The solution can be a bit expensive."
"I would like to next release to be able to support on-premise deployment. The construction of the rules within the firewall could also use some improvement."
"While it is possible to configure between two of the solution's devices in the same model, the high available usually fails."
"The interface of Sophos XG could be improved. I would prefer the Sophos XG to have an interface for the technician who is setting it up similar to the Sophos SG. I felt the Sophos SG user interface was superior. however, in terms of the functionality of the product, Sophos XG is in many ways more powerful than the Sophos SG. I have no complaints about the quality of the product or the end result. For someone who has used both, I preferred the old interface to the new one."
"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."
"The VPN features can be improved. Due to covid-19, we have a lot of employees that work from home and we need better VPN capabilities."
"Sophos XG's user interface has some room for improvement."
"Sophos XG could improve by making the remote access and VPN better."
"Lacks improved throughput performance in a box."
SonicWall NSa is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 26 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 36 reviews. SonicWall NSa is rated 8.0, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Easy to scale advanced threat protection solution with knowledgeable technical support, but has occasional bugs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Secure, duel switch capabilities, and good support". SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Cisco Secure Firewall, WatchGuard Firebox and Netgate pfSense, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Sangfor NGAF. See our SonicWall NSa vs. Sophos XG report.
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