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SonicWall NSv vs Sophos UTM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.1
SonicWall NSv improved security and productivity, reduced costs, and enhanced network monitoring, strengthening infrastructure and resource management.
Sentiment score
5.7
Sophos UTM offers quick returns, efficient network management, and cost savings, benefiting managed service providers and ensuring data protection.
In terms of cost, using SonicWall NSv in the cloud has allowed me to avoid purchasing additional physical firewall appliances, while scaling via VM size has proven more cost-effective than hardware refresh cycles, leading to reduced overall infrastructure and firewall expansion costs.
Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
Investment was challenging but strategic, given its advantages like 30% depreciation in the Indian ecosystem by the third year.
CEO at a recruiting/HR firm with 11-50 employees
Based on SonicWall NSv, it helped us to easily navigate through everything and get done what we needed in a very quick manner.
Senior Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
I have seen a return on investment with Sophos UTM, and I can share that the price is around thirty percent better, especially if you count in the employee time.
System Engineer SDDC / VCF at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
SonicWall NSv customer service is praised for prompt, effective support, with high ratings despite occasional wait time concerns.
Sentiment score
6.7
Sophos UTM's customer service receives mixed reviews for response times but is praised for expertise and community resources.
Customer support for SonicWall NSv is top-notch.
IT systems and network engineer at Nelo Global Technologies Africa Limited
Whenever I create a case regarding any issue, their support is prompt and effective, adhering to the SLA, which leaves our customers very satisfied.
Project Manager in IT at IT Solutions India Pvt. Ltd.
I would rate the customer support a 10 out of 10.
HPC engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
The technical support by Sophos is amazing, especially when I pay for the enhanced support.
Associate Director - Management Support Services at CIHP
I would rate the technical support by Sophos a 10.
Network and Infrastructure Manager at Sonysugar
I would rate the technical support with Sophos a seven because sometimes the time of the first resolution is not ideal.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
SonicWall NSv provides scalable solutions with easy upgrades and cloud integration, enabling smooth performance improvements for growing environments.
Sentiment score
6.0
Sophos UTM is highly scalable, supporting growth via licenses, hardware, and clustering, adaptable to varying deployment sizes.
It has met our organization's needs by allowing us to scale our security posture consistently with our cloud compute growth, increased traffic and user areas, new cloud regions, and policy complexity growth.
Senior Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Cloud scalability with SonicWall NSv has worked well and is much easier compared to the physical firewall, though it still requires good planning to avoid performance bottlenecks during peak traffic.
Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
Nonetheless, the product is robust, eliminating major scalability concerns.
CEO at a recruiting/HR firm with 11-50 employees
You can have high availability clusters, so very, very scalable in my opinion.
System Engineer SDDC / VCF at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
SonicWall NSv is praised for stability, reliable performance, effective management, and preference over Palo Alto and Sophos.
Sentiment score
7.5
Sophos UTM is praised for stability and reliability, with few issues occurring mainly during updates or resource demands.
It handles traffic well, providing reliable perimeter security with minimal interruptions.
Network Security Consultant at Terafence Private Limited
Understanding and handling these devices onsite was limited, requiring external support.
CEO at a recruiting/HR firm with 11-50 employees
It rates around eight to nine in terms of stability, and it is quite good.
Owner at IT CARE
 

Room For Improvement

SonicWall NSv struggles with pricing, slow GUI, and setup complexity while users seek improved features and support.
Sophos UTM needs enhancements in reporting, UI, threat protection, VPN, technical support, scalability, pricing, and configuration simplicity.
I believe that application-based QoS policy is very important given the current environment. This feature should be available for application QoS as well in this firewall.
Project Manager in IT at IT Solutions India Pvt. Ltd.
When the software was downloaded, optimal hardware utilization was lacking, making hardware upgrades inevitable.
CEO at a recruiting/HR firm with 11-50 employees
Currently, we are getting challenges with user-wise reports and other reporting details.
Owner at IT CARE
If you want to really implement some rules that are a little bit more difficult, Sophos always recommends getting the dedicated WAF, or web application firewall, but I would prefer to have more features on the web application firewall in the firewall itself because it would make more sense.
System Engineer SDDC / VCF at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
I would prefer to see additional features in the next release of Sophos UTM because cyber crime increases every day, so we also need to improve our game to prevent any chances for intrusion.
Network and Infrastructure Manager at Sonysugar
It would make my work much simpler because it makes decision-making much easier.
IT Manager at Vegol
 

Setup Cost

SonicWall NSv's reasonable pricing varies by region, with competitive licensing but higher costs in places like Brazil.
Sophos UTM offers flexible pricing with incentives, praised for its features and value despite some regional variances.
The Global VPN will be chargeable in our product, unlike Fortinet or Sophos, where it is free—this is a major difference.
Owner at IT CARE
SonicWall NSv was a bit expensive for the subscription.
Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Since we have been using it for years, it makes it a bit more affordable.
DevOps Support Engineer at Bluegrass
Pricing has become expensive recently due to the dollar hike and naira value changes in Nigeria.
Associate Director - Management Support Services at CIHP
The value between what I receive and what I pay is the best in the industry.
System Administrator at a training & coaching company with 11-50 employees
The pricing would be more economical if sold directly to the user compared to going through a partner, as they need to take their percentage.
Network and Infrastructure Manager at Sonysugar
 

Valuable Features

SonicWall NSv offers robust security with advanced features and customization, enhancing productivity and protection in cloud environments.
Sophos UTM excels in configuration ease, real-time reporting, cost-effectiveness, and flexible security features, benefiting efficient management.
The cloud delivery threat intelligence spots suspicious behavior in just a few seconds, stopping it before execution, automatically blocking and quarantining files.
IT systems and network engineer at Nelo Global Technologies Africa Limited
SonicWall NSv has positively impacted my organization by helping us access our whitelisted web apps since we manage web apps while ensuring proper standards to prevent any information leaks.
DevOps Support Engineer at Bluegrass
When I had to establish multiple new branches and add multiple firewalls at a time for the new openings, the auto-creation of firewall rules saved me so much time on the configuration of firewalls.
network security engineer
The zero-day protection and firewall rules are some of the most effective features for threat management.
Associate Director - Management Support Services at CIHP
It helps us quite a lot, especially because since we use Sophos UTM, malware intrusions are not rampant.
Network and Infrastructure Manager at Sonysugar
Sophos UTM's valuable features include the cost, which is very competitive when compared with other vendors, balanced with the features that it delivers.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

SonicWall NSv
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (14th)
Sophos UTM
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

SG
Senior Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Secures east-west cloud traffic and improves threat visibility through deep inspection
SonicWall NSv offers great features. I cannot pinpoint a single best feature, but the best feature is the ability to deliver the full, high-efficiency inspection power of a physical SonicWall, including zero-day defense using Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection to the cloud, efficiently removing the performance versus cloud trade-off typically associated with virtual firewalls. Regarding deep memory inspection and real-time zero-day defense in SonicWall NSv, deep memory inspection is distinct from traditional sandboxing methods because it is focused on what is happening in the memory during file execution time, rather than just observing file system behavior. The deep memory inspection process addresses all challenges by employing a proprietary technique within the secure analysis environment, focusing on CPU-level analysis and real-time verdict. Those are the key points. SonicWall NSv's user interface is quite clear and easy to navigate. If someone has not worked with SonicWall and this is their first experience with the platform, I would highly recommend it. It is very easy to navigate and very user-friendly. SonicWall NSv has positively impacted our organization because we gained clear visibility into our network, and it helps to identify potential security issues that we had. We were able to remediate those issues, and so far, we have had a great experience with SonicWall NSv. We were able to manage approximately 99% of network-based attacks through this platform.
Bashir Bashir - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Vegol
Firewall management has become simpler and now provides real-time visibility and bandwidth control
The features I have found most valuable in Sophos UTM are that it is much easier to configure, I appreciate the reporting side of it, and the rules are very straightforward to work with. Sophos UTM's real-time insights into network health help my organization because I get real-time reports on what is happening on my network, what is trying to access me, the destination, and all that. I can then be reactive or proactive, and for zero-day, I think it is beneficial because it can learn what my network does. If anything goes outside what it expects, it sends a report on Sophos Central, so I find zero-day makes my work a bit easier. The use of Sophos UTM's intuitive management console has impacted my security policy enforcement in that it is much easier to configure; I configure with information rather than with presumptions.
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Comparison Review

it_user216600 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Consultant with 51-200 employees
Jan 3, 2016
Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate
I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Security Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business75
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SonicWall NSV?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of SonicWall NSv has been mostly positive, though there are a few areas that can be improved in licensing. Pricing for SonicWall NSv is com...
What needs improvement with SonicWall NSV?
Overall, SonicWall NSv is a strong and reliable virtual firewall, but based on my hands-on experience, there are a few areas where it can definitely be improved. The first area is the management in...
What is your primary use case for SonicWall NSV?
The main use case for SonicWall NSv is to secure virtual and cloud-based infrastructure by providing centralized firewall security, including VPN access and traffic inspections. In one of our envir...
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 good. The most valuable features for me are their web and email filtering. I wou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos UTM?
The pricing for Sophos UTM is reasonable; I do not have an issue with it, though I was considering RED because I have different sites I wanted to connect, and instead of doing site-to-site, the RED...
What needs improvement with Sophos UTM?
I would like to improve Sophos UTM in that there is software I use that goes deeper in the reporting on usage. There is software called Fastvue that breaks down everything in the firewall and whate...
 

Also Known As

SonicWall Network Security Virtual
Astaro
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Comlogic, Depaul, Hutt City Council
One Housing Group
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