Sophos Home vs WatchGuard Firebox comparison

Sophos and WatchGuard are both solutions in the Anti-Malware Tools category. Sophos is ranked #21 with an average rating of 9.0, while WatchGuard is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.6. Additionally, 100% of Sophos users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of WatchGuard users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 5, 2025

WatchGuard Firebox and Sophos Home compete in the cybersecurity space. WatchGuard Firebox has the upper hand in enterprise-level network protection, while Sophos Home is preferred for ease of use in personal settings.

Features: WatchGuard Firebox includes advanced threat protection, centralized management, and robust VPN capabilities. Sophos Home offers easy installation, protection for personal devices, and user-friendly operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WatchGuard Firebox's deployment is complex, aimed at IT professionals, offering extensive support. Sophos Home is easier to deploy, requiring minimal setup with accessible support for non-experts.

Pricing and ROI: WatchGuard Firebox involves higher initial costs with a focus on enterprise ROI through its comprehensive security. Sophos Home provides an affordable solution for individuals, emphasizing direct ROI through its protection plans.

To learn more, read our detailed Sophos Home vs. WatchGuard Firebox Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Sophos Home vs. WatchGuard Firebox

August 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.

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Alex Clerici

System Integrator IT Manager at Tecnimex S.r.l.

Has good integration with other Sophos products and offers ransomware protection

I expect an improvement with mobile integration. I want mobile devices to have better security, like Sophos Home's total security. Users often need to connect to a cloud platform to manage or change settings, which can be difficult. To improve this, providing minimal local settings could help users. The tool needs to improve its pricing. The current pricing is for medium and enterprise businesses, but it needs to improve for small businesses. The solution's support could also be improved, especially because local support often needs to interact with global support. This can make response times longer than expected.

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Rajesh Makwana

Regional Pre-Sales Engineer at Roundrobin Tech

Efficient bandwidth management and secure network access with a strong firewall

The primary use case of the Firebox mainly revolves around bandwidth management, unnecessary web blocking, application control, and protection against brute force attacks. It is also implemented for load balancing, SD-WAN, and branch-to-branch connectivity from one location to another. We also use…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."

"Fortinet FortiGate has helped me reduce Mean Time To Respond, or MTTR, and helped my organization consolidate all of the tools in one application."

"Fortinet FortiGate is pretty robust. The updates and firmware releases are pretty timely. They have a good product revision and review system, so they are constantly reviewing their configuration and the different mechanisms that are used on Fortinet FortiGate."

"Fortinet FortiGate is a very light product. It's easy to understand."

"Fortinet FortiGate brings numerous benefits to my company."

"We can use our devices to check all of the perimeters. It secures email websites."

"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."

"Application control and the web filter are the best features of Fortinet FortiGate."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The tool's most valuable feature is ransomware protection. Its integration with other Sophos security products is good, and the AI features have made it an efficient product."

"With Sophos Home, it's easy to implement; you just log in and manage the various computers as to what you want to detect."

"The most valuable features are the VPN and web blocker security."

"All of the features have been valuable. There's nothing on my M270 that I'm not using. If you have remote access, you can see how many users are coming from the outside world to be connected to the systems, through the virus systems that we have behind the firewall, in order to gain access to their files and do their work. We can also see how long they stay online and whether these connections are closed forcefully or for any other reasons, such as a glitch or some kind of misbehavior, to see if internet traffic is optimized and if that particular traffic is under company policies, concerning which websites were visited."

"It is a scalable solution."

"It does its job very well, and it is quite easy to put to use."

"The security that is used for defending from the attacks is very good."

"The set up of the VPN is pretty straightforward. Being able to build VPNs on the fly for certain users, if need be, is also valuable."

"I find that their tech support is excellent. And as a reseller, my relationship with my point of contact is also strong. WatchGuard does a good job of maintaining that."

"I find this solution very easy to manage. The web manager and Firebox key features are particularly impressive for cloud applications. That's why I often recommend this solution to our clients. It has good threat management capabilities and works against different types of threats."

More WatchGuard Firebox pros

Cons

"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."

"They need to improve their technical support."

"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."

"Not all features are available in the web UI. Features such as enabling multiple MPLS circuits can only be accomplished through the command line, so these need to be made available in the web UI."

"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."

"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."

"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."

"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"I expect an improvement with mobile integration. I want mobile devices to have better security, like Sophos Home's total security. Users often need to connect to a cloud platform to manage or change settings, which can be difficult. To improve this, providing minimal local settings could help users."

"For homeowners, determining ROI is challenging. With personal emails or maybe a few business emails, if you don't get hacked, then you're good."

"The only downside is that it is missing an API, that you can use to easily collect information from it."

"Sometimes, the writing rules are a little confusing in how am I doing them."

"Cloud-based central administration of all devices from one point would be nice"

"I'd like a few extra features, especially around threat severity assessment."

"There is no message displayed for the user on the desktop informing them that access to a web page has been blocked by Application Control."

"I would like to see more tutorials on setting up the Firebox."

"The VPN aspect of the WatchGuard Firebox is an area that could potentially benefit from improvement. We encountered difficulties while attempting to integrate Windows 11 laptops into the system, which resulted in unreliable connections. After some research, we discovered that this was primarily due to compatibility issues with Windows 11 and required a patch. However, it was still a challenge as it seemed that even when we tried to keep the laptops on Windows 10, they still exhibited the same issues as Windows 11 machines. Despite WatchGuard attributing the problem to Microsoft, we were eventually able to find a solution and all the machines are now functioning seamlessly."

"Since WatchGuard acquired Panda, there may be synergies in consolidating both solutions under a single name to reduce customer confusion."

More WatchGuard Firebox cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing scheme of Fortinet is better than Cisco. It is more logical."

"Fortinet FortiGate allows you to purchase licenses for hardware and software."

"If you purchase a one-year subscription with the hardware and then you want to renew for the second year, it is very costly."

"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."

"It is more expensive than Sophos. Fortinet is overall more expensive than Sophos. The small range of Fortinet, such as 60F and 80F, is more expensive than the small range of Sophos. Sophos is cheaper. In addition, if you jump from 80F Series to 100F Series, the price doubles."

"Its price is reasonable. They have a clear pricing policy. It is not complicated by the number of VPN users at a time. We know what the price is. The yearly subscription for the security license is rather high, but it is all included for whatever number of users you have and the kind of functions you need."

"Its pricing is good. The advantages of Fortinet FortiGate over its competitors include good pricing and meeting our requirements at a lower cost."

"The price, in comparison to other products is very cheap."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

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."

"The solution is a bit more expensive than other options."

"We had a trade-in offer at the end of our first three-year term. As a result, we pretty much got a free device by buying the three-year subscription. It was around $3,000 for the three-years."

"The price is so small that I don't pay attention to it anymore. I think we pay a few thousand dollars for two to three years, so about $100 per month. That's for all of our users. There is an additional cost if we want to go with a deeper licensing model, but we just pay for antivirus, IPS, and main product support."

"The subscription that was purchased is for three years, but it is usually for one year at a time."

"I haven't seen the pricing since 2017, but it was competitive. SonicWall, Barracuda, and WatchGuard were all about the same price when we did our last pricing."

"WatchGuard offers competitive pricing with attractive margins, benefiting both the company and its partners."

"I buy a three-year renewal on the main device, which is usually around $3,000 to $4,000. They usually upgrade the device when I do it. You get a big discount when you do three years."

More WatchGuard Firebox pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Retailer

10%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

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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...

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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 ...

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What needs improvement with Sophos Home?

For homeowners, determining ROI is challenging. With personal emails or maybe a few business emails, if you don't get...

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What advice do you have for others considering Sophos Home?

I would have to check the new features because AI is constantly evolving, and a lot of these companies come out with ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos Home?

Sophos Home is very cheap, and I find it to be a no-brainer for that type of security.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?

We are providing our services to all WatchGuard customers in the region.

See all answers

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...

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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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos XG vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 12% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 11% of the time

Cisco Meraki MX vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Sophos Home

Compared 50% of the time

HitmanPro.Alert by Sophos vs Sophos Home

Compared 10% of the time

Emsisoft Anti-Malware Home vs Sophos Home

Compared 10% of the time

AdGuard vs Sophos Home

Compared 9% of the time

F-Secure Total vs Sophos Home

Compared 8% of the time

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OPNsense vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 6% of the time

SonicWall TZ vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 5% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 5% of the time

Sophos XG vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 5% of the time

Sophos UTM vs WatchGuard Firebox

Compared 4% of the time

More WatchGuard Firebox Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

August 2025

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

Anti-Malware Tools

January 2025

Download Sophos Home product report

Buyer's Guide

WatchGuard Firebox

July 2025

Download WatchGuard Firebox product report

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall

No data available

WatchGuard Threat Detection and Response, WatchGuard Application Control, WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention, WatchGuard Gateway AntiVirus, WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate offers comprehensive network security and firewall protection across multiple locations. It effectively manages data traffic and secures environments with features like VPN, intrusion prevention, and UTM controls.

Organizations rely on Fortinet FortiGate for its robust integration with advanced security policies, ensuring significant protection for enterprises, cloud environments, and educational sectors. It facilitates network segmentation, application-level security, and authentication management, securing communication within and between locations such as branches and data centers. Its efficient SD-WAN and UTM features enable streamlined data management and enhanced threat protection capabilities. Users appreciate its centralized management, facilitating seamless operations across diverse environments.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiGate?

VPN Capabilities: Ensure secure remote access for users and seamless site-to-site connections.
Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): Detect and prevent security threats and vulnerabilities.
Advanced Firewall: Offers robust firewalling with application control and web filtering.
SD-WAN: Optimizes application performance and enhances bandwidth management.
SSL VPN: Provides reliable and secure access for remote workers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiGate?

High-performance Security: Delivers effective threat mitigation with high availability.
Centralized Management: Simplifies network operations with cloud-based management tools.
Detailed Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights into network activity and security threats.
Load Balancing: Ensures optimal resource distribution and traffic management.

Fortinet FortiGate is crucial in sectors like education, offering robust networks for secure data flow between campuses and facilitating remote learning. In enterprise environments, it allows efficient management of application traffic and security across multiple branches, while in the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with diverse platforms to enhance security infrastructure.

Fortinet

Sophos Home is a powerful security solution designed to protect devices from malware and cyber threats.

With efficient virus protection and comprehensive web filtering capabilities, it shields computers and data effectively.

The user-friendly interface, real-time monitoring, and seamless integration across devices make it a valuable tool for enhancing security.

Sophos

WatchGuard Firebox is a high-performance firewall known for its ease of setup, offering robust security with layered protection and centralized management capabilities.

WatchGuard Firebox stands out for its intuitive management and high throughput, addressing security needs with features like VPN, web filtering, and threat detection. Its centralized control and reporting abilities, along with Active Directory integration, make it popular among varied organizations. Its user-friendly interface and ongoing updates enhance usability and reliability. However, there's a call for better cloud-based administration, scalability, and improved integration with third-party vendors.

What are the key features of WatchGuard Firebox?

Ease of Setup: Quick and straightforward installation process.
GUI: User-friendly graphical interface for simplified navigation.
VPN Features: Secure and efficient virtual private network management.
Web Filtering: Advanced filtering for safer browsing experiences.
Threat Detection: Proactive monitoring and detection of cyber threats.

What benefits or ROI should be evaluated?

Centralized Control: Streamlined management from a single point.
High Throughput: Efficient data handling and processing capacity.
Stable Performance: Consistent and reliable operational functionality.
Active Directory Integration: Seamless connection with user directories.
Customer Service: Strong support service for customer inquiries.

WatchGuard Firebox is implemented across industries to secure internet gateways and protect data in multi-site businesses. Its applications span from Unified Threat Management (UTM) and intrusion prevention to compliance support in business environments requiring secure connectivity through VPNs.

WatchGuard

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

1. Acer 2. Adidas 3. Aetna 4. Aflac 5. Airbus 6. AIG 7. Amazon 8. American Express 9. American Airlines 10. Amex 11. Apple 12. AT&T 13. Audi 14. Avaya 15. Bank of America 16. Barclays 17. Bayer 18. Ben & Jerry's 19. BMW 20. Boeing 21. Bristol-Myers Squibb 22. Cadbury 23. Campbell Soup 24. Capital One 25. Caterpillar 26. Cisco 27. Coca-Cola 28. Comcast 29. ConocoPhillips 30. Dell 31. Disney 32. Dominion Energy 33. DuPont 34. eBay 35. ExxonMobil 36. FedEx 37. Ford 38. General Electric 39. General Motors 40. Google 42. Halliburton 43. Home Depot 44. Honda 45. Intel 46. Johnson & Johnson 47. JPMorgan Chase 48. Kellogg's 49. KeyCorp 50. Kraft Heinz 52. L'Oréal 53. Lockheed Martin 54. McDonald's 55. Merck 56. Microsoft 57. Morgan Stanley 58. Nike 59. PepsiCo 60. Pfizer 61. Qualcomm 62. RBC 63. Red Bull 64. Reebok 65. Siemens 66. Tesla 67. Toyota 68. Visa 69. Wells Fargo 70. Xerox 71. Yum! Brands

Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence

Buyer's Guide

Sophos Home vs. WatchGuard Firebox

August 2025

Free Report: Sophos Home vs. WatchGuard Firebox

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