We performed a comparison between Sophos UTM and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall."
"Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features are ease of use, flexibility, and most of the configuration we can be done using the GUI. When we compare Fortinet FortiGate with other solutions the firewall policy are very easy to understand."
"Whenever we raise a complaint with FortiGate, their response and resolution times are minimal."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"I am "headache free" that I don't have to categorize all the websites and that security has been pre categorized by the people, and that the services are getting updated. At least one part of my problem is over."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"Brings greater visibility into the network traffic coming inside and passing away from the company."
"The solution can scale."
"What I like about the solution is the ease of use."
"It now controls all the security aspects of our web servers with Sophos UTM WAF."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The packet filtering's great. You get out what you put into it. It works great as long as you know your security and configure everything adequately. If you just pop one in and it's not configured, then it's basically wide open. It kind of depends on the admin skill, but it's an excellent product."
"Configuration could not be made any easier."
"It makes it a lot easier for us to maintain things. Prior to it, things were more difficult. This means less time on us. We can focus on other things. The recovery is more in man-hours for us than anything else."
"Intrusion Prevention is my primary focus so that's what I find most useful. The why is straightforward: It's to prevent intrusion."
"Regarding the reporting, I was in the Dimension server earlier today. It's very powerful. I like it. And the management features are easy to use. I like the fact that I can open up the System Manager client or I can just do it through the web if I'm making a quick change."
"Policy VPN, site-to-site VPN, traffic monitoring, anti-spam filters, and all other advanced features are valuable."
"It protects me against malicious websites, as well as malicious downloads, as a perimeter anti-virus. I've also seen it blocking a lot of pings and different probes."
"It's hard to pick one feature over another. But if I had to pick one, the UTM would be the most valuable because of the notification. I get notified via email if there is any type of threat detection or alert, telling me something is wrong."
"The solution simplifies my business. Normally, for administration, we are using NetApp System Manager on Window since it's easy to create new policies. In a short amount of time, you can create new policies based on new requirements. For example, in the last few months, many requirements changed due to the coronavirus, adding the use of new services, like Office 365, and eLearning tools, like Zoom."
"Firebox's best feature is the access portal."
"Among the most valuable features is the ease of use — love the interface — of both the web interface and of the WatchGuard System Manager."
"The support from Fortinet FortiGate could improve. They are not easily accessible when we need them. They could improve their response time."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"This product could use some improvement with web filtering. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up and maintain."
"Last year, Sophos had some major internal management changes that negatively impacted their support."
"Sophos should improve its ability to check something like bandwidth consumption for users or something more real-time."
"The reporting could be a lot better."
"There were a lot of features and functionality in Sophos SG UTM but nothing was state of the art in terms of technology. You did not get the latest functions. It was very monolithic as it was based on an old Linux PuTTY system."
"I would like to see the SD-WAN feature improved."
"Sophos UTM's internet security could be better."
"The only time we face a problem or issues is when we place a ticket. We have found that response is very slow."
"The reporting is a little on the weak side. I would like to see a better reporting set and easier drill-down options."
"The level of support from WatchGuard is not as good."
"Sometimes I would like to copy a rule set from one box to another box in a direct way. This is a feature that is not present at the moment in WatchGuard."
"I don't think I can get a full-blown DNS client from it. I've been trying to have DNS services. It has forwarding, but I don't get the services of a full DNS client. My main difficulty with it is that I can't run a complete service. I need NTP. I need DNS. I need DHCP for my domain, but I only get forwarding. As far as I can tell, I don't get caching and the kinds of reporting and registration needed to host a DNS for a domain. I have to have a separate solution for that."
"The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer... The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work."
"I would like to have a little more control over access points and the ability to see the bandwidth that is passing through a specific access point. We are not able to see that. We can see what traffic is passing through the Firebox itself, but we can't identify if it is coming from a particular access point or not."
"This solution needs the option to add an external hard drive."
"The data loss protection works well, but it could be easier to configure. The complexity of data loss protection makes it a more difficult feature to fully leverage. Better integration with third-party, two-factor authentication would be advantageous."
Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 77 reviews. Sophos UTM is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Rock-solid stability and easy to change the model". Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and KerioControl, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Meraki MX and Sophos XGS. See our Sophos UTM vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Unified Threat Management (UTM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.