We performed a comparison between Sophos XGS and WatchGuard Firebox based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"The SD-WAN function is very developed. It has SD-WAN functionality with security features in one device. We can manage from one single console SD-WAN and the security policy."
"This product is definitely scalable."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."
"Sophos XGS's most valuable feature is content filtering."
"The most valuable features in Sophos XGS are bandwidth management, content filtering, and WAN link management failover. If one internet activity or one link would fail, automatically it will switch over to another one."
"Sophos XGS's best features are its VPN and ATPR1 cert protection."
"It's much faster than the previous firewall, so you can do the work faster."
"We are happy and satisfied with all the features."
"There are good KCL rules and policies as well as NATing rules."
"Setup was straightforward. One person is enough for deployment."
"It offers an easy initial implementation."
"WatchGuard Firebox's two-factor authentication feature is particularly useful and provides an added layer of protection."
"They've done a lot of work with their SD-WAN, which we do use, to have our old internet service with our new internet service. If anything goes down on a particular interface, I can have different rules applied. Most of my users don't even know when our primary internet goes down anymore... I don't have to be here to do anything to switch it to our backup internet or to switch it back."
"Firebox operates effectively in the background, blocking potential threats without a need for constant monitoring."
"The most valuable features of this solution are live logging, rule setup and maintenance, and VPN creation."
"Their support is excellent, and the stability is very good."
"We experienced that WatchGuard is easy to setup regarding VPN compared to other firewalls of other brands."
"Simple to move settings between WatchGuard boxes."
"I like the High Availability features of the newest ones I'm using because they allow a firewall to fail and still be up and running."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"Scalability is one of the disadvantages. When it comes to scalability, you have to actually change the box. If you want to upgrade it, you need to actually change the existing box and probably you take the system off to other sites."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"We'd like an interface that can monitor everything."
"The VPN capability needs some improvement in Sophos XGS."
"Support could be improved."
"I recommend Sophos increase the user capacity of the firewall by 1.5 times. For example, say the firewall can accommodate 1,000 users now, then it should handle a load of 1,500 users."
"I would like to see a history of the monthly bandwidth utilization, the bandwidth consumption for a period of time."
"In version 18 of Sophos XGS, the log details are not very good. However, in version 19 they are more detailed. The Fortinet FortiGate has better detail overall compared to Sophos XGS. They provide updates to the solution frequently, but they do not fix the problems that exist."
"Sophos' technical support has degraded in the last couple of years. They seem to need to ask a lot of questions, even with simple problems, and take a long time to provide solutions."
"There can be lag time when updating an operating policy."
"I'm not really impressed with the reporting side of it. It may be something I just haven't figured out very well, but it's hard to filter down on reporting of the actual valuable information that you would want. There is a lot of information out there so you have to have some kind of tool capture it and then filter through. So far, I haven't found the reporting side of the WatchGuard to be that user-friendly."
"Firebox would be improved with integration for endpoint protection solutions."
"Setup of this solution is complex, it's not plug and play."
"It's sometimes not easy to understand and can require specialist assistance."
"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 see more simplified management of the firewall... It's a complicated system to use."
"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."
"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."
Sophos XGS is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 58 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Sophos XGS is rated 8.0, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Sophos XGS writes "Highly stable, scalable, and priced well". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and SonicWall NSa. See our Sophos XGS vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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