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Trellix Intrusion Prevention System vs WatchGuard Firebox comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 5, 2025

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
411
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Trellix Intrusion Preventio...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (13th)
WatchGuard Firebox
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (11th), Firewalls (14th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (8th), Anti-Malware Tools (12th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (20th), Application Control (7th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Daniel_Martins - PeerSpot reviewer
Decade of experience empowers seamless problem resolution and support
I haven't seen threat intelligence and machine learning for predictive threat analysis in the Trellix Intrusion Prevention System yet. For Trellix IPS, AI improvements are an area where it can improve. It's a significant feature. Regarding the Trellix Intrusion Prevention System's flexibility for catering to our organization's specific infrastructure requirements, we have only on-premises and virtual appliances, but it's acceptable. The access and platform could potentially integrate with SaaS. Similar to when you put the EPO in mode integration with SaaS, you can connect with a local credential and with an X Console credential. Another possibility would be to connect with an integration login with the X Console. We have this with EPO on-premise, but with IPS, we don't have it.
Rajesh  Makwana - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

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 among the best options in the market."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"Some of the best features of Fortinet FortiGate include the next-generation firewall features."
"The ECC management and the GUI that offers single interface management are the most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"McAfee NSP is much more stable than Cisco."
"It has a lot of functions, such as firewall. We are administrators, and we create some rules to protect our network. We also monitor the traffic in and out and have disk encryption on-premises. When we detect malware, we scan for the virus on the PC. We can then delete or block the malware."
"The most valuable features are the customization of the signature and the unlimited amount of signatures in IPS."
"Overall the solution is very good. It offers great protection and gives us a good overview of what is on the network."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it is a good product for dealing with DDoS attacks and for the inspection of network traffic."
"The product is worth the investment."
"Great monitoring feature."
"It does its job very well, and it is quite easy to put to use."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use of the interface."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the dashboard."
"After conducting several tests I found the antivirus is working very well. Additionally, they have a very interesting feature, DNS WatchGuard, which is checking DNS requests for phishing, among other things, and it has caught a lot of unwanted attempts and attacks."
"It's user-friendly. And if you are using a WatchGuard device and you want to test that side of the software, it's quite easy to get the license to test it."
"Firebox operates effectively in the background, blocking potential threats without a need for constant monitoring."
"What I found most valuable in WatchGuard Firebox is that it's a functional platform that works, and each of its features works well. The solution also has good reporting and dashboard capabilities. I also find the overall performance of WatchGuard Firebox great."
"I haven't a problem with anti-virus stability using WatchGuard for over two years."
 

Cons

"In an incident, after a restart, Fortinet FortiGate did not connect to FortiGuard servers. Due to that reason, on the customer end, all websites got blocked. I don't know why this happened. The firewall of a bank in Sri Lanka rebooted yesterday, and after that, FortiGuard servers did not connect properly, blocking all customer environment websites."
"The user interface of the Fortinet FortiGate management console could be more intuitive and user-friendly, and the log analysis and reporting features could be enhanced to provide more flexibility and customizable insights."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"The AI with Fortinet FortiGate is not very well integrated on their devices, and their cloud infrastructure is not as good as Cisco's."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"The management console needs to be less complex and easier to navigate."
"The management component could be simplified."
"The area of concern where the tool needs improvement is how the product prompts users at a network level that helps prevent any wireless network attacks through alerts and notifications."
"The Network Security Managers could be more stable, agile, and work faster. When it comes to instability, there is room for improvement."
"There are limited resources for configuration guidance."
"The solution could improve some aspects of detection."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The platform’s GUI could be the latest."
"I would like to see the devices made more flexible by adding modules to increase the ports that we can use."
"If they could make the traffic monitoring easier that would be great. I don't use it that frequently, but I would like to see some improvements in the ease of use of that component, so it makes more sense. I know it's a technical component so there's going to be some difficulty trying to make that easier."
"The software in it could be a bit more friendly for an amateur user. I look at it and don't understand what half the stuff is. Looking at the interface, it is all mumbo-jumbo to me. It's not a simple interface. You have to be an IT guy to understand it. It is not for your average person to use, then walk away from it. It is much more entailed."
"I believe there is room for improvement in policies, with the potential to enhance the margins further."
"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."
"The licensing can be a bit expensive."
"We use WatchGuard to manage our failover for internet. If a primary internet goes down, it does a failover to the secondary the internet. However, what it doesn't do so well is that if the primary internet has a lot of latency but it's not completely down, it doesn't do a failover to the backup in a timely manner."
"The time they take to classify an application once they find that it is unknown can be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet is reasonable in pricing and licensing. Overall, FortiGate is affordable. The licensing fee can be a little high, depending on the budget for your project."
"Licensing for Fortinet FortiGate is on a yearly basis. Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"The price, in comparison to other products is very cheap."
"The price is okay."
"It is too expensive for us. My organization is very small, and we have a total of ten users. We have three internal users and seven external users. The FortiGate 100D series is too expensive for renewing the licenses."
"The licensing costs are very low."
"No comment."
"There is no challenge in Fortinet FortiGate pricing."
"The tool is competitively priced."
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The pricing of WatchGuard is probably a little higher than the SonicWall, but it makes up for it in dependability. It's worth it to me, especially since it's not much higher. For just a little bit higher price you get the dependability of the firewall with the WatchGuard brand."
"Its cost is okay. It is not too expensive, not too low. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of pricing."
"I find the solution to be very affordable."
"WatchGuard offers competitive pricing with attractive margins, benefiting both the company and its partners."
"The price is very good."
"Very competitive pricing regarding throughput compared to other alternatives."
"The solution is a bit more expensive than other options."
"The two larger devices are about $1,000 each and the smaller ones are about $500 or $600 each... It's cheaper and you have more control because it's self-managed."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Retailer
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about McAfee Network Security Platform?
The threat intelligence updates are very accurate.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for McAfee Network Security Platform?
The tool is competitively priced. I rate the pricing a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with McAfee Network Security Platform?
I haven't seen threat intelligence and machine learning for predictive threat analysis in the Trellix Intrusion Preve...
What is your primary use case for WatchGuard Firebox?
We are providing our services to all WatchGuard customers in the region.
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...
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.
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
McAfee Network Security Platform, McAfee NSP, IntruShield Network Intrusion Prevention System, IntruShield Network IPS
WatchGuard Threat Detection and Response, WatchGuard Application Control, WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention, WatchGuard Gateway AntiVirus, WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service
 

Overview

 

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
Desjardins Group, HollyFrontier, Nubia, Agbar, WNS Global Services, INAIL, Universidad de Las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), Cook County, China Pacific Insurance, Bank Central Asia, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, City of Chicago, Macquarie Telecom, Sutherland Global Services, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, United Automotive Electronic Systems
Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence
Find out what your peers are saying about Darktrace, Check Point Software Technologies, Fortinet and others in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS). Updated: July 2025.
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