We performed a comparison between WatchGuard Firebox and Zscaler Cloud Firewall 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."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 solution is extremely reliable."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"It is a safe product."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"The reports are detailed."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use of the interface."
"The most valuable feature is the GUI, especially the real-time bandwidth usage report. Also, its integration with WiFi access points is nice."
"Policy VPN, site-to-site VPN, traffic monitoring, anti-spam filters, and all other advanced features are valuable."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the FireWall features. The management side of WatchGuard is quite easy because it supports two ways to manage it - by the web and the other one they call WatchGuard systems manager. I used to be familiar with WSM only, but they improved their GUI in the web browser and now it is much easier to do it within the web browser."
"The Dimension control, the one-spot reporting and control, has been nice. It's been easy to go in and make sure people are doing what they're supposed to be doing and that only the right stuff is getting in."
"From my experience with their customer service team, I would say that they seem quite knowledgeable and fairly quick to respond."
"Zscaler Cloud Firewall understands the applications in the current generation and adapts to the present generation cloud applications."
"Once you have Zscaler running you have access to configure it however you want."
"Most of the features that Zscaler has to offer, we will deploy."
"Includes advanced tech protection."
"The visibility and log availability offered are highly valued for troubleshooting purposes, and this is a key factor driving customer interest in the firewall module."
"The scalability is okay. We have around 2200 people using this solution."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It helps a lot of companies to reduce their downtime. Also, It helps businesses in terms of being secured and protected from any threats."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"Its customer service could be better."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"Websense is an application that monitors and filters internet traffic. Websense was derived from WatchGuard. But when you go to WatchGuard to actually implement that particular feature, you have to use some type of additional feature and you have to pay for it, unfortunately. I think it should be free or free in the WatchGuard box itself, as an option. It would be nice if they didn't charge us for that."
"The product's technical support services need improvement."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the threat protection, data packet inspection, and performance of the solution. Generally, it's just a lower-end product. It does the job but doesn't do it very well."
"In terms of the reporting and management features — and this isn't necessarily a WatchGuard issue, this seems to be more of an industry-wide issue — you get reports, but a lot of times you don't know what you're looking at. You're so overwhelmed with the data. You're getting a lot of stuff that doesn't matter, so it takes time to parse through it, to actually get what you want to know."
"Due to their lack of investment in marketing, channel development, and certifications, WatchGuard faces challenges in gaining visibility and market share, especially in regions like Pakistan."
"I would like to see more simplified management of the firewall... It's a complicated system to use."
"The drawbacks are just sometimes not having the technical information that we need in order to easily make connections with all of our Internet-based clients."
"It would be nice to have some sort of a form factor, a physical form factor perhaps, or virtual machine that you could install on devices or on a cloud, and have some cloud computing."
"We are having some issues with internet access being denied when organizational ID-based policies change. For example, a lower level employee ends up getting the same level of access as that of a higher level employee."
"Its technical support services could be better."
"Certain criteria need to be met if you want to scale this solution."
"Because it's on cloud, it doesn't allow application of extra settings."
"When it comes to customer support, there is room for improvement in Zscaler's service."
"They do not provide a few components that are fundamental to differentiate the products"
"There are some areas it could improve when it comes to blocking, we have to block some things manually. For example, if we block a top-level domain we have seen that the new IPs come through, the IPs are not blocked. There should be some more granular way of doing it. My only request is if you're blocking something at a top level, the sub-level sub-domains and all those other IPs should be blocked too automatically."
WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews while Zscaler Cloud Firewall is ranked 23rd in Firewalls with 15 reviews. WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.6, while Zscaler Cloud Firewall is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Cloud Firewall writes "A highly stable and comprehensive cloud security and access solution". WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX, whereas Zscaler Cloud Firewall is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG and OPNsense. See our WatchGuard Firebox vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall report.
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