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WatchGuard Firebox vs Zscaler Cloud Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
396
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
WatchGuard Firebox
Ranking in Firewalls
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (2nd)
Zscaler Cloud Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
25th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 21.2%, up from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WatchGuard Firebox is 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zscaler Cloud Firewall is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

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.
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…
Bhaskar Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Though it helps deal with web traffic or any malicious traffic, it needs to work on its DC performance issues
The product's initial setup phase is moderate in level, so it is neither very complex nor very easy. For the deployment, my company first needs to gather all the requirements of the users and the domain names and consider how many users there are in the company. In the implementation and planning part, my company needs to consider what kind of policies we will create while ensuring that the policies are created based on the requirements of the users. There is a need to segregate the users' requirements since there are separate departments in the company, like the HR department, sales department, IT department, and manufacturing department, so that our company can create policies depending on their requirements. On-site, if you want a GRE tunnel, our company can handle GRE tunnel traffic routing and Zscaler Cloud Firewall, after which Zscaler will take action based on the policies created by our organization. For the deployments and maintenance, a team of five members consisting of two managers and three engineers is required.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"Fortinet FortiGate provides combined features that other firewalls do not offer, offering a full package cost-effective manager with all integration supported."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"There is a tool called FSSO, which is a single sign-on user ID agent that works perfectly."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"The reports are detailed."
"The Firebox offers valuable features such as network security, URL filtering, UTM features, intrusion prevention and detection, and authentication."
"The set up was quite straightforward and we handled it in-house. It took a few hours to deploy the product."
"I like their management features a lot. Their System Manager server as well the System Manager software make managing them, and tracking changes, very easy and complete."
"The throughput is great. It's perfect. We have no issues whatsoever. The management features are very powerful..."
"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."
"The most valuables feature of WatchGuard Firebox are the VPNs, and web filtering where we can stop users from going to malicious sites."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is the VPN. It's easy to connect to the VPN."
"It provides in-depth visibility into your network, ensuring that traffic flowing into your organization, be it from offices or individual users, is effectively filtered and secured through multiple layers of protection."
"I like the ease of deployment and its flexibility. We don't need to deal with license, quotes, procurement, delivery, and installation. Everything is software-based, and it's very easy to operate."
"The solution is scalable."
"The solution offers good sandboxing."
"The scalability is okay. We have around 2200 people using this solution."
"Zscaler provides effective protection against various cyber threats ensuring a safe environment"
"Includes advanced tech protection."
"It helps a lot of companies to reduce their downtime. Also, It helps businesses in terms of being secured and protected from any threats."
 

Cons

"I prefer Palo Alto over Fortinet FortiGate. Its IPS engine is not better than the Palo Alto version. The monitoring tool needs improvement, and the syslog configuration needs enhancement."
"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 issue lies with features available in GUI versus CLI during configuration. When using GUI, I want to accomplish everything there, but sometimes it requires using CLI to ensure proper configuration."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"I would rate the technical support of Fortinet FortiGate as a five because it is not as strong as Cisco. Additionally, the turnaround time is very high compared to Cisco."
"The main thing they have to improve in Fortinet FortiGate is the technical support; the rest of the features are good enough. We can handle them, but sometimes you really need support, and in that case, we are not getting it at the proper time."
"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
"The performance of the solution's processor needs to be faster."
"There is a slight learning curve."
"The level of support from WatchGuard is not as good."
"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."
"I think one area for improvement in this solution would be enhancing communication with tools like Active Directory. This would make the tool easier to integrate and effective for users."
"We bought Firebox four or five years ago, and with the first version I had to reboot it every two or three months for no apparent reason. We upgraded last year to the M370 and it's been running, but it is rebooting from time to time. I don't know why."
"The solution can improve by adding a feature to tag a MAC address of a computer system in the policy and more IP configuration settings."
"I'd like to have better access to workstation monitoring, connection monitoring, and the amount of time an address is being used, to better gauge proper network utilization. If I knew that something was connected to a particular external location for an extended period that seems abnormal, I'd be able to act upon it."
"Apart from the issues associated with the product in areas like the DC performance issues and DC failover, Zscaler Cloud Firewall's IP should not have a proxy IP."
"When it comes to customer support, there is room for improvement in Zscaler's service."
"Certain criteria need to be met if you want to scale this solution."
"Data Leak Prevention is only for web filtering and there is no protection for email."
"It would be better if they improved their policy, package visibility, and flexibility while we're creating rules for inspection. It could also be cheaper or more things could be included in the basic package. In the next release, I would like better coverage in the Asia Pacific region and better quality of service."
"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."
"There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, the GUI is outdated, with noticeable lags and delays, especially when generating reports for past transactions."
"The issue right now is probably that Zscaler is not providing web browser isolation. Another solution, Menlo, offers this. For one customer, we had to send traffic to Menlo to do the isolation for us. It was requested by the customer so that they could integrate any iframe. Zscaler needs to add this type of feature in their next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet's pricing is more straightforward than other solutions. If Fortinet doesn't stick out when you're searching for a solution, you are a glutton for punishment. You only need to know two things when purchasing a Fortinet solution: your total bandwidth and bandwidth at the site. You need to estimate the future bandwidth with other solutions if your customer plans to upgrade."
"The cost of Fortinet FortiGate is competitive and not expensive compared to other enterprise- grade solutions. On average, the license cost per year is around seventy percent of the firewall's purchase price."
"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."
"The beauty is the price performance ratio is great with FortiGate. It provides all the features we needed and the price is comparable with others' firewalls. The price is quite competitive with the firewalls with similar features."
"The price of FortiGate is reasonable as I plan to buy new switches. The initial gadgets are already booted, and the pricing seems normal on the market. As for additional costs, I haven't subscribed to many extra features, so I'm only using what I need. Last year, I renewed the support for three years, which can sometimes be expensive but depends on the security benefits and how it helps us."
"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."
"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."
"The pricing is justified. It's a little pricey, but what you pay for is what you get."
"They license it. When we buy it, we buy it with a three-year license. That's the most cost-effective way to do it. So, if you're going to buy it, then buy it with the three-year licensing."
"The cost three years ago was about $800."
"We paid $4000 in AUD for WatchGuard Firebox per year. There were no additional costs."
"Their price point worked, which is the reason why we stayed with WatchGuard."
"It has a very good price. It is not the most expensive one, and it is also not the cheapest one. It is just spot-on in terms of price."
"Each one, for the primary unit, was $8,600 and the High Availability unit was $2,000. That's with three years of subscription and support and the Total Security Suite."
"It's an affordable tool"
"The licensing costs are comparatively lower than other providers, and I would rate the pricing as five out of five."
"The product is a bit expensive compared to the solutions offered by its competitors, like Palo Alto. There is a need to make yearly payments towards the license in charges associated with the product."
"Zscaler is priced too high compared to the cost of Fortinet."
"There are different subscription models available."
"There are licensing costs, and I would not say that it's a cheap vendor."
"It is expensive for small businesses."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis. It is somewhere around 30 or 40 pounds per user for our organization."
"There is an annual license required for the use of the Zscaler Cloud Firewall."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Hospitality Company
6%
Educational Organization
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Retailer
7%
 

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 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.
Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?
Netscope, Zscaler if they continue route they are on now. FIrewalls needs great deal of automation on each end, datac...
What do you like most about Zscaler Cloud Firewall?
The product’s firewall and VPN package are fantastic compared to any other solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler Cloud Firewall?
Zscaler Cloud Firewall is quite expensive compared to competitors. However, it offered moderate value for money.
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
No data available
No data available
 

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
Ellips, Diecutstickers.com, Clarke Energy, NCR, Wrest Park, Homeslice Pizza, Fortessa Tableware Solutions, The Phoenix Residence
Zenith Live, Azure, Carlsberg Group
Find out what your peers are saying about WatchGuard Firebox vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,641 professionals have used our research since 2012.