KerioControl Reviews

Name: KerioControl
Brand: GFI
Rating: 4 (16 reviews)

Vendor: GFI

4.0 out of 5

16 reviews

601 followers

What is KerioControl?UNIXBusinessApplication
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Kerio Control is a popular security product for small and medium-sized businesses. It is a next-generation firewall that provides unified threat management without complexity. Kerio Control provides advanced anti-virus protection and industry-leading web and content application filtering, and has a secure VPN.

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Featured reviews

Gilbert Mwiinga

Baobab College logo System Administrator at Baobab College

Dec 22, 2021

The user login can be improved because we use the captive portal where users have to register before they access the internet server. That has been a huge challenge. They can improve the user login part and make it more user-friendly. It looks user-friendly, but it doesn't work as it is expected to work. They can also improve the reporting feature. They don't provide content filtering when it comes to search engine results. We had an incident on the network where a blocked site was showing up in search results. We are in a school environment, so we have blocked a site with some of the explicit content so that kids wouldn't see it. When one of them did a search, the results came on the search engine part. When you try to drill down to the website, it blocks, but when you search by image, it brings up all the images. That's one of the reasons why we are looking at Juniper. Its inability to provide content filtering for search results was a high-impact issue. We've been talking to them about this issue. It was a very sensitive issue for us because we had kids in year four who were exposed to images that they were not supposed to see. Because of Kerio Control, we failed to protect kids from such content, and we expected them to respond to it with the urgency it required, but their support was pathetic. The ticket was escalated, but we had to send them a couple of emails to let them know how serious the case was, and then we had a live call with their support team. We have had issues with its performance and stability. They can do better. We've had situations where we had a terrible performance on the network, and when you restart it, everything goes back to normal.

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Saham Hendinejad

Chief Executive Officer at Quby

Mar 6, 2023

What is our primary use case I currently use the solution for on-network management. We are using the product in our factory and in our main office. We use the channel to connect the network, and also, we are using it for user access control, as a router, actually. That's it. What is most…

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Timur Assembayev

Network Specialist at Wattum

Dec 2, 2022

How has it helped my organization There were some issues with our main firewall and it went down. In a short time, I deployed KerioControl and save our business. What is most valuable? The most valuable features of KerioControl are ease of configuration, user-friendliness, and comfortable to…

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Pricing

Users have generally found KerioControl's pricing to be reasonable and fair. The licensing is yearly and all-inclusive, with no additional costs. KerioControl's pricing, setup cost, and licensing have received positive feedback from users, with only a few minor concerns mentioned.

ROI

The product has proven to be efficient and satisfactory, resulting in a return on investment for users.

Primary Use Case

KerioControl's primary use case is for network management, firewall protection, web-filtering user controls, data plan usage, bandwidth management, routing, intrusion detection and prevention, controlling access to the web, and VPN connections. It is used for small and medium networks, on-network management in factories and main offices, and with virtual machines in VMware. The solution provides control over bandwidth internet and gives access control to the web.

Valuable Features

The valuable features of KerioControl mentioned in the reviews include filtering rules, ease of use, accounting and live monitoring of firewall status, graphical interface and user interface, affordability, stability, ease of setup, user-friendliness, complete firewall for small or mid-range networks, all-in-one solution with firewall, antivirus software, and network protection, IPS (Intrusion Prevention System), content filtering options, intrusion detection and prevention, bandwidth management, routing capabilities, effective antivirus with quick filtering options, and easy management. KerioControl is also praised for its long history and evolution as a proprietary firewall.

Room for Improvement

Users have identified several areas where KerioControl could be improved. One suggestion is to add a protocol for VPN on Android devices, as this feature is currently lacking. The upgrades to the product have also been noted to slow down the network. Users have also expressed concerns about HTTPS decryption and the lack of visibility into actual user internet usage. The VPN features could be expanded to include options such as IPsec VPNs, SSL VPNs, and L2TP VPNs. Integrations with Kerio Operator and larger bandwidth capacity for handling internet connections are also desired. The GUI could use a refresh, as it has remained consistent across versions with no notable changes. The filtering on the unlicensed version of KerioControl is considered inefficient and requires manual website additions. Anti-spamming features for emails are also missing. The reporting side could be improved, as well as content filtering and flexibility in modifying and configuring features. The user login process, particularly in the captive portal, needs improvement to be more user-friendly. Additionally, content filtering for search engine results is currently lacking, which has caused sensitive issues in school environments. The performance and stability of KerioControl have been problematic, requiring restarts to normalize the network. Higher availability and a mobile VPN channel are desired features, along with SD-WAN capabilities in future releases. More dashboards and improved hardware design are also suggested to enhance the overall user experience.

Initial Setup

KerioControl's setup was described as easy, straightforward, and simple by multiple reviewers. They mentioned that it can be deployed quickly, taking anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. Documentation and online resources were available to assist with the installation process. A network administrator can set it up within ten minutes. Reviewers also mentioned that the initial setup is user-friendly and can be implemented without much difficulty. Some reviewers mentioned that they have done the installation multiple times, indicating familiarity and ease with the process.

Scalability

KerioControl is described as scalable and easy to extend. It is considered good and it is described as powerful and fast, although it may slow down the Internet due to filtering services.

Customer Service and Support

Customers have had varied experiences with the customer service and support of KerioControl. Some have found the support team's answers to be good and appreciate their quick response time. Others have not needed to use technical support because they find all the answers online or find online communities to be a helpful resource. However, there are limited websites and communities available for support.

Stability

Based on the reviews, users have varying opinions on the stability of the solution of KerioControl. Some users rate it highly, with one person giving it a nine out of ten rating and another stating that it is extremely stable. There are also positive comments about its reliability and lack of bugs or glitches. However, there are also a few users who mention experiencing problems with performance or errors during updates.

Pricing

ROI

The product has proven to be efficient and satisfactory, resulting in a return on investment for users.

Primary Use Case

Valuable Features

Room for Improvement

Initial Setup

Scalability

KerioControl is described as scalable and easy to extend. It is considered good and it is described as powerful and fast, although it may slow down the Internet due to filtering services.

Customer Service and Support

Stability

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our KerioControl Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Learn more about KerioControl

With Kerio Control you can:

Preserve the integrity of your network.
Manage bandwidth to streamline traffic flows.
Improve productivity with filtering capabilities.

Kerio Control Features

Some of Kerio Control’s most valuable features include:

High availability, deployment flexibility, deep packet inspection, advanced routing, usage reporting, quick administering, intrusion detection and prevention (IPS), gateway anti-virus, VPN, web and content application filtering, and centralized administration with MyKerio.

Kerio Control Benefits

Eliminate downtime risks: Because Kerio Control offers high availability and failover protection, you can eliminate the risk and cost of connectivity or threat protection downtime.
Detailed reports: Kerio Control makes it easy to view individual users’ internet activity through detailed reports.
Traffic monitoring: Traffic monitoring allows you to manage bandwidth and makes it possible for you to control access to streaming video and peer-to-peer networks.
Server protection: Using Kerio Control’s advanced networking routing and deep packet inspection, you can protect servers.
Easily create policies: With Kerio Control, you can create both inbound and outbound traffic policies, and can also restrict communication by specific URLs, applications, traffic type, content category, or even time of day.
Snort-based analysis: Kerio Control gives you the ability to add a transparent layer of intrusion prevention with snort-based analysis along with a database of rule and blacklisted IP addresses that is regularly refreshed.
Optionally integrated anti-virus: WIth this feature, you can prevent viruses, Trojans, or spyware from entering your networks.

Reviews from Real Users

Here is some feedback from some of our users who are currently using the solution:

PeerSpot user Brian C., Senior Technology Specialist, VP at Unified Technology Solutions, writes "It is very comprehensive and simple. It has all the active protections. It's updated. We love that you can set how often it is updated so you can work on what is right for you. A large company with a lot of bandwidth can update the virus definitions and security definitions hourly, if they want. A smaller site that's remote, where maybe updating the definitions will eat into the bandwidth, we can schedule those more to go later at night. It's very flexible and works for us in all types of situations. This is great because then we don't have to learn seven different products to be able to work with seven different scenarios."

Andy D., IT Manager at Flare Technologies, praises how easy it is to use and says, "One thing we use quite a lot, as well, is the DHCP Server, because we do a lot of work where all our devices need to have static IP addresses. Rather than going around and configuring every box, we do it all through DHCP reservations. It's easier. We've got a record of it. We can manipulate it if we need to change something or change some hardware. It's all easy. Even guys who are not used to using it can pick it up quite quickly."

KerioControl is the #10 ranked solution in top Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software and #19 ranked solution in best firewalls. PeerSpot users give KerioControl an average rating of 8.0 out of 10. KerioControl is most commonly compared to Netgate pfSense: KerioControl vs Netgate pfSense. KerioControl is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 45% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 22% of all views.