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Sophos UTM pros and cons

Vendor: Sophos

4.2 out of 5

113 reviews
89% willing to recommend

7,221 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Sophos UTM offers comprehensive protection by integrating firewall, antivirus, and application control. It is known for easy configuration and management, making it user-friendly. Providing advanced threat protection, it includes features like real-time crypto virus protection and intrusion prevention, and is cost-effective. However, it lacks import/export functions, integration with Office 365 for spam filtering, and has slow technical support. Pricing is high compared to competitors and affected by currency changes.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Sophos UTM provides strong web server protection by concealing the server's base system from unauthorized access.

It offers advanced threat protection and real-time defense against crypto viruses through Sophos Sandstorm.

The initial setup of Sophos UTM is straightforward and can be completed quickly, with a functioning firewall enabled in 30 minutes.

Sophos UTM efficiently manages firewalls from the cloud and allows a single pane of glass management for all VPCs.

The integrated multifactor authentication and flexible firewall policy settings enhance security and simplify management.

CONS

Technical support lacks responsiveness and effectiveness, with issues like long response times and poor communication.

Documentation is inadequate, particularly for AWS integration and VPC setup guidance.

Features such as load balancing and VPN support need improvements to meet user needs effectively.

Scalability and reliability are issues, particularly for large or high-availability environments.

Pricing is perceived as high, especially compared to competitors, with calls for more flexible pricing options.

Sophos UTM Pros review quotes

ZE

Pre-sales manager at National Information Technology Company

Apr 2, 2019

Sophos UTM has improved the porting section. It has improved security by seeing the gaps. For example, when you discover that an entry has been using a certain application, with Sophos UTM acting as a Layer 7 firewall, you can block the application, not the port.

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Network Administrator at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Mar 4, 2021

We've found the technical support to be helpful.

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Project Engineer

Jan 21, 2018

It does not take much effort or thinking to understand how it works.

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Snr Dev Ops Engineer at a tech services company

Jan 1, 2018

It allows our developers to be able to securely log into servers to deploy and manage software.

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AH

Owner / Network Security Engineer at Texarkana IT

Nov 22, 2022

The packet filtering's great. You get out what you put into it. It works great as long as you know your security and configure everything adequately. If you just pop one in and it's not configured, then it's basically wide open. It kind of depends on the admin skill, but it's an excellent product.

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reviewer1640424

Technical Director at a security firm with 1-10 employees

Aug 7, 2021

Sophos SG UTM had all the basic functionality that you needed. It is user-friendly and easy to manage for any integrator.

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MM

Marek Modlinski Modlinski

Senior Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Feb 7, 2021

Sophos UTM is the simplest of these products to setup.

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AP

Anthony Petecca

Manager IT and Security at Health Street

Jan 13, 2019

The isolation of infected machines is a big feature. Also, the ability to detect external sources that change files on a file server is really big.

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reviewer1452492

President at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Dec 16, 2020

Good basic firewall functions with advanced firewall scanning.

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reviewer1019058

Software Sales Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 4, 2022

Sophos UTM is very user-friendly and has good integration with other solutions.

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Sophos UTM Cons review quotes

ZE

Pre-sales manager at National Information Technology Company

Apr 2, 2019

With Sophos UTM, there is a general rule in the firewall when the country blocking can block some countries from accessing your data. In the current version, you still need to add it by putting in the IP range. This feature would be helpful for administrators and it gives them the advantage to block stuff in less time.

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Network Administrator at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Mar 4, 2021

The ease of use could be a bit better.

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Project Engineer

Jan 21, 2018

This product could use some improvement with web filtering. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up and maintain.

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Free Report: Sophos UTM Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Sophos UTM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.

852,780 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Snr Dev Ops Engineer at a tech services company

Jan 1, 2018

There is absolutely no support when using AWS. If you buy the on-premise Sophos solution, you get support.

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AH

Owner / Network Security Engineer at Texarkana IT

Nov 22, 2022

Email spam filtering only works if you have an on-prem Exchange server. It doesn't interface with Office 365 like the XG model. That would be one feature that they could improve. They're not going to do it because they're trying to push us all to XG.

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reviewer1640424

Technical Director at a security firm with 1-10 employees

Aug 7, 2021

There were a lot of features and functionality in Sophos SG UTM but nothing was state of the art in terms of technology. You did not get the latest functions. It was very monolithic as it was based on an old Linux PuTTY system.

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MM

Marek Modlinski Modlinski

Senior Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Feb 7, 2021

The logs are not clear, which means that you need an additional piece of software in order to read them clearly.

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AP

Anthony Petecca

Manager IT and Security at Health Street

Jan 13, 2019

It does have built-in policies, which enable you to disable USB devices, etc. It would be nice if they had more policies because there are not that many of them.

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reviewer1452492

President at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Dec 16, 2020

Updates come out agonizingly slowly, a trickle.

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reviewer1019058

Software Sales Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 4, 2022

Flexibility in pricing could be improved. It's more rigid in its pricing compared to its competitor: Kaspersky.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 89)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Meraki MX vs Sophos UTM

Check Point NGFW vs Sophos UTM

WatchGuard Firebox vs Sophos UTM

Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs Sophos UTM

Untangle NG Firewall vs Sophos UTM

KerioControl vs Sophos UTM

Zyxel Unified Security Gateway vs Sophos UTM

Stormshield Network Security vs Sophos UTM

Huawei NGFW vs Sophos UTM

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Sophos Cyberoam UTM vs Sophos UTM

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See all alternatives

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