Sophos XGS Reviews

The best use case of Sophos XGS is for customers who use CMGs that manage the gateway of Microsoft, which was made obsolete years ago. Clients want to replace their proxy with some solution, and Sophos is one of the best bets.

The solution is good for web filtering. It's also possible to use it as a load balancer and a destination firewall and site-to-site channeling. Remote users can gain access via Sophos. It solves for a variety of uses that the client needs. 

In our market, they offer a web filter SSL VPN and they are very useful for the customer.

The initial setup is very simple. 

It's stable and reliable. 

We can scale the product.

Some firewall names like Palo Alto and FortiGate are very famous for security. People find them very secure. While Sophos is fairly secure, they aren't known for their security, and it's not an obvious selling point. Unfortunately, on Gartner, Magic Quadrant, and Forrester, Sophos doesn't have a good presence. They need to get better at marketing their abilities and expanding what they can do.

I would like to see them in third-party evaluation reports like Gartner, Magic Quadrant, or Forrester to make it easier for us to show our customers that Sophos is a leader in the market. It will be easier for us to sell them. Our market depends on what products are currently in Gartner and Forrester, and these platforms. 

We've been working with the solution for five to six years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product is scalable. 

We have more than 100 clients on Sophos. 

Technical support is good and above average. 

Neutral

It is easy to set up the solution. It's not a complex process. 

While it depends on the magnitude of the customer's environment, normally the deployment only takes a day or two.

We do not require any outside assistance. We can handle the setup ourselves. 

If the client needs us to, we can deploy the solution for them. Since we sell the solution, we have a good understanding of the process. We have been doing implementations for years. 

The pricing is moderate. It's not overly expensive. They offer good licensing. 

We are using and selling the solution. We are deploying it for different customers.

When the customer wants to buy an appliance, definitely it's an on-prem solution. However, when it comes to an endpoint or a firewall as a service, they offer cloud solutions as well.

I'd recommend the solution to others. 

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

We are system integrators implementing Sophos fvarious of clients, including government agencies, industry, small offices, and schools. We can implement this solution for any organization. They have Sophos on the cloud, but we only install on-premises for our clients. 

We receive an email report on the number of attacks Sophos has stopped each day. Since we installed the solution, the number of detected attacks has increased considerably. 

Web filtering and intrusion detection are essential features. As system integrators, we also like the dashboard because it's easier to configure all the features.

Our only issue is the price.

I started working with Sophos about four years ago.

Sophos is stable.

Sophos is scalable. You can do high availability and a lot of other things with it.

I rate Sophos' support five out of 10. It's sometimes difficult to contact them, and finding a solution is not easy.

Sophos is one of the best solutions on the market, but Meraki and FortiGate are on the same level. We only work with Sophos and Meraki. We don't use any other vendors. Meraki is installed for specific situations, but we use Sophos for the rest.

There is an installation wizard, so the deployment is straightforward. The basic installation takes about an hour. However, it takes longer to build a customized solution for a client with multiple policies that must be configured. It is easy to do it, but it takes time.

After the deployment, there isn't much maintenance. They notify us when they need to install an update.  We can do it without rebooting the system, so the customer has no downtime. 

I rate Sophos XGS five out of 10 for affordability. Sophos has several license tiers. The basic license is Network Protection, and you can purchase additional modules. Right now, if I want to upgrade one client to the new one, they give me a 99 percent discount on hardware. However, the hardware cost is nothing because the license is expensive.

I rate Sophos XGs nine out of 10. Aside from the price and the support, the solution is excellent. My only advice is to be careful because you cannot renew the license again once Sophos products reach the end of life. You have to purchase a new solution.

We normally use physical appliances for office and virtual appliances for datacenter.

XGS is similar to XG series but adds new Xstream Flow processors that are used to accelerate various functionalities that are normally done in x86 CPU.

Sophos will soon release SFOS v19 software which will utilize Xstream for even more functionalities like IPsec, SSLVPN, SDWAN and etc.

What I found most valuable in Sophos XGS is that it's very easy to manage.

Authentication with Azure AD needs improvement. It would be better if it could work directly without using local AD server. For comparison Fortinet FortiGate allows to use SAML authentication with Azure AD and does not require any local server. It is currently unknown to me, if or when it will be implemented on Sophos.

Local DHCP service also needs improvement. Windows DHCP service offers more functionality and is more flexible and easier to use. SFOS v18.5.3 added DHCP option functionality in the GUI - which previously worked only from CLI. 

I've been working with Sophos XGS since they came out. I cannot remember exactly the year and date, but it hasn't been so long, e.g. just one year.

It is very stable - have not had any issues.

The scalability of Sophos XGS is good. Normally we suggest the clients to use firewall as a service, since it gives more flexibility both for client and us, since usually we manage the client's firewall. There is a virtual version of the firewall which scales even more, since it can be upgraded to a license that offers more RAM and CPU cores. For us, it scales very well, e.g. I'm giving it the maximum score: ten out of ten.

If a client is looking for a new firewall, then we normally need to consider as much information as possible (user count, weight per user, LAN throughput, WAN throughput, functionalities and etc). If a client wants to pick a solution for larger environment, then we also ask recommendation from Sophos to get the most optimal solution.

Positive

The initial setup for Sophos XGS is very easy. From cloud it can be deployed even faster, since it allows to create configuration templates.

The ratio of price and functionality is good.

Licensing cost depends on particular model and required functionality:
- It is possible to use the firewall without any license, but then it will work only as port based firewall.
- Normally we suggest to use at least Standard License.
- Licensing cost for single appliance or active/passive HA cluster is the same - only 1 license.
- Active/Active cluster requires 2 licenses and performance gain is very small. It is better to use more powerful appliance. 

We are Sophos Gold partner and mainly like to use Sophos XGS firewalls.
If it a requirement by client, then we can also offer non-Sophos firewall solutions.

There are multiple models of Sophos XGS that we use, e.g. we use both desktop  and 1U sized models.

Sophos XGS can be fully cloud managed, and it's possible to deploy it directly from the cloud, that you installed the hardware, and maybe I have to use an ESB key, though I'm not sure. We haven't tried deploying it that way yet.

The only difference between Sophos XGS and Sophos XG is the software version that is supported on the hardware. The difference will be when the version 19 software comes up, as it will not work on Sophos XG.

I recommend Sophos XGS to others who are thinking of implementing it. I recommend for them to use it. Sophos firewall can be also used without additional firewall, but we strongly suggest using Standard license, which offers application filtering and IDS/IPS.

We use the solution to secure networks and traffic for our customers.

The solution is easy to use and provides regular updates. Along with this, it is network friendly as well. Thus, we can easily control and monitor the devices.

The solution's pricing and stability could be better.

We have been using the solution for three years.

It is a stable solution. I rate its stability a seven or eight. Sometimes, we encounter stability issues.

It is a scalable solution. I rate its scalability an eight or nine. Our clients for the solution are enterprise businesses.

The solution's technical support is good.

Positive

The solution is easy to install. It takes a day or two to complete depending on the use cases. We require one technician for its deployment. Also, its maintenance process involves adding connections, managing them, and checking the errors.

We have the solution's annual license. Its price is moderate, but it could be cheaper. Also, there are additional costs involved as it requires appointing IT experts.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it as seven out of ten.

I use XGS for filtering and spam blocking. We have 255 users.

Spam filtering is what I love most about XGS.

The reporting could be better. 

I have been using Sophos XGS for about five years.

Setting up Sophos XGS is straightforward, and it took us about four hours to deploy.

I pay for a yearly license for XGS. It's not cheap, but the price is okay compared to other gateway devices. It's in the middle. 

I rate Sophos XGS eight out of 10. 

We use this solution for security purposes, traffic filtering, voice filtering, blocking websites, traffic shaping, and wireless protection. We also use this solution to analyze malware threats and email protection logs.

Sophos XGS is profound as a firewall and security product. We have deployed Sophos XGS and Endpoint in several banking systems and government sites. Our customers are satisfied that Sophos XGS is continuously blocking websites and giving us reports on which apps, users or websites are vulnerable. As partners, we also benefit and have deployed several parallels on the customer side. In addition, Sophos has improved its technical support service, and customers are happy about the support.

The most valuable feature is the network policy and SD-WAN policy.

There was a hardware conflict with the software. Recently we did five RMA of Sophos hardware, and several customers said the hardware and firmware were faulty, so there is a dependency on the hardware. For some customers, EQuIS is also an issue, and when we claim RMA from Bangladesh, it takes almost one month to get the product. 

In addition, the firmware has some bugs because it continuously updates in 5.1, 5.3, and 5.7. So, if we randomly change the firmware, it's not fixable, and this should be improved. 

In Sophos XG Firewall, we can create a different zone, like LAN, DMZ, and MZ, but we cannot customize the WAN dual, so it would be good if we could do dual customization.

We have been using this solution for five years. It was called Sophos XG Firewall Endpoint before Sophos XGS. Recently we deployed XGS version 4300. It is deployed on-premises.

It is not a stable solution, and improvements can be made to firmware and hardware.

The scalability could be improved.

The technical support is helpful, but the response time could be faster. When we raise a case, there is sometimes a delay in responding. There is no toll-free number to call for emergency support in Bangladesh, so we call a Singapore number and wait a long time for technical support. When they eventually answer, they ask us many questions, which consumes a lot of time, and they sometimes transfer us to other technical engineers. This is a significant issue for us in Bangladesh and should be improved.

Sophos XGS was a tender proposal, and we chose it.

It was an easy setup, and it was not complex. The deployment depends on the customer's timeline, requirements and scope of work. Basic configuration takes about one or two days, and we deployed both in-house and in the customer environment. I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. One person can do deployment because we're not doing any mounting, and mounting requires two people. So configuration can also be done by one person.

They have annual licenses, and we have a three-year license. Unfortunately, I do not have information on the licensing costs.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten, and I would recommend this solution to others.

Sophos XGS can be deployed on the cloud or on-premise.

Sophos XGS can be used as a firewall, secured appliance firewall, routing, and depending on the licensing on it, to secure web servers.

The most valuable features of Sophos XGS are a set of functionalities that are quite commendable, they call it synchronized security, where all the solutions share defense lines with each other.

Sophos XGS could improve the price.

I have been using Sophos XGS for approximately four years.

Sophos XGS is reliable.

The scalability of Sophos XGS is good.

We have approximately 1,000 cumulative users using the solution. We have approximately 15 customers using this solution.

The support from Sophos XGS is great.

The initial setup of Sophos XGS is straightforward, but if you are not experienced it would be difficult.

The licensing cost for Sophos XGS is high. However, they do apply competitive discounts and different layers of discounts.

Sophos XGS is rated number one on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the current year. They are doing well with respect to innovations.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Sophos XGS an eight out of ten.

We are happy and satisfied with all the features. There is nothing special there.

The main thing that we would like to see improved is ransom. They could provide something better. We are not using a public IP. 

I have been using Sophos XGS for the past year.

It is stable for our intended purposes.

Sophos XGS is scalable.

Technical support is very good.

It depends upon the requirement you may have. If we see that it is a straightforward requirement, it will be easy to implement.

Compared to Fortinet, the cost is high. Even compared to the U.S. market the market price is high.

We work with SonicWall and Fortinet. This depends upon the requirements you have. Sometimes the client wants a particular price, sometimes they are considering a solution, and sometimes it is pricing. It's based on the distributors, support, and installers.

I would rate Sophos XGS a seven out of ten.