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WatchGuard Firebox pros and cons

Vendor: WatchGuard

4.2 out of 5

86 reviews
95% willing to recommend

701 followers

Pros & Cons summary

WatchGuard Firebox is prized for its ease in setting up VPN and proxy features, offering robust layered security with intrusion prevention and antivirus scanning. Its high availability ensures continuous operation during failures. Centralized management simplifies policy deployment, although it poses challenges for non-IT users. Frequent reboots and unclear documentation for multi-site setups are noted, and the reporting features require separate configuration.

Buyer's Guide

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

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

WatchGuard Firebox is praised for its efficient VPN and proxy features, which are simple to set up and enhance security.

It offers robust Layer 2 and Layer 3 security, providing comprehensive protection against various threats.

Intrusion detection and prevention features are highlighted as valuable for stopping potential attacks.

The centralized management console allows for easy policy management and deployment across multiple devices.

Users appreciate the scalability and performance, particularly the ability to handle high data rates and seamless integration with SD-WAN technology.

CONS

WatchGuard Firebox needs better integration and compatibility with third-party vendors like FireMon, Splunk, and Tenable.

There is a need to improve WatchGuard Firebox's threat protection, data packet inspection, and overall performance.

Setting up WatchGuard Firebox is complex, and it is not a plug-and-play device.

Documentation for WatchGuard Firebox's configuration could be clearer and more comprehensive.

WatchGuard Firebox should enhance its reporting features and offer more management reports out-of-the-box.

WatchGuard Firebox Pros review quotes

IT Manager at a engineering company with 11-50 employees

Jul 28, 2019

One of my favorite features is the Geolocation service, where you can actually block specific activity or IP addresses registered to certain countries. For example, I don't want any web traffic from Russia or North Korea. I may even lock down certain policies down to 'I only want U.S. IP addresses.' I find that very useful.

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JG

IT Manager at WTS Media (Wholesale Tape & Supply)

Oct 2, 2019

[A] valuable feature would be the branch office. We have five offices throughout the United States, and it coordinates the connections of those offices.

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PG

Owner at a construction company with 51-200 employees

Dec 17, 2020

The ports that I have assigned appear to be unattainable to outside 'mal-actors,' unless they have an address registered on the internet that this thing is expecting. That's a layer of security.

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KC

Manager IT at a hospitality company with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 30, 2020

WatchGuard has a very easy VPN and branch office VPN setup, so we use those pretty extensively.

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JJ

IT Specialist at ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK

Jul 14, 2019

It's pretty simple to understand when you want to do any diagnostics on your network. If you want to go in and see what packages are having trouble getting through, what's being held, stalled, etc., it's very easy to use in that way.

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GT

Director of Information Technology at a recreational facilities/services company with 201-500 employees

May 3, 2020

Among the most valuable features is the ease of use — love the interface — of both the web interface and of the WatchGuard System Manager.

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JM

IT Director at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees

Apr 8, 2020

The policy monitoring and allowing different traffic flows are the most useful features for us; regulating which traffic comes in and out.

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reviewer1230873

Network Administrator at a retailer

Nov 14, 2019

It's hard to pick one feature over another. But if I had to pick one, the UTM would be the most valuable because of the notification. I get notified via email if there is any type of threat detection or alert, telling me something is wrong.

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SR

President and Owner at Peak Communication Systems, Inc.

Aug 2, 2020

It saves us time in the respect that we now have the template built for it so we can get in and get it done. We've had much less problem supporting Voice over IP technologies from different companies. Because our client base has grown over the years, we're probably saving 20 to 30 man-hours a month now that we've got this on a good stable level.

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HA

IT Manager at YAMAZEN, INC

May 16, 2019

The most valuable feature is the GUI, especially the real-time bandwidth usage report. Also, its integration with WiFi access points is nice.

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WatchGuard Firebox Cons review quotes

IT Manager at a engineering company with 11-50 employees

Jul 28, 2019

Reporting is something you've got to set up separately. It's one of those things that you've got to put some time into. One of the options is to set up a local report server, which is what I did. It's not great. It's okay... Some of the stuff is a little complicated to get up and running. Once you do, it becomes very user-friendly and easy to work with, but I find there are some implementation headaches with some of their stuff.

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JG

IT Manager at WTS Media (Wholesale Tape & Supply)

Oct 2, 2019

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.

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PG

Owner at a construction company with 51-200 employees

Dec 17, 2020

I don't think I can get a full-blown DNS client from it. I've been trying to have DNS services. It has forwarding, but I don't get the services of a full DNS client. My main difficulty with it is that I can't run a complete service. I need NTP. I need DNS. I need DHCP for my domain, but I only get forwarding. As far as I can tell, I don't get caching and the kinds of reporting and registration needed to host a DNS for a domain. I have to have a separate solution for that.

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WatchGuard Firebox

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Learn what your peers think about WatchGuard Firebox. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.

849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

KC

Manager IT at a hospitality company with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 30, 2020

Once you start getting into proxy actions and setting up: "Okay, cool. Once this rule gets triggered, what actions have to happen?" I do know a few people who use WatchGuard and they still have to get assistance when they look at that. So I would file that as a con for WatchGuard. Proxy actions can be a little bit complicated.

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JJ

IT Specialist at ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK

Jul 14, 2019

One other shortcoming is that there is no backup for it. We really haven't figured out how we might solve that problem. We may want to put a duplicate in... With WatchGuard, we just have the one box. If that were to fail, we'd probably be really hurting.

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GT

Director of Information Technology at a recreational facilities/services company with 201-500 employees

May 3, 2020

If they could make the traffic monitoring easier that would be great. I don't use it that frequently, but I would like to see some improvements in the ease of use of that component, so it makes more sense. I know it's a technical component so there's going to be some difficulty trying to make that easier.

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JM

IT Director at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees

Apr 8, 2020

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.

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reviewer1230873

Network Administrator at a retailer

Nov 14, 2019

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.

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SR

President and Owner at Peak Communication Systems, Inc.

Aug 2, 2020

The pricing could be improved. It is definitely one of the more expensive products.

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HA

IT Manager at YAMAZEN, INC

May 16, 2019

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.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 80)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Fortinet FortiGate vs WatchGuard Firebox

Netgate pfSense vs WatchGuard Firebox

OPNsense vs WatchGuard Firebox

Sophos XG vs WatchGuard Firebox

Cisco Secure Firewall vs WatchGuard Firebox

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