We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Palo Alto Networks comes out on top in this comparison. It is robust, performs well, and has good support. Sophos XG does, however, do better in the Pricing and Ease of Deployment categories.
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"The solution is stable."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"The GUI is simple and the solution is straightforward."
"With our High availability pair, we have had no downtime for several years, since it was first put it in production."
"The most important part of this solution is its reliability, as it just works without any fancy features."
"I like the navigation of the general Panorama solution. I can easily navigate around and get to the thing I need. I'm not wasting time trying to find something."
"Some of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' valuable features are their powerful capabilities and user-friendliness."
"When we put it on the border, it was blocking everything that we were getting ahead of time, and we weren't getting any hits. This includes URL filtering, spam prevention, and anti-virus."
"Application control, IPS, and sandboxing towards the cloud are the most valuable features. It is a very user-friendly product with a very easy-to-use interface."
"The solution does a great job of identifying malicious items and vulnerabilities with URL filtering."
"This is a very stable solution."
"I like their firewall and the intrusion detection feature"
"The solution has all the security features you would need for any type of environment."
"One of the most valuable features is the VPN."
"The product is very easy to explore. It has a very good layout."
"Sophos XG is very useful, it does many things."
"The product has a console that is based in the cloud for all their products. In this console, they have email security, firewall security, endpoint security, et cetera. All of the products on offer in the console are very useful for us."
"The most significant aspect is the protection it offers."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"People sometimes find it more expensive as compared to other solutions. There are also fewer training opportunities for Palo Alto than Cisco and other vendors."
"For an upcoming release, they could improve on the way to build security rules per user."
"Palo Alto should improve their support. It's sometimes difficult to get the right technician or engineer to fix the problem as soon as possible."
"The SD-WAN product is fairly new. They could probably improve that in terms of customizing it and making the configuration a little bit easier."
"I don't deal with it from a day-to-day perspective, but I can say that the evidence that I typically need is there, but sometimes, it's a task to actually get it and pull it out. They can make it easier to gather that evidence."
"I would like them to bring in some features that would encourage traffic shaping or bandwidth routing, like other UTM firewalls, because the solution should be capable of limiting the bandwidth for rules."
"With new features and applications you get bugs."
"There has been a recent change in the graphical interface. For the monitoring part, they could have a better UI."
"It could offer a DNS Filter for blocking botnet networks."
"The interface of Sophos XG could be improved. I would prefer the Sophos XG to have an interface for the technician who is setting it up similar to the Sophos SG. I felt the Sophos SG user interface was superior. however, in terms of the functionality of the product, Sophos XG is in many ways more powerful than the Sophos SG. I have no complaints about the quality of the product or the end result. For someone who has used both, I preferred the old interface to the new one."
"The UI needs improvement because it can be a little weird at times."
"I am using the Azure Active Directory in my company and it was complicated to integrate this solution with Azure."
"The VPN features can be improved. Due to covid-19, we have a lot of employees that work from home and we need better VPN capabilities."
"I would like to have a more efficient login process."
"The price should be cheaper."
"I would like to next release to be able to support on-premise deployment. The construction of the rules within the firewall could also use some improvement."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Netgate pfSense and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. Sophos XG report.
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Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat signatures and updates. I also appreciate that I can just import addresses and URL objects from the external server. Palo Alto has a dedicated management interface, which makes it easy to manage the device and handle the initial configuration. It has fantastic throughput and its connection speed is pretty fair, even when dealing with a high traffic load. With Palo Alto I can configure and manage with REST API integration. And Palo Alto provides deep visibility into your network activity via Application and Command Control.
Although Palo Alto has great things going for it, there are a few things I dislike about it. For example, when the CPU is 100%, the GUI can take a very long time to respond. Booting time is also time-consuming, and committing the configuration takes more time than I would like it to.
Like Palo Alto, Sophos XG is quick and easy to configure. It is compact in size, and therefore does not weigh a lot either. Similar to Palo Alto as well, it can handle heavy traffic and has a solid performance. A good thing about Sophos XG is that it supports IPsec connection with multiple vendor firewalls. However, I am not impressed with the CLI which is not so useful, and I don’t like that there is no option to import bulk address objects.
Conclusion:
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Sophos XG are both good products. However, Palo Alto has certain features I really like and that’s why I chose it. For me, Palo Alto’s dynamic address group option is a big advantage because it is a huge time saver instead of having to create address groups manually. Another biggie for me was its DNS Sinkhole feature because it is something I rely on a lot and it is very effective in blocking C2 command control traffic.