We compared SonicWall TZ and WatchGuard Firebox across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Comparison Results: SonicWall TZ is highly praised for its user-friendly interface, robust features, and cost-effectiveness. However, there are areas that need improvement such as reporting, licensing, scalability, and support. On the other hand, WatchGuard Firebox is commended for its comprehensive features, ease of use, and reasonable pricing. However, it also has areas that need improvement including the interface, web blocker feature, reporting, customer support, security, configuration options, scalability, and integration.
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"The feature we found most valuable in SonicWall TZ is that it is user-friendly for an administrator."
"It does exactly what it says on the tin. It is good for protecting the business from being compromised. Its port protection is very good."
"The performance has been very good. Overall, the solution is quite stable."
"Good VPN connection."
"From our point of view, the most valuable feature was the ease of deployment."
"We are able to block whatever we want to block by using this product. It provides all required security features, such as content filtering, VPN, in one box. Before switching to SonicWall, we had specified all required features."
"It is very stable with no issues. The firewall's been up for the past 35 days non-stop. It's performed great. It has performed as it should perform."
"SonicWall TZ is a very cost-effective solution that provides good security."
"Their support is excellent, and the stability is very good."
"It also provides us with layered security. It has onboard virus scanning features that allow it to scan before something gets to the host. It will also stop a person from going to a site that is known to be bad."
"There are no problems with the technical support. If a problem occurs it gets resolved immediately with our technical support partners."
"The solution has increased productivity with our outside salespeople being able to connect into their computers and use those remotely."
"I could still keep the data rates really high, up near the two gigahertz data speeds, without compromise on the security perimeters being acted simultaneously."
"[A] valuable feature would be the branch office. We have five offices throughout the United States, and it coordinates the connections of those offices."
"WatchGuard Firebox's two-factor authentication feature is particularly useful and provides an added layer of protection."
"WatchGuard has a very easy VPN and branch office VPN setup, so we use those pretty extensively."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"The marketing of SonicWall has to be increased. Currently, when it comes to firewalls, most people go for Cisco and Palo Alto. SonicWall should improve its marketing and branding policies to increase sales. Other than that, it is good."
"The monitoring is a little bit confusing."
"Its reporting can be improved. Currently, we cannot directly get the user names. It only shows the IP, which makes it a bit confusing because we need to use the IP to find the user. If we could directly get the name of the user, it would be better."
"We have experienced some issues with SonicWall TZ and they are lacking some advanced features other vendors have."
"User interface could be improved."
"The lack of support is having me look into other solutions to replace SonicWALL."
"In terms of what needs to be improved, I would say better load balancing and data filtering."
"The reporting analytics could be improved, it is very unstable."
"The UI is not as user-friendly as the model that I had used before, which was from Check Point. The design of the Firebox UI is restricted and needs an experienced network guy to understand the format and settings."
"I would like to see more simplified management of the firewall... It's a complicated system to use."
"This solution needs the option to add an external hard drive."
"There should be better integration and a way to configure multiple vendors into the same data center in order to offer more flexibility."
"I would like to see more tutorials on setting up the Firebox."
"The solution needs to improve its accessibility."
"The performance of the solution's processor needs to be faster."
"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."
SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, OPNsense, Meraki MX and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our SonicWall TZ vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
