We performed a comparison between Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: WatchGuard Firebox comes out on top in this comparison. It is easy to use, performs well, and has robust security protocols. In addition, its support is better than that of Sophos XG.
"It's an easy solution to set up."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"This solution does everything and anything a firewall can do."
"We created and configured a VPN for connecting our remote sites and also to make it more secure and reliable. We also like its two-factor authentication features."
"The stability has been excellent."
"It is easy to implement."
"The user interface is very good."
"What we found valuable is the way they deal with emails, as well as the way the bandwidth usage is shown."
"It is feature-rich, I like the server authentication, and the reports are good."
"If you want to install antivirus and firewalling on endpoints, then Sophos is the best option."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable features of this solution are live logging, rule setup and maintenance, and VPN creation."
"The set up was quite straightforward and we handled it in-house. It took a few hours to deploy the product."
"We experienced that WatchGuard is easy to setup regarding VPN compared to other firewalls of other brands."
"The set up of the VPN is pretty straightforward. Being able to build VPNs on the fly for certain users, if need be, is also valuable."
"I have found the DNS Watch feature for intrusion and prevention response and APT Locker most valuable to me."
"The product's usability is good. It is straightforward and simple. One of the benefits is that it is easy to navigate and intuitive."
"The most effective and helpful features of WatchGuard Firebox, especially when purchased with the full suite of applications, are its bundled applications and subscriptions for comprehensive protection against various threats."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"Lacks training for new features."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"The reporting in Fortinet FortiGate could improve. Customers are having to purchase additional reporting components. When I have used the Sophos solution it is a complete solution, in Fortinet FortiGate you have to use additional tools to have the features needed."
"Their updates can be faster and more regular."
"One feature I would like to add is remote wipeout capability. This would be useful in cases where a user leaves the organization and fails to return their laptop. Remote wipeout would allow for the deletion of data from the device with a single command. Regarding technical support from Sophos XG, it's generally satisfactory. However, the response time could be improved. It takes around one hour to receive assistance, but reducing this to 30-45 minutes would benefit us."
"Sophos XG's user interface has some room for improvement."
"Sophos XG's web server protection and log viewer could improve. They should also introduce sandboxing."
"I would like to have remote access to clients using a static IP for a certain period of time."
"The solution could be improved if it offered more documentation or at least provided more information about the products themselves."
"The only issue that Sophos XG now needs to improve is the product's reporting capability."
"It is performing well. However, the only challenges that we are facing are the effectiveness with blocking the proxy and tuneling applications, aside from proxy and similar applications. So the application filter on the product is not really performing 100%. Every now and then there are some updates that are happening on such applications, and it takes time until it gets the appropriate updates and becomes capable of capturing such applications and blocking them. A new feature I would really like to see would be some sort of an enhanced application filter with greater efficiency when it comes to the applications that can bypass firewall policies. These applications are really a nightmare. Once they are on the network and not detected, or the appliance is not really successful in capturing them and unblocking them, the bandwidth gets wasted all the time."
"We use WatchGuard to manage our failover for internet. If a primary internet goes down, it does a failover to the secondary the internet. However, what it doesn't do so well is that if the primary internet has a lot of latency but it's not completely down, it doesn't do a failover to the backup in a timely manner."
"The way Secure Sign-On authentication is happening needs to be improved. When the Secure Sign-On portal is turned on, anybody who comes into the campus, whether he or she is a staff member or a guest, has to go past the initial portal. One of the shortcomings is the username. It shouldn't allow permutations or combinations with upper or lower cases. For example, when there is a username abc, it shouldn't allow ABC or Abc. It should not allow the same username, but currently, two separate people can go in. Therefore, its authentication or validation should be improved, and the case sensitiveness should be picked up. If I have restricted someone to two devices, they shouldn't be able to use different combinations of the same username and get into the third or fourth device. It shouldn't allow different combinations of alphabets to be used to log in."
"Cloud-based central administration of all devices from one point would be nice"
"There should be better integration and a way to configure multiple vendors into the same data center in order to offer more flexibility."
"A 12-hour power outage... got our batteries."
"When working with WatchGuard, specifically in configuring Panda Security on the portal for the first time, it was challenging for me."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer... The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work."
Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. Sophos XG is rated 8.2, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Check Point NGFW, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Sophos XG vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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