We performed a comparison between SonicWall NSa and SonicWall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: SonicWall TZ has an edge in this comparison. Unlike SonicWall NSa, its reviewers mention seeing an ROI.
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"It can expand easily."
"The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network."
"We've found the solution to be pretty stable."
"The ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The product is working okay. The product is working feature-wise."
"We can do the hosting and security all under one box. The UTM is a good feature."
"For me, the most valuable feature of SonicWall NSa is the UTM."
"Overall SonicWall NSa is a good solution for our use case."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the GUI pre-filtering and the ATP (advanced threat protection)."
"The stability is better than other products."
"The antivirus and items of that nature were quite helpful to have."
"The filtering is excellent."
"SonicWall TZ is very user-friendly and has network MAC binding. Additionally, the firewall works well."
"The most valuable feature is content filtering and app control."
"SonicWall TZ is a stable product."
"No negative impression of the scalability."
"The best thing about the product is the very good threat prevention output."
"Offers the right amount of control without being incredibly convoluted and frustrating."
"The most valuable features have been content filtering, and the interface is easy to navigate and to use."
"The most common feature in the firewall, apart from that traditional firewall, would be the security services, like application control, URL filtering, Gateway Anti-Virus, and IPS protection. These are the essential features in the firewalls which I think, has to be enabled and properly used at every network infrastructure."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"This product could be improved with Active directory integration and better handling in IPsec and GRE Tunnels."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"There are a lot of bugs I have found in the solution and it is difficult to upgrade. These areas need improvement."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"The dynamics needs to be improved. The solution is not very compatible compared to the market products."
"The only thing that we would want would be single-pane management, which it has, but the GMS is not very good. It's purely the management of multiple devices for multiple customers, that's the only thing that it's lacking."
"I would like to have a built-in vulnerability scanner in the firewall. It would be great to have such functionality. Its price could also be better. It would also be good to have a local warehouse. It doesn't get damaged a lot, but if a customer needs a replacement, currently, it has to come from Miami or Mexico, which can take a few days. It would be better if they have a local warehouse from where we can just pick replacements and quickly solve a client's needs in terms of replacing equipment. It would be great to have it locally instead of waiting for it from Mexico or the USA."
"You can do zero-trust networking with them, but it's not easy."
"The product could expand its throughput capacity."
"The cost could be lower. There could also be more flexibility for smaller companies."
"The problem primarily with SonicWall is it's a Unix box. And it's all software, all the activities, blocking, censoring, everything has to happen in the software. If you start hitting the box with a lot of sessions it slows down and that's not what I expect from a firewall."
"They should consider upgrading the capabilities within the GUI."
"We require centralized monitoring of the network features, which they have but they are not to the level that we require."
"The cost of the solution has room for improvement."
"The user support could be improved because you have to go outside to get that kind of support."
"The market seems to be going to a cloud-supported, new generation of firewall products. I think that's probably going to be important to us, the next time around."
"The areas we would like to see improvement include more features available similar to the equivalent FortiGate appliance, e.g. SSL encryption and inspection. Two-factor authentication capability would be another additional feature that could be included in the next release."
"I would like the solution to build in more redundancy. I"
"The log analyzer in SonicWall TZ is something that they need to improve upon."
"I'd like to have cloud management at no additional cost. Unfortunately, leveraging SonicWall's cloud management capabilities is cost-prohibitive, so we don't use it. They should have a reasonable subscription or offer it to us at no cost as an MSP."
SonicWall NSa is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 80 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". SonicWall NSa is most compared with Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, WatchGuard Firebox and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our SonicWall NSa vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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Basically, the main difference is that the TZ series is intended for a Branch office since it has fewer ports and the speed is around 1 GB.
The NSA series has more processor power and more port where you can create subnets and zones (like DMZ). Also, it has ports with 10 Gb and a processor to support the demand.
I have read that an approximate number of users in the highest TZ series (TZ 670) is around 150 to 200 but that is just an estimate.
Hope this helps. You can get more details in SonicWall datasheets where you will find the speed, throughput and more technical specifications to select the one that fits your requirements.
In simple words,
TZ is for small businesses (less than 100, maximum 150 users).
TZ has fewer ports.
NSA is for medium and large enterprises: > 150 Users,
NSA has many ports to support large networks