We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and Sophos UTM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."In a week, we can make new policy and view what all our users did."
"You can use your web browser to do the configuration which is easier than Cisco CLI transcripts."
"Its ease of configuration and management is very useful for us and for other companies that don't have an onsite IT person. It is easy to configure and easy to manage. It is easy to configure the VPN with the Auto VPN feature."
"Easy to administer and saves time when you have many smaller locations that you have to manage."
"It prevents us from being hacked and delivers information about who and where the attack came from."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"It is very easy to use and manage. It is also very easy to scale."
"Dual WAN connections are greatly simplified and point-to-point VPNs automatically connect regardless of what WAN connection is active."
"The solution is stable."
"Sophos UTM is very user-friendly and has good integration with other solutions."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"An easy solution to learn because the graphics are very intuitive."
"It improved bandwidth utilization and provided link load balancing features for internet and intranet lease lines."
"Has great security features and does a good job of protecting the network."
"The firewall itself is very strong and provides great security."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"I need more UTM protection security features."
"In general, the SD-WAN feature needs to be improved. The load sharing and load balancing of the traffic should be improved. I have had some problems with these features in the past."
"It would be great if the Meraki devices let us see, in real time, the internet demand on a single device."
"The only stability issue is in Content Filtering. Sometimes we need to report these types of issues to Cisco support."
"Management can be improved in Meraki MX."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"When it comes to cost, that's a pain point."
"The configuration options for firewall and IPS have limitations."
"The application control is really bad. It needs a lot of enhancements. The traffic shaping and bandwidth control, and application control need a lot of work."
"Sophos UTM's firewall is a bit weak, and some of its features lack depth compared to other products like F5."
"I would like them to move from the Classic Load Balancer to the Network Load Balancer. This would make it easier to do certain things with Amazon. They are able to do some enhancements with Network Load Balancer that they are unable to do with Classic Load Balancer."
"I am going to flat out say technical support is terrible. Being a Platinum level customer, I am not happy with the support."
"We had some problems with the configuration. They had provided a CloudFormation template, and we had to go several rounds to make it work."
"There is absolutely no support when using AWS. If you buy the on-premise Sophos solution, you get support."
"The lack of import/export functions for network and service options drives me mad."
"The solution needs to do better at covering mobile devices, although they may have an integrated solution for that purpose."
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 59 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Meraki MX is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG and Zscaler Internet Access, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, OPNsense and Juniper SRX Series Firewall. See our Meraki MX vs. Sophos UTM report.
See our list of best Unified Threat Management (UTM) vendors.
We monitor all Unified Threat Management (UTM) 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.
To be honest, if you are still buying firewall appliances and UTM licenses you are already behind a very obvious requirement to move to Cloud security. Buying UTM does not solve the growing risk of mobility and cloud application delivery. It would be worthwhile reading Gartner's SASE paper on security transformation. Or research Zscaler, who has been delivering this model for 10 years.
If a user is in your network behind your UTM, what stops him from connecting to his mobile phone Hotspot and bypassing all UTM, DLP, etc. Security has to move from the network to the endpoint. Protection regardless of location, device or network. Anything less is a massive compromise and a false sense of actual security.
Sophos gives on-premise UTM functionalities that work like traditional UTMs (such as FortiGate, Firepower and the likes). Meraki MX devices are managed from the cloud and are subscription-based but also extremely easy to configure.
If you want a very easy to configure solution with a minimum IT staff and prefer OPEX over CAPEX, go with Meraki.
If you want on-premise control, and prefer CAPEX over OPEX, go with Sophos.
I haven't had any experience with Sophos, but in small business environments I've found the Meraki devices to be needlessly complex. As one who has worked quite a bit with enterprise Cisco devices, I can't say I'm surprised. In my opinion, complexity doesn't necessarily denote better functionality.
Most concerning to me, though, the Meraki devices also stop functioning entirely if you don't renew. their licenses, and it's some $500 per year *per device.* Any situation where a license not being reactivated can shut down your entire network is a huge concern, particularly at such high cost. We aren't talking Karen not being able to use Acrobat or something here... we're talking entire site outage. That is enough to make any technician worth their salt have a mild seizure.
When it comes to Security, I have very good experiences with Sophos, I can say the security solution is absolutely great in Sophos. Whereas I have never used Meraki, so I can't comment anything on it.
SD-WAN; no experience on any of the requested products, so better not to make any false comment/advice.