Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Sophos UTM vs Sophos XGS comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
317
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Sophos UTM
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (2nd)
Sophos XGS
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (15th)
 

Featured Reviews

DineshKumar28 - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective threat prevention with responsive customer support
We are using Fortinet FortiGate as a firewall Fortinet FortiGate has been invaluable. It has helped save costs due to its various features, reliable performance, very good UI, low latency, and stability. The Threat Intel engine in Fortinet FortiGate is highly rated for its effectiveness in…
Emanuele-Gnali - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances security by providing intuitive firewall policy settings 
The primary use case for the solution is as a perimeter protection firewall, which includes functionalities such as VPN, web control, and traffic inspection. It is used in various customer environments, providing comprehensive security management and network protection The platform's most…
MarounAbboud - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives us peace of mind with network security, application control, and web server protection
Having previously worked with the Astaro Security Gateway platform (now called Sophos UTM), I can attest that the configuration and dashboard for this older platform was easier to manage than that of both Sophos XG and XGS. If it were up to me, I would prefer to go back to the older SG dashboard. I am hoping that in future, the dashboard for Sophos XGS will be simpler and easier.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"The main benefit is the grouping of our security monitoring."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"Brings greater visibility into the network traffic coming inside and passing away from the company."
"This is a very stable product."
"Stability-wise, I rate this solution a ten out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate this solution a ten out of ten."
"It now controls all the security aspects of our web servers with Sophos UTM WAF.​"
"The scalability is good."
"It makes it a lot easier for us to maintain things. Prior to it, things were more difficult. This means less time on us. We can focus on other things. The recovery is more in man-hours for us than anything else."
"It meets our compliance needs in an elastic computer environment."
"The most valuable feature is the price. I've been requesting prices all over these years between different solutions like Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point and Sophos has been the cheapest and the best of all of them that I have tried. I have been working with Fortinet, it's a fact that the price is surprisingly better."
"The scalability of Sophos XGS is very good."
"Sophos XGS has contributed to the reduction of the overall security costs of our company's customers."
"Spam filtering is what I love most about XGS."
"I think Sophos technical support's immediate response is good compared to Fortinet's. If the technical engineer is good, they get the solution immediately. If not, it might take two days. For improvement, immediate response is required, whether by email, phone call, or WhatsApp. Sometimes, we can't wait three or four days for a solution. In urgent situations, we might use a spare Sophos device while waiting for support."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The solution is very user-friendly, and the GUI is so good that I don't have to use the CLI. This eliminates the need for typing; clicking allows me to get to what I'm looking for."
"One of the main advantages of Sophos XGS is the processor. You don't have to wait a long time for when you are managing the firewall and the traffic is faster now."
"I like the Sophos UI. It interface has a more comfortable feel than the competitors."
 

Cons

"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"The cloud features and integration could be improved."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"We would like to see better pricing."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"The reporting could improve by providing information on where, or from which device attacks are coming from. We are already given the country where the attack is coming from but more information would be beneficial."
"Sophos customer support could use some improvement."
"It would be nice if it had basic features, such as DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
"In short, the UI and UX are the areas of improvement in Sophos UTM and similar solutions compared to Palo Alto."
"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."
"The ease of use could be a bit better."
"The memory and processing were problematic. The interface could be better."
"There is still room for improvement in wireless protection. I don't mean their WiFi device is bad, but there are still things to improve on, such as WiFi roaming."
"The price of Sophos XGS could improve, it is high."
"In the new release 19, there should be the implementation of a cloud service that you can use to set up the IPSec tunnels, and the SD-WAN from the WAN dashboard, and then you can push that configuration out to every firewall that you have."
"Sophos XGS is quite expensive, potentially a nine out of ten in terms of cost, making it much pricier than other firewalls."
"In my view, Sophos operates effectively in a reactive mode, focusing on static detection and forwarding traffic. However, Fortinet takes a more proactive approach, blocking both connection and route connections. While Sophos forwards any connection in both inbound and outbound traffic, I believe this is a positive aspect, especially in a country with various sizing considerations. This is my perspective, emphasizing the significance of Sophos XGS in software work."
"There is no option for right-clicking on any feature after logging into the firewall."
"Compared to Fortinet, the cost is high."
"The customer service response time can be improved."
"The functionality of SD-WAN compared to other boxes is lacking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a very full-featured and it's priced well solution."
"I had to pay for the license for the firewall, but it is guaranteed to have updates. I expect a good service for it. It was about €1000 for a year, and there was no additional cost."
"Fortinet has more device options that are affordable for small businesses than Palo Alto, and its enterprise-level models are also cheaper. Palo Alto also has a separate license for VPN connections and SD-WAN, but FortiGate offers these features standard."
"It is affordable. Palo Alto is much more expensive than Fortinet."
"The price of FortiGate is good."
"Other firewalls are more expensive than Fortinet FortiGate, such as the Azure firewall."
"It is an inexpensive solution."
"Its pricing is competitive with other solutions."
"If you would like to run an active-passive HA system, you only need to buy an additional hardware without subscription. At other vendors, you need subscription for both devices.​"
"It is the cheapest product available. It's good if you have a low budget."
"The licensing model is very straightforward, it's a bit pricey, but for what you get, it's well worth it."
"Pricing for the upgrade was very competitive as Sophos wanted to retain existing customers."
"The price of the solution is high. The price from USD to my currency is expensive."
"The pricing for Sophos UTM is quite acceptable compared to other UTM vendors."
"It's expensive. It has a yearly license."
"Pricing for Sophos UTM is OK. Here in Egypt, many companies use the solution because of its price and features. My company pays the Sophos UTM license fee yearly."
"Sophos XGS is a very expensive solution."
"The license for Sophos XGS is for three years, paid on a yearly basis. Everything is included with the license; there are no additional fees."
"A central firewall on the cloud with a cluster might be 70,000 to 80,000 euros for a three-year license."
"The licensing cost is in the normal range and is not very costly."
"I would like to see them reduce the price."
"The pricing for Sophos is much better compared to that of Fortinet and Check Point. On a scale from one to five with one being expensive and five being competitive, I would rate Sophos' pricing at four. The pricing can be for the hardware appliance and the license, or it can be subscription-based. It can be around 3000 USD up to 25,000 USD per year depending on the model or series of the hardware you choose to buy."
"The price of Sophos XGS depends on the type of license. However, the licensing cost is approximately 60 percent of the total cost."
"It is roughly around $4,000."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Firewalls solutions are best for your needs.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user216600 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 3, 2016
Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate
I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between Sophos UTM and Sophos XG?
The Sophos UTM is a UTM and Sophos XG is the NGFW. First, you must know about the difference between a UTM and NGFW. ...
What do you like most about Sophos UTM?
The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the endpoint protection feature.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos UTM?
The product pricing and licensing are higher, but they offer good value for the features and stability provided.
What do you like most about Sophos XGS?
The policies are the greatest feature. They allow us to configure granular control over our network traffic.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos XGS?
If the pricing model is more flexible or lower, it would be highly preferable, making it a more competitive option fo...
What needs improvement with Sophos XGS?
The user interface has improved significantly over the past few years, and having a more competitive price model coul...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
Astaro
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
One Housing Group
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Sophos UTM vs. Sophos XGS and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.