KerioControl Reviews

I use Kerio Control is several different places. I use it at home. I also have a firewall at my grocery store. I have a server on the internet that uses Kerio Connect, and I have Kerio Control in front of it.

It has improved my organization because I am able to back the mail server through the tunnel to my house. All the video cameras at the store get copied and backed up to my house as well. For example, if I had a break-in and someone took the video server, I would still have copies of all the videos.

Kerio has saved time for those who manage security. It notifies me whenever there's a problem or when something goes wrong so we don't have to constantly watch the screen. It saves us 20 to 30 man-hours a week. 

The custom firewalling is pretty intuitive. You don't have to sit there and learn a new language or anything like that. You can just block this, open that, allow this, just allow that. With a lot of firewalls nowadays, you have to know a language. You have to sit there at the keyboard and type in special commands, and those commands are not used anywhere, just for that particular brand of firewall. Connecting the two up in two different locations for a tunnel is easy.

The comprehensiveness of the security features that Kerio Control provides us with is good. Before GFI had it, they would have more updates. The updates have been slower, but I like the things that they keep adding like the ability to block by country. I use pretty much every feature.

Kerio Control gives us everything in one solution.

The firewall and intrusion detection features are pretty good. I haven't had an issue that I know of. I hope no one's gotten any. I think it's good.

I also like the malware and antivirus features. It's sitting in front of my email server and the email server has antivirus too. The firewall catches it before the email server even catches it, so they work pretty well.

I like the VPN but I don't use content filtering that much. It works pretty well but a lot of times kids can get around that kind of stuff. I don't have kids that age anymore, so I don't have to worry about it. I don't use the content filtering that much.

Kerio is easy to use. If you don't know tech, you can't just get up and do it. Nothing can be that easy, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to do it. `

The only thing that I have a problem with is not so much the product itself, but back when Kerio had it, I could call up Kerio or send an email and do an upgrade online. I could renew my subscription online. But now, I have to go through a third-party, and it seems clumsy. 

I can no longer renew my subscription directly with GFI but we have to go through third-party resellers like CDW. The first time I did it with CDW. I went to CDW and it was almost like they didn't even know anything. They didn't know what package I was supposed to get. Then after I got it, it took almost five days to get everything working. I used to be able to go to Kerio's website and then add the stuff to my cart, use my credit card, and it would bill me. Everything would be working in a few minutes. But now, if your subscription is getting ready to expire, you better give it a week or two.

I have been using Kerio Control since the late nineties when it was called WinRoute Firewall.

The stability is really good. I haven't had any issues whatsoever. 

I'm not a large enterprise, so I don't know how well it scales. But I imagine if you were to throw bigger hardware at it, it would scale really well.

I'm the owner, so nobody else touches Kerio except for me. Everybody else uses it as part of their job. They don't really know it's there.

My company is small-sized and Kerio is good for it. It's good for small and medium businesses. I've never used it on a large or an extra-large enterprise, so I couldn't give my opinion on that. I would imagine it could, I just don't have any experience.

I haven't used GFI, but back when Kerio had it, they were very good.

They were very responsive. A lot of times you call the company tech support and they want to treat you like you don't know what you're doing. It's a "Is the power plugged into the wall" kind of a thing. They're very fast to understand that it's not the user that they're talking to on the phone. That the user they're talking to on the phone knows what they're doing to an extent and needs some extra help. It saves time. But I haven't had to call GFI yet, other than when my key wasn't working. It was an email. When I renewed my subscription, the keys didn't update. They had a problem with their update process, so the person had to go and manually update all my subscriptions. It took a few days. 

At first, they didn't understand, because they said it's just automatic. Which it's supposed to be. The next day I told them that it didn't update. Then finally looked and they did one subscription, and then I told them that my other subscriptions didn't update. 

At first, I was supposed to read a manual on how to do it. But I was doing everything that was shown, it just that their process behind the scene wasn't working. It's the online thing, so it was updated. However, my server wouldn't get the notification that it was updated. They thought I was not doing the website properly because they would tell me to go to the website and hit update. It first started as if I was a user that didn't know how to do anything and then they realized we had a problem. I fixed it. It should have been a lot faster.

I did try out another solution called Unify but it wouldn't work very well. I couldn't get the VPN tunneling to work. The GUI was not intuitive and it was all over the place. Things were not all in the same spot. 

I actually bought several of them. I was going to go away from Kerio. I didn't like the way Unify worked. You had to have a gateway key in order for it to work. You took two devices to make one device work. I ended up scrapping that project and kept Kerio.

For the initial setup, it walks you through a wizard. I've just never used that. But the wizard can set up a very basic bare bones, don't let anything in kind of a setup, which works. My setup is more complex. I have VPNs and tunnels. Any IP on my network has to be logged in, in order to get out. Mine is more of a complex setup. The ease of setup is pretty easy if you use the wizard. It just asks you a few questions and that's it. It's a bit more complex when you do it yourself. 

The deployment took a couple of hours. 

I have seen ROI. All the attacks, malware, and viruses that have been stopped are nonstop. The people out there are attacking all the time. It's nonstop, it never stops.

We have peace of mind that our solution stops all those attacks.

Get the GFI unlimited, unless you're only going to have it at one spot. The pricing for the unlimited is a pretty good deal.

I looked into Palo Alto, that had a lot of features and everything else. But when I tried to contact them to get a price, they didn't give me the time of day. They wouldn't even return my call. At the time I was a director for a very large company and they still ignored me.

Make sure the person that's doing it knows what they're doing. If you're not getting overly complicated, pretty much anybody can do it. But if you're going to get complex, you'll need to have somebody that knows their way around or else you might make yourself vulnerable.

If you have a tunnel and you have to change certificates because they expired, you do it in the right order, or else you might have to travel long ways to accept the key on the other side. If you create a new key for the tunnel and apply it, the tunnel is down until the other side accepts the key. If going through the tunnel was your only way there, then you're now traveling unnecessarily or long ways. Luckily for me, it was not too far away. But if you have city to city and you have no one on the other end that has the ability to log in and accept the key, then you're going there.

I would rate Kerio Control an eight out of ten. 

I haven't had a lot of experience with the new owners and I'm worried that they're going to sunset it or not give it the attention it needs. That's just my thought, I have no proof or anything like that. 

We use Kerio Control primarily for site-to-site VPN and client VPNs.

The solution is easy to manage. Kerio Control is unique compared to other firewalls because it has been around since 2000 when we switched and the name it started with was WinRoute, and then later became Kerio Control. It evolved over time and it is more of a proprietary firewall on its own and has been developed through open source.

The Kerio hardware devices look cheap and could be improved. Some of our clients are switching to Sophos because their hardware has a more sleek design.

I have been using Kerio Control for a long time.

Kerio Control stability is extremely stable. On the administration side, you have total control because of MyKerio. Which is a portal that allows you to control all your Kerio Controls and other Kerio solutions. Similar to other firewall vendors nowadays, they have their own portal to centralize the management of your firewalls. 

The solution is scalable. If you are using virtualized machines you can have as much memory and much storage, but you do not need much storage for this solution. It is powerful and fast, although it can slow down the internet because of the filtering. For example, if you have most of your services running, such as antivirus, content filtering, and intrusion prevention. When all of those are all enabled and there is a lot of configuration and it might slow down your internet service to about 70%, instead of a direct simple router.

The technical support is good as a reseller. We have direct connection with the technical support, we can send them an email and they will get back to us. If it requires phone calls, they phone us up or we phone them.

The initial setup is straightforward. You receive a box and then you receive the activation keys. When you receive the activation keys, it will work fine. Without the activation keys, your subscription for firewall, antivirus, and web filter, is not going to work.

If you are doing a fresh installation without the VPN, you have to set up all your routers on each different location to have a site-to-site VPN. However, if you are migrating from a firewall to Kerio Control, you have to migrate the users, DHCPs, and static IPs, that you want to have on the devices to keep you from losing service. For up to a five-site location, it could take approximately one hour for each location to set up the firewalls.

To start out you are going to have to purchase the firewall hardware and the subscription itself which could be approximately $2,000 and for the annual subscription, it will be approximately $400. The subscription entails many aspects, such as you do not lose your antivirus upgrades or your web filtering does not stop.

We are switching from Kerio Control to Sophos because of the sleek design of the devices. If you want a cheaper solution, you can choose Kerio Control, but if you want a much sleeker design, then should consider Sophos.

I rate Kerio Control an eight out of ten.

• Firewall
• Security
• VPN

I use it both within my company and with its clients. I work with Windows Servers, small to medium-sized businesses, and under 100 users.

For product versions, we use the 1100 and 1300 series along with NG100, NG300, and NG500.

Instead of using a cloud-based product for accessing information, and putting my data at risk in the cloud and in someone else's hands, it has allowed me to use a VPN and access my data directly from a laptop when I am out in the field. That has made my life a lot easier, where I'm able to access any information I need to be able access, basically on demand, with an Internet connection. That alone has been great.

The solution has increased the number of VPN clients extended to those outside my environment by 30 percent. 

My clients are pretty lax about the content filter, but it works well. For the most part, they want to keep their employees pretty happy. Therefore, they are not too strict about what they are viewing. Obviously, they don't want them surfing any adult sites or anything like that. But, for the most part, they do allow shopping at work and things like that. They're more relaxed about it, to a certain degree.

The VPN and security are the most valuable features. In the current climate, with people working more remotely, it is nice to have a solution that is flexible and provides multiple features, such as, being a firewall and VPN.

The antivirus works pretty well.

The comprehensiveness of the security features could be improved upon. However, for the most part, it is pretty good. They could add more logs. I would like to see more detailed reporting, custom reporting from the logs, and more of a streamlined interface for certain aspects.

The malware features could be improved. In the large systems, it could use a better alert system, as far as things happening. I get a lot more information from Kerio Connect, as far as alerts, but not so many through the Control products.

It's pretty easy to use. Although, the interface could be improved upon. Certain settings are thin to a certain degree, whereas they should be put more to the forefront and right in front of your face. I would give it a seven out of a 10 for its ease of use.

Almost a decade.

It's pretty stable. I don't have too many complaints about the product.

I'm a sole proprietor. I don't have any employees, so it's just me.

I deal mostly with small businesses, so it scales well for that.

When GFI first took over, there were issues. There were issues contacting them. Even recently, there have been some issues with the MyKerio site. I was getting false notifications, and that basically took a month to resolve, which I thought was wrong in today's environment. I rely on notifications, and it was giving me false notifications. I had no idea if systems were down or not, so I was a bit disappointed.

I have used a couple of other brands, like SonicWall, but not in a long time. 

Kerio Control has more flexibility, e.g., VPN with the Kerio Control Boxes. Though, some of the other products do have better reporting.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward and intuitive. I just need to have some of the information of my clients in front of me. The only thing would be to tweak bug filters and content filters a bit, depending upon your client requirements. However, getting it up and running, it's pretty straightforward. 

There are wizards. You can just follow the wizard, pay attention, and be all right.

I haven't used all the features yet, e.g., I still don't integrate Active Directory.

I use the Kerio Control Boxes. So, I receive it, test it, register it, and update it, then take it out to the client, reconfigure it, and tweak it. This takes three hours.

The solution has saved time for me. It saves me five or six hours a month, where I would have to go run back and forth between clients. If I'm out in the field, I would have to run back to the office to get something or check something. Therefore, it has saved time for me while being onsite and having to access information that I need quickly. For the most part, the security has been good. I haven't had too many issues. Though, the reporting could be better, so I can see specific data on their systems.

I've used them for VPN tunnels to connect offices. For one of my clients, the return on investment is rather good, because there are software products out there that charge on a yearly basis for subscriptions. Using the Kerio Control VPN, there are no yearly subscriptions. So, it has saved them money.

It gives us a lot. It does prove to be a very robust product for the cost.

The yearly maintenance fee is a bit high for the Kerio Control Boxes. The end of life for the devices is kind of short. It seems like they're making you upgrade within a short period of time. They should at least allow five years, but it seems like they are changing their end of life to be shorter to generate revenue.

The solution’s firewall and intrusion detection features are average. They're not spectacular, but they do the job. For the price point though, it's very good.

The solution is pretty reliable. It is flexible, e.g., if you have an old workstation, you can turn that into a Kerio Control Box, which is nice. I'll continue using them. However, I believe that their end of life and maintenance fees could be a little more flexible, as far as the cost of the maintenance fee and the length of the lifecycle of these devices. 

I would give the solution an eight out of 10.

It is for local use in our company of about one hundred users. It is also deployed to different clients, which are from twenty to two hundred users.

It provides security to the internal network and implements solutions through VPN to access specific internal services, without the need to open the network completely. The usage capacity of Kerio Control is enormous.

The ease of use and the ability to deliver customized solutions is incredible. When updating from version 9.2.4 to version 9.2.5, support services was able to remove 5 patches from version 9.2.5 in a very short amount of time to normalize the system.

Support responses. The response time was very good, but not excellent, because they were worried about their system normalization solution. They slightly delayed in answering direct queries.

I am evaluating version 9.2.6. I would like for there to be a difference between international and national links, something I can find in other firewalls.

Yes, in version 9.2.5, but we solved it quickly.

None

In general, I have not used it, except in version 9.2.5. The response was very good.

None

Simple initial setup.

An internal team implemented the solution.

In 2 years 80% of the investment was returned.

Initial implementation costs are comparable to a similar product due to the ease of performing basic operations.

The cost of the product has optional additions with very good prices. The product update is 25% of its value which is very good.

Yes, FortiGate.

Setting up a small laboratory is simple and fast, so you can see a small portion of the solution's benefits and what it will do to improve a business's security.

The filtering rules are valuable. The product is easy to use.

There is no protocol for VPN in Android. It would be good if the product added a protocol for VPN. The upgrades make the network slower.

I have been using the solution for four years.

I rate the product’s stability a seven out of ten.

The solution is scalable. Four people in our company are using the solution. We are planning to increase the number of users to five or six.

I have contacted the support team by email. The team's answers are good. They answer quickly.

Positive

The solution was easy to deploy. Documentation was available online so that we could install it easily.

We installed the product in-house in a couple of months.

We have seen an ROI on the product. It is efficient. We are satisfied with it.

The pricing is reasonable. We have to pay approximately EUR 175 for the product.

We are working for some customers. If someone wants to buy the solution, they must check the internet. The internet is full of advice, which would help them with any questions they have. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

We use the tool for hosting and virtualization.

The solution has an app manager and a portal where you can maintain all your Keri products. It is a firewall that includes antivirus and anti-malware, which adds security. The VPNs, both site-to-site and client VPNs, are pretty easy to set up.

The solution's VPNs help us to work from home or other locations. 

The solution's hardware is not that great and could use more improvement. However, the VM software and the virtualized KerioControl itself are pretty good. The software is good; it's just the hardware that needs improvement.

With KerioControl, it's much easier to see what areas to configure. Unlike Sophos and other devices, their security features are harder to navigate. But with KerioControl, it's just easy.

The tool's deployment is very easy. It can be easily accessed via a web browser or GFI web portal. One resource is enough to handle it. 

You can get ROI in months. 

There's a one-time fee. For KerioConnect, it's just a server. With KerioControl, you have an option. You can virtualize it on a VMware system or have the hardware. I think mid-range or desktop KerioControl hardware could cost around 2000 dollars for a 25 user client. You need annual renewal for additional features like antivirus. 

I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten. 

We use it for bandwidth management, filtering, routing, and intrusion detection and prevention. It is our main edge firewall.

I am working with the latest version. 

I like intrusion detection and prevention and bandwidth management. The routing part is also awesome. It is a good firewall. We never had a major breach from outside. We've never been impacted by ransomware, and our systems have never been infiltrated.

The user login can be improved because we use the captive portal where users have to register before they access the internet server. That has been a huge challenge. They can improve the user login part and make it more user-friendly. It looks user-friendly, but it doesn't work as it is expected to work. They can also improve the reporting feature.

They don't provide content filtering when it comes to search engine results. We had an incident on the network where a blocked site was showing up in search results. We are in a school environment, so we have blocked a site with some of the explicit content so that kids wouldn't see it. When one of them did a search, the results came on the search engine part. When you try to drill down to the website, it blocks, but when you search by image, it brings up all the images. That's one of the reasons why we are looking at Juniper. 

Its inability to provide content filtering for search results was a high-impact issue. We've been talking to them about this issue. It was a very sensitive issue for us because we had kids in year four who were exposed to images that they were not supposed to see. Because of Kerio Control, we failed to protect kids from such content, and we expected them to respond to it with the urgency it required, but their support was pathetic. The ticket was escalated, but we had to send them a couple of emails to let them know how serious the case was, and then we had a live call with their support team.

We have had issues with its performance and stability. They can do better. We've had situations where we had a terrible performance on the network, and when you restart it, everything goes back to normal.

I have been using this solution for six or seven years.

Its performance is average, and it isn't that stable. I would give it a 50 out of 100. 

It is easy to scale. We have about 600 users.

We've been talking to them about the content filtering issue. The ticket was escalated, but we had to wait for two days for it to be answered. We sent them a couple of emails to let them know how serious the case was, and then we had a live call with their support team. We found their support to be pathetic, and we really expected them to take it seriously.

It is straightforward. It is easy to configure.

We do it internally. On the maintenance part, it requires patching, seeing if we want to block anything from our network, and adding more rules.

Its price is fair. There are no additional costs.

We are evaluating Juniper. In terms of monitoring, the response from Juniper was good. We requested a demo, and we got more than a demo. They went above and beyond to get a specialist in security who sat with the team. He presented not just what the product can do; he also presented what is involved in security. Their support seems good. From what they demonstrated, its monitoring, reporting, and intrusion detection features look pretty good.

It is a good firewall. It does what it is required to do, but it needs improvements. Their support and reporting could improve, and they can also do some work on the user login part.

For a campus, you can't depend on Kerio Control to provide everything. You need to look at some of the other tools if you're dealing with students, but for all other organizations, it is perfect as it is.

I would rate it a seven out of 10. 

The primary use case of this solution is for the security of the entire network. There are more than 10 companies that are distributors in the territory and for this region, we have to manage and to guarantee that all the companies can interchange data between them, but also with the outside in a safe way. Kerio is the right solution to achieve our objectives because each client and each server that is distributed in the different companies can be maintained and can be controlled in the correct way.

The flexibility of the system, the capacity to provide the right level of security, and the ability to be integrated into different kinds of infrastructures are the most valuable features. 

The improvement that we are looking for is for when decide to move some part of our application to the cloud. This is one of the projects that we have in progress. Mainly to distribute some services on the cloud and to make that a possibility not only for our company, but also for the customer to have access to this application. To guarantee a correct level of security, not only for our application but also for all customers that access our system. This is one item that we are now considering.

Stability is good. We are satisfied with the performance of the system.

We have more than 300 users that are distributed in more than 10 different units. There is one production unit that is around 170 people, and the other 130 are distributed in the other nine companies.

Some of the users are administrators, the other users are in the technical department, R&D, sales, and the production department. 

Their technical support is very good. We haven't had any problems with them. 

We have used Sophos in the past. 

The initial setup was complex. The system itself isn't complex in terms of actually using it. It is user-friendly. It is complex in terms of the capacity to control the situation.

We didn't spend a lot of time on the deployment. In the beginning, we did need to dedicate some time to implement the infrastructure internally. In terms of the operations and maintenance, we don't spend a lot of time on it.

It requires two people for maintenance.

At the beginning, we did need a consultant to set up the system but now we have our own resources in our company who manage the system.

The pricing is in-line with our expectations in terms of the quality that we get for it. 

Kerio is user-friendly, it's flexible, and can be used on different kinds of infrastructure. You don't need a high level of skill to use it. It monitors, identifies potential problems and it takes actions on a problem. The system is quite easy to use, and we don't have any kinds of problems with it, compared to other solutions that are not easy to understand and are complex. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. Right now, we are really satisfied with the product. Of course, we are open to seeing other improvements, but from our side, we don't need any other improvements because what we have right now complies with our needs.