KerioControl Reviews

We use the solution mainly as a firewall. 

I am impressed with the tool's firewall filtering capacity. 

The product's technical support is not good as it used to be. 

I have been working with the product for 15 years. 

The tool's stability is great. 

The solution is scalable. 

The product's setup is straightforward. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. 

Our primary use case of this solution is for general network security and VLANs. It's in use 24/7, all the time. 

This solution has improved my organization because we can access remotely. With Kerio Control, we can remotely control systems to be installed in multiple areas. The remote connection is valuable for us.

The firewall feature is the most valuable.

I would like to see them develop a bit more flexibility creating VLANs.

It's a real good product. This version has many features for creating VLANs and also for traffic rules, firewall rules, etc.

Scalability is more than enough. There are over 50 users. Ten of them are management on the business side and about 20 or 30 are part of the crews.

Technical support is good. They respond right away. 

The initial setup is a bit complex, but it was fine for our IT department. Deployment took around one month and it only required one person. One person works on it, and it takes him about two or three weeks. Maintenance requires two people.

We did use an integrator. We have an IT manager.

Pricing is good, but the licensing took a lot of time. It was with a company in Europe and we got it with 50 users and wanted to upgrade to unlimited users. They first make it 250 users, then one or two weeks later unlimited. It took two weeks to get an unlimited license. It was strange but if you purchase with unlimited then it's no problem. You get it right away. The upgrade took a lot of time. 

We looked at Kerio Control vs Sophos Cyberoam. 

I would recommend this solution to someone considering it. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Navigation through options and configure them is just two mouse clicks away. Lots of information without need of an external tool.

• Site-to-Site VPN
• Easy configuration
• Really easy and user friendly GUI
• Stability
• AD integration
• Traffic shaping options
• QoS management is great
• VLAN options per interface
• Proxy and Reverse proxy with SSL options
• Two step authentication
• The real-time built-in monitoring applications
• Intrusion prevention system
• DNS redirection
• Easy monitoring and configuration of the routing table
• Guest interface feature

We had several routers in our environment, including Linux firewalls and Cisco PIX for user and site-to-site VPN connections, all of them were replaced by Kerio Control. The improvement was instant as now we have a better overview of all our internet connections and LAN-to-LAN connections. We even have a better control of our site-to-site VPN tunnels.

The VPN configuration because if you need specific VPN parameters you have to configure them through the CLI of the appliance. These options are not available in the GUI. The intrusion prevention system is good, but it could be better and you cannot configure per IP exceptions. Some diagnostic tools can be improved too, however they are good enough to the everyday usage. Last,lu the Ubuntu/Debian VPN client can be improved a lot.

It does not offer high availability option yet, however you can do that through VMware's fault-tolerance feature.

Guest Interface has a built-in web site for access to the internet (like a hotspot). In some cases, guest users cannot see this interface and then they cannot navigate/use the internet, however this only happens on rare occasions.

I have used this for four years in several locations, and all of them are happy with it.

We had no issues deploying it.

Kerio Control can be used with three internet connection modes:

• Single internet connection
• Fail-Over
• Load-Balancig.

If you put the appliance in Fail-Over mode it will simply FAIL, and will bypass your routing rules. It will start balancing connections (even when you have not configure it) and the stability will be annoyingly poor. However, the user manual says that you have to put it on Load-Balancing mode if you want to use routing policies which is contradictory, but that's how it works. When you put the appliance in Load-Balancing mode it i will work great.

Once again you have to double-check licenses, remembering the licences count the IP that is passing through the firewall to the internet, and site-to-site connections will not count.

Here in Argentina they are terrible, as they will not answer emails and will not reurn the phone calls. Otherwise Kerio support is great.

We had a mix of Linux IPtables and Cisco appliances. We switched because the business needs a quicker and more precise response from IT.. Now, with a clicks, we can see everything.

It's not complex at all, however I have to modify the virtual appliance because it came with the E1000 virtual network adapter. I removed them and put VMXNet3 in instead. I also had to change the amount of default configured RAM. It's now working great.

I implemented it myself as it's really easy to setup and use.

To test it, you can setup a mini-lab inside of a VMware hypervisor. The major problem that you will find with this is the licensing, as it´s confusing and you have to remember that they licence the appliance per IP basis. The basic licence includes five users and 25 IPs for every device that pases through the firewall which counts as a used licence. If you have one user connected to the VPN and 24 devices using the internet (Tablets, Phones, VoIP phones, computers) then you are using 25 of the available IPs so no-one else would be allowed to use the VPN or navigate through the firewall until the VPN user disconnects, or one of the devices is not being used to connect to the internet. So you have to double-check how many IP address/users you will need before buy and deploy it. Luckily for us, Kerio offered a 30 day free trial for testing. Also, they sell the product with Sophos AV and a really good content filter.

Connection Monitor

Debug Area

The Main Dashboard

Traffic Rules

Our primary use case for this solution is a UTM (Unified Threat Management) router.

This solution gives me confidence in the ability to quickly recover from hardware failures.

What I like the most about Kerio is that I can use the software appliance as a solution, so if the hardware fails for any reason then I can quickly replace it with hardware that I have in stock. Typically, I use a Dell OptiPlex i5 desktop or small form factor.

Their support is getting better but still needs improvement. I had been using Kerio products for quite a few years before GFI purchased them.  What liked about the support was that the people you contacted were actually using the product in their homes, they played with the product and broke it and fixed so understood it well. GFI support folks at the first level are script readers and point you to documents you can find on the support website. For me, I have gone down that path already when I opened a ticket. 

I see they have phone support now, but I have not used it.

I cannot think of any features that are needed at this time.

This solution works. The only issues are hardware failures.

With respect to the scalability, I have it running in five-person offices and in fifty-person offices.

The technical support was very good originally but fell short when GFI took over. It is now getting better.

I switched from SonicWall because, at the time, they did not accurately report the throughput of the router when all of the UTM features were enabled. Also, setting up the traffic rules was not as easy as Kerio Control.

The initial setup for this solution is very easy.

The implementation and deployment is something that I do myself.

I do not worry about the ROI. I just need something that works and protects.

My advice is to use your own hardware and do not use theirs.

There were some issues with our main firewall and it went down. In a short time, I deployed KerioControl and save our business.

The most valuable features of KerioControl are ease of configuration, user-friendliness, and comfortable to use. It is an all-in-one solution, it comes with many features, such as a firewall, antivirus software, and network protection.

The GUI should be changed because it remains the same consistency across versions. However, those who have been using KerioControl for a long time may be accustomed to the current interface. Installing a new version in the same location makes it easy to find, but overall, there are no notable changes between versions.

I have been using KerioControl for approximately five years.

KerioControl is stable because it is a Lunux-based system. However, it depends on the cores because they do not change the base core of Linux systems.

The scalability of KerioControl is good and it is easy to do.

I have worked at many companies, and the most users that have been using KerioControl has been 500.

If our company grows and the popularity of KerioControl increases we will increase our usage of the solution.

I have not had the need to use the support from KerioControl because I have found all the answers to my questions online.

I previously used Cisco Firepower and Netgear.

The initial setup of KerioControl is straightforward.

The implementation of the solution was done in-house.

We have received a return on investment.

I compared KerioControl with other companies based on price, functionality, features, and ease of use, ultimately choosing KerioControl as the best option.

The KerioControl is a good solution. It can be deployed on old servers and it works well with no issues.

Our primary use cases are for internet connectivity, security, and VPNs.

The VPN connections have improved my organization. It also means that I can manage security more easily.

The most valuable feature is the VPN. It enables us to do remote work. 

I use the geo IP filtering a lot. 

We also like the security. We can control what sites users can go to and we can make sure that where they're going is appropriate and that it's work-related.

Quality of service and bandwidth management need improvement. It just doesn't seem granular in that.

The denial of service could also be improved. There recently was a big issue with denial of service attacks and it was a bit laborious.

I have been using Kerio Control since 2016. 

It's stable and we rarely have any reliability issues.

It is scalable up to a point that then you might have to use a user faster, bigger one, but on the whole, it is scalable. It's because based most installations I have are over 300. Whereas if they start to get really big, you'll need to increase the model to the next model up.

In my company, it's me that manages and installs them all. We install, manage, and offer basic management and support.

The environments we've installed for can go from three to 50 users.

We've never had any problems with it not being able to manage the traffic.

The GFI technical support is average. The speed of response sometimes is not very fast. Sometimes they take a while to resolve an issue. For example, I've got an issue that's not been resolved for three months now, meaning that the box, the unit isn't performing as it should do.

My clients generally replace solutions like SonicWall and Fortinet with Kerio but sometimes they don't have a firewall at all, so we set them up with their first firewall.

It's easier when all our customers are using the same firewall. It makes it easier for us to manage them across the board. We use Kerio across the board.

We used to use a lot of Fortinet but now we've replaced that with Kerio because of the support and price, although now the support is not so good. The price is fair and the features are all pretty much the same.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's a bit tricky because I do it a lot, but it's pretty straightforward. It has a Wizard if you need it, but I don't need it anymore. I know what I'm doing. I find it quite easy to set up.

A basic deployment takes an hour. Just the box standards are set out for everybody, and then if they need something specific, we'll add it in afterward. But a straightforward, standard, basic setup takes about an hour.

We have a unified implementation strategy that we start with and then we tweak it if need be. We don't use MyKerio to put a standard implementation across all of them.

Our standard implementation strategy is to implement dual internet connections, standards, and standard traffic rules with VPN access.

At the end of the day, our customers are being managed, looked after, and they're secure, so they're happy.

The licensing is a bit of an issue. People don't like to have to buy user licenses. They think they should be able to buy the box and be able to use it. Licensing is a bit old fashioned in terms of the fact that if they don't renew the license that box becomes useless. People really don't like that. Then they can't use it anymore.

My advice would be to make sure you've got an internet connection. The first thing you have to do is register the user on the internet and then if you get to a new installation where you're setting them up from scratch, you're going to struggle because with the new Kerio unit, the first thing it needs to do is connect to the internet and it can't do that if you haven't set it up. It's best to get it set up before you install it on site.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using the solution is not to assume everything is running okay because it might not be. The main reason is because of the denial of service not being up to scratch. You have to make sure that their connections aren't being kept of denial of service effects. That's the problem right now. I would say denial of service is probably one of the weakest areas.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

I have had a few issues with HTTPS decryption. The solution also does not show the actual user's Internet usage. 

I have been using the product for ten years. 

I did not face any issues with stability while using the tool's trial version. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. 

I use Kerio Control as a firewall or IPS.

Kerio Control has helped my organization by hiding my private IP address behind the firewall and we use the proxy destination instead of my website.

I have found the most valuable features of Kerio Control to be the IPS and firewall.

Kerio Control could improve content filtering.

In the next release, it would be beneficial to have a new signature to the IPS technology. Additionally, some of the features are not able to be modified or configured, there needs to be more flexibility. 

I have been using Kerio Control for approximately four years.

The solution is stable.

I have found Kerio Control to be able to scale horizontally and vertically.

We have approximately 40 users using this solution. Many of them are administrators.

I do not use the technical support from Kerio Control. When I have an issue I find the solution by searching the internet.

The initial setup was simple, it was standard. It only takes a few minutes.

We have approximately two people that do the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

I pay approximately $50 for the solution on an annual basis.

I rate Kerio Control an eight out of ten.