SonicWall NSa Reviews

SonicWall has USCS and anti-virus at the gateway level. Everything is filtered, and if it detects an intruder, it drops the line.

We have security as a service, and they make recommendations about adding to the denylist and other things. That part could be more accessible and more user-friendly. I'd like to see SonicWall add a user-friendly interface where our internal team can drag and drop everything. We get the IOCs from the security companies, so these things can be filtered and blocked at the gateway level. They could add a feature where our team uploads the IOCs in an Excel spreadsheet instead of entering them in one at a time. 

We've been using SonicWall for almost seven years.

Yeah, it is much stable and we have been using NSa the previous version before also, the old device. It's all so far okay. It's stable only.

We could expand by another 20 percent, and the product would still cover us. It shouldn't be a problem. We haven't faced many challenges. It's a gateway-level firewall product, and we have 140 users.

SonicWall support is good.

We used Cisco a long time ago, but we moved to SonicWall almost eight years ago.

Setting up SonicWall isn't that complicated, but you need to know the scope — what's allowed and what isn't. But it's not as complex as Cisco. The deployment takes a couple of days, but we could probably do it faster. We upgraded from the older version of SonicWall NSa to the latest appliance in less time. 

It doesn't require a large team for maintenance. If we can manage it, anyone can. We only have three people on our team, and we can manage it without issue. 

We used the local redistributor here in Bahrain. They were knowledgeable and had SonicWall experience, so they didn't face much of a challenge. It was straightforward. The only difference is that we went with high availability — two devices. 

We have a yearly license. SonicWall's price is better than other vendors. We get a discount of about 15 percent off the initial cost.

I rate SonicWall eight out of 10. I recommend it. If you implement SonicWall, it'll be a smooth journey.

We are a software development company, and we have approximately 100 to 125 users working at the same time. This firewall is part of our security solution and we are planning to upgrade it to a TZ or another NSA model.

The most valuable features are the antivirus and reporting.

SonicWall NSA is easy to deploy, easy to maintain, and easy to configure. There are lots of features, which is really good for us

The reporting feature could be better because most of the companies want to have the analytics included, which is something that you have to buy separately.

We bought our SonicWall NSA between nine and ten years ago.

This is a stable solution, as per our needs. We have not experienced any problems with it.

We have 125 concurrent users at this time.

We are planning to replace the current model with either a TZ or another NSA.

The NSA model is very easy to deploy and it does not take a long time to do.

I deployed it myself. I watched some videos online and then completed the deployment.

Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis, and we are happy with the pricing. This is one of the reasons that we choose this product.

This is definitely a product that I can recommend to others.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are a solution provider and SonicWall NSA is one of the firewalls that we implement for our clients. I have implemented it for many companies and currently, I have four or five clients that we are supporting.

The most valuable features are the VPN, SSL VPN, and IPSec VPN.

The port forwarding functionality works well.

The number of concurrent VPN users is too limited.

SonicWall does not support DynDNS, yet this is an important feature for smaller companies that do not have a static IP address. It means that if the IP address changes then it would automatically be picked up by the firewall and it will assist with site-to-site VPN connections.

I have been working with SonicWall NSA for two years.

SonicWall NSA is a stable firewall.

I have set up SonicWall NSA for smaller companies in Dubai. Most of my customers are small to medium-sized with between 20 and 100 users. I would say that it is scalable.

The support offered by SonicWall is good. I would rate them a six or seven out of ten.

I also have more than five years of experience with Fortinet FortiGate. I have worked with models such as the 30E, 50E, 60E, 100E, and 60D. I also have experience with the Meraki Firewall.

The VPN limitations are better with FortiGate. Even with the lower versions, such as the 30E, it supports 100 tunnels and 100 users. With SonicWall, you are limited to five IPSec VPN connections at one time.

FortiGate also supports DynDNS, which is an important feature for smaller companies.

The initial setup is okay and I don't have any issues with it. When you configure any UTM box, whether it's new or if you are configuring it for the first time, it will take some time to complete. Once you get through it for the first time, it is much easier from then on.

If you want to connect more than five concurrent users by VPN then you have to pay an additional fee.

Overall, this is a good firewall and they would do much better in the market if they included support for DynDNS and additional VPN connections for free.

At this point, because of the restrictions with the VPN, we are recommending Fortinet rather than SonicWall. If in the future these concerns are dealt with, then I will recommend SonicWall.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Primary use is Office 365, all our users have cloud-based email. The rest is business emails, business procurement, etc. And if users are on after hours and they want to see more, we allow it, but still, blocking is difficult on the SonicWall. It's not easy. We have about 300 users who go through the internet.

At the moment, none. It just doesn't do its task. Users, no matter how you configure it - and it's configured quite carefully in the sense of censoring - seem to be able to punch to the file. It just doesn't do its job.

It seems to have all the features, it's just not performing.

It has good reporting, the reporting is marvelous, but reporting is always after the fact and you want to be proactive if you're a firewall. You don't want to be saying “Ah! We had a bot running on the network,” while SonicWall itself didn't give that indication in an active way.

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.

I have worked with this box for six months, and it's a daily task to manage this thing. You don't have to always have time to do this.

The room for improvement is to step away from the Unix platform. It needs to be a specialized system that manages firewall activity. You don't want to rely on two systems, one being Unix and one being the firewall. Unix is a powerful system, I have no doubts about it. I've set up Unix systems my whole life and they're very powerful. However, when it comes to dedicated tasks it's not suitable. That's Unix. Unix is general. It does everything. And by doing everything, it's not always as powerful as a dedicated system like a hardware solution, like Fortigate.

It's fairly stable. In the last six months, I've had to restart the box about five or six times because it just didn't do what it needed to do. And after the restart it started working again. So it's not as reliable, in my view.

It might be working in other environments, but in my view - we have a satellite connection of only 8 megabits - it's very hard to control bandwidth on the SonicWall to allow certain types of traffic to have priority. You can't really dedicate certain bandwidth for, let's say, an Office 365 solution. It's all very global. And global makes it hard to manage on a slow link, and 8 megabits is a slow link.

I don't know about scalability because I have only worked with this box. There are probably faster boxes on the market. This box should be sufficient for 300 employees and my impression is that performance is suffering if too many people are trying to get through it.

The main reason this was bought was it was cheap. We all know that Fortigate is far more expensive. But, then again, it's more like the Rolls-Royce of firewalls. And what you can do with it in hardware has no comparison with any of the software solutions on the market. Yes, everything performs, every firewall-type solution, whatever you want to use, does its job. But you want to have a management-free solution. If you look at Fortigate, no matter how you look at it, you know it works. With Unix boxes, you never know. It's a Unix system and, for whatever reason, it can stop working and you have to reboot the machine, which is not the most beneficial solution.

I've used Fortigates. Fortigates have no problems if you start adding a thousand users, depending on what kind of service provider you have. A big difference is that it's global censoring on the SonicWall. On the Fortigate you can censor per rule, and that's a big difference if you are in a multi-user environment where you have different types of actions.

At my current company, this was set up at the beginning, when the company started. They have never had a different solution. They have another location with Zyxel firewalls, which will also be replaced with Fortigates. They all perform. That's probably the best thing I can say about them. What we're going to implement now is a far broader solution with authentication and everything else. At this stage, that is not implemented on the SonicWall. My fear is that if we implemented that on the SonicWall, we would have more problems. It's really not that flexible.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are manageability and the features, and by features I mean complete management of the firewall.

The setup is fairly simple. That's why I'm surprised that this box is struggling. That's not what I would expect from this type of solution.

Do your homework. Go to your website, compare firewalls, not only SonicWall, not only Fortigate. Compare them for the task that it needs to run for your company. That's the bottom line. There are small firewalls which will suffice for certain companies. You might need bigger ones, you might need more features. So really, you have to do your homework.

I work in an African country, knowledge is something they are still gaining, and SonicWall is too difficult for most people to manage, versus a Fortigate where it's really a step-through and you know what you're doing, you can see what you're doing. You can't really see that on a SonicWall.

It's very hard to manage this box. You really need a lot of skills to operate the SonicWall. There is training and the like, but it's just hard to manage. Even if you have the knowledge, there are too many options. The menus are not very clear, where you should find the information.

We use the product for a lot of things, so it's hard to talk about an individual use case.

The solution seems to help with any intrusion.

I like all the features. The global filtering and the content filtering are great. It's not always intuitive, however, you can usually figure it out. It's really handling all of our firewall needs.

It's stable.

The solution can scale. 

The user interface could be better. 

I've been at the company for about two years and have used the solution since my arrival.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. As long as we maintain patching, we're good.

The solution has been scalable.

About 150 people are using it in our organization. 

I'm not sure if we have plans to increase usage at this time. 

We have been very satisfied with the technical support. 

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution. this product was in place when I arrived at the company. 

The product was already set up when I got here, so I can't speak to the implementation process.

You only need one person to handle deployment and maintenance tasks. 

We've had it for quite a while and therefore must find it to be quite cost-effective. 

I'm not familiar with the licensing aspects of the solution. 

I'm a technical person. I don't care about the cost.

We have a very old SonicWall NSa. That's why we're looking to upgrade.

I'd advise new users to just learn how to work around the interface. That's my one complaint. It's sometimes a little cumbersome to use the UI.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

SonicWall NSa can be used as a perimeter and ELAN firewall.

The solution has many useful features, such as content management, user management, user filtering, and domain controller connectivity mapping.

The reporting and monitoring are a bit complex and should be easier in SonicWall NSa because other firewalls I have experienced have been more simple, such as Palo Alto. We are able to receive a clear view of our network. As a general user with little experience, it would be difficult for them to handle.

I have been using SonicWall NSa for approximately seven years.

I have found SonicWall NSa to be stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have approximately 180 users using this solution.

The support of the solution has been good. We normally go through our partner support but if anything is outside the limits of their knowledge then it gets passed onto the SonicWall support.

The installation is not easy, you should have a basic understanding of your network and what your requirements are. Generally, the implementation is done by the vendor. We have an external party who used to do the basic configuration. However, the new generation firewalls do not take much time and are easier.

We used an outsourced vendor for the implementation of the solution. 

We have approximately two individuals that do the maintenance of the solution.

There is a license required for this solution and you can purchase a one, two, or three year term. Typically businesses choose the one year subscription and then later choose the three year licensing option if they are satisfied.

I have evaluated Palo Alto firewalls.

I would recommend this solution.

I rate SonicWall NSa a seven out of ten.

We use this firewall to protect our perimeter. We create NAT policies and have a DMZ set up.

It is also used to filter the internet for all of our users.

The most valuable feature is the sandbox.

The content filter needs to be improved. I would also like to see better application filtering.

When we are troubleshooting problems, we find that the logs we see are not sufficient. It makes it difficult to find out what the main issue is. It means that we have to search further or perform another test to see what happened.

Technical support is in need of improvement.

We have been using SonicWall for approximately 15 years, and more specifically, SonicWall NSA for the past 10.

The stability is fine and we don't have any issues. We have never needed to report a problem.

We have about 20 people in the company who are protected by this product, and I think that the scalability is fine. However, I would say that it is best for small to medium-sized organizations.

When we have gone to the vendor for support, I don't think that the quality was very good. I would rate the vendor support a six out of ten.

I used to work with Check Point, and they are very good when it comes to application filtering.

The initial setup is easy and the deployment can be completed in between two and four hours. This includes installation and adjustments that need to be made.

We have an in-house SonicWall specialist.

When implemented properly, the total cost of operation is very low.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing SonicWall NSA is that they have to be very clear about what it is that they're looking for. It is a good solution for small and medium-sized businesses, and when you are very clear about what you need, you can implement a lot of other security services with a total cost of operation that is very low.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I am a consultant. I work with a software dealer in the IT security business.

I deployed SonicWall for a customer just last month.

It's very simple to use and the support is great. I am in India and they have a support office here. As a company product, SonicWall firewalls and their support has been excellent.

It's a simple, rugged product. When I say rugged, mechanically, it's a very rugged box. The same thing applies to Sophos also, it's also a very rugged box. It's rugged technology, it can take a beating and still be operational. 

One of the greatest strengths of the SonicWall system is that they have multiple portals for multiple tasks, whereas all the other solutions have no single tool for doing multiple tasks. That has been one major advantage of SonicWall. Regarding the SonicWall box, you need to be capable of taking multiple loads compared to the competition. That's a very unique feature of the SonicWall system. They also have an antivirus solution that is tied to their system which is called SentinelOne.

The support is very good. The product is also very reliable. There are always new, frequent updates — nothing more or less. It's very flexible; it's ready to go right out of the box, unlike some other solutions which require a lot of training. The GUI is very user-friendly. Even if you've never touched a firewall in your life, with a bit of time and practice, you'll get the hang of it.

In terms of improvement, they should consider changing the logic of how the rules are created. Everything is spread out into multiple pockets, so to speak; it should be more condensed. The technology is sound; I am not saying that it's brilliant, but it is very sound for most mid-range uses — it does a fantastic job.

They should consider upgrading the capabilities within the GUI. The way the GUI is configured for creating rules, I would say they should consider making that a bit more flexible. That would really help a lot.

I have used SonicWall NSA for three years.

SonicWall NSA is very stable. I ran my last box for 10 years before I switched it off. 10 years is a long time for anything. If it can run for 10 years, it's stable. It's money made twice over. It might not be technologically up to speed and it may not be upgradeable, but that's a different matter.

These boxes are well-known for the amount of mechanics and users they can handle.

The initial setup is very easy.

The basic setup takes roughly half an hour. After that, when it comes to configuring the rules and dependencies, with ideal conditions, I would say that it takes roughly a week. Overall, within two to three weeks, we were in production.

Roughly 90% (50% in the worst-case scenario) of the customer's settings are ready within a couple of days from the time the box is powered up. When you power up the box, you have to set the rules. So, I implement it, engage the rules, and then ask somebody to test some of the connections and give me some feedback. That takes a bit of time, but otherwise, it only takes a couple of days until the box is ready. If you want to push it, within a week it's possible to reach roughly 90% to 95% production — the rules and the performance have to be fine-tuned which takes a little bit of time.

 I would definitely recommend SonicWall for their simplicity of use, but if you can configure SonicWall, have a look at Sophos also. Sophos has put a lot of hard work into their connections and the GUI. SonicWall's GUI is slightly lacking compared to Sophos' GUI; however, capabilities-wise, Sophos doesn't have a lead over SonicWall.

If I had to make a recommendation to a customer, I would tell them to look at both products. I would push the Sophos box because it has certain advantages, technologically, compared to SonicWall. For example, they have their own antivirus solution — the Sophos antivirus solution. It's a firewall as well and the tool will communicate with the central cloud. From the cloud instance, you can control the system.

The Sophos gateway has got allied products, like SD run connectors. You can manage the same rules between multiple firewalls because they're all connected to the same account. Overall, Sophos is superior to SonicWall.

The first requirement of a paying customer, independent of their choice of product, is to check if the technical support of the product is locally available. That's the first requirement I would give to any customer. The product may be great but if the support in your geographical region is not there, then it's not worth it.

Take Trend Micro for example. If you're a customer of Trend Micro but you're not in the immediate support region, then what happens? You will have to raise a ticket and wait, but you don't have anybody on the ground to come to your office and do an emergency scan and raise your ticket, so it's a bit of a dangerous issue. I would recommend a product that has both local technical and physical support.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give SonicWall a rating of eight.