SonicWall TZ Reviews

We are an MSP and Sonicwall partner and have installed virtually every model, from the TZ 150 during the old days, up to the new TZ 500, TZ 600s and NSA series. I've been using SonicWall for many years and it's still a major part of our solutions for many of our customers compared the optional product lines that we sell. I previous owned an IT firm for 30 years and recently merged with a larger organization where I focus on customer security and guidance. 

Sonic has been very progressive, continually updating their product-line and service offerings to stay current with, and ahead of the evolving security landscape. Again, they have consistently developed great solutions for both the SMB and enterprise market which has enable our support team to leverage their expertise with Sonicwall across our entire client base.

The most valuable features are the ease of setup, ease of management, integration, the VPN integration andnet extender which is part of their remote access, and functionality. Overall, they've been very effective and it's an affordable product. 

Not relating to this product specifically, but I think overall the company needs to think more broadly about security continuity across the entire security spectrum and integrate more security options with their solutions, like Cisco is doing. They need identity management products and DNS solutions to really complete the line of security. Because of the whole management system, there could also be improvement to their GMS, which is a system allowing you to manage an entire fleet of their firewalls via a central pane of glass. Today as more organizations as forced to working from home and the security perimeter is now the home, businesses need more affordable and scalable systems to manage and monitor numerous devices, more easily and push out updates through essential platforms.

I've been using this solution for over 15 years. 

I find it a very stable product and company. We really have not had problems with functionality or support. The ability to meet customer needs and implement security features, as well as just the reliability of the hardware itself has been very good over the years.

Scalability is good but once you buy the product itself, you're limited to what that particular device can deliver in terms of throughput and add-on features. You can easily add on additional functionality through various software/licensing, but it can't scale up more than the product's physical limitations. To address this, Sonicwall does have an upgrade program to enable organizations to capitalize on any investments made in training and management tools.

Obviously they have a dedicated support team for firewalls in general, unless you get to the bigger enterprise products. That's a different team. We find that whenever we have problems, we can get to somebody within a reasonable period of time.

We also provide CISCO solutions our clients where it may be a better fit.  The decision on which solutions to use can be influenced by either existing infrastructure and/or the experience and resources the customer may have inhouse.  Additionally, product feature-set and customer needs play the biggest role in determining what is the best fit for the customer.

Initial setup is quite straightforward via Sonicwall's GUI.

I can't talk about specifics, but purchasing the product is an upfront capital expense for maintenance as well as for the product itself so I can't amortize that down to a monthly or annual figure because the products are also very diverse in price depending on the usage or the package that you get. There are a very broad number of products within the TZ series from the very low end to the medium range. You've got many different models to choose from at different price points. On top of that, you've got the maintenance agreements that are relatively priced based on the product, so that is a variable too. I know that they are very competitive in pricing compared to other solutions on the market.

It's worth looking into this solution. It's a very competitive product in terms of pricing, performance and features. It's definitely worth evaluating, especially for small to medium size businesses, branch offices and home. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

I use SonicWall TZ for my office remote access from outdoors.

The most valuable feature of SonicWall TZ is the double authentication, where it asks for one password and again asks for a four-digit code, which changes every 30 seconds.

The solution's antivirus checking could be improved so that we can have a deeper inspection of the packets.

I have been using SonicWall TZ for one year.

I rate SonicWall TZ ten out of ten for stability.

SonicWall TZ has good scalability. Around eight users are using the solution in our organization.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten for scalability.

The solution's technical support team is good, and they provide us with email notifications regarding new updates.

Positive

The solution's initial setup is easy because we do it once only and never make changes.

The solution’s deployment hardly took 30 minutes.

The solution is moderately priced, where it's neither cheap nor expensive.

The solution has improved our business network security, and I am satisfied with its performance. The firewall performance of SonicWall TZ has met our security needs. I would recommend the solution to other users.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use the tool for filtering and log management.

The product’s filtering and URL-blocking features are valuable. SD-WAN and VPN are also valuable features.

The solution must provide more ports.

I have been using the solution for six months.

I rate the tool’s stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a ten out of ten. We have around 100 users. We use the tool daily.

We used Sophos before. We switched to SonicWall TZ because it provides high availability.

I rate the ease of setup a ten out of ten. Setting up the users and accounts according to the groups and categories takes a few hours. The whole setup requires a few days.

We deploy the solution in-house. We need three people to deploy the tool. We need one knowledgeable person who has mastered firewalls to maintain the product.

The product is worth the money.

The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap. I rate the pricing a six out of ten.

We set up new environments and implemented firewall solutions in our organization. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for its firewall capabilities.

The best thing about the product is the very good threat prevention output.

The dashboard needs to be improved.

They can work on the GUI part of the solution. Currently, it is a little bit complicated as compared to other competitors.

Each uplink is quite a big and complicated sort of tool. Other products, like Checkpoint, are so-so, however, they are better. Fortinet is a good example of one that is very good and easy to use.

I've been working with the solution for four to five years.

The stability is excellent. We find it to be reliable. We haven't had any issues at all.

We consider growing the solution based on the company's needs. We work with different sizes of organizations. We try to project out what a company will need, not tomorrow, but three years down the line, and build for that on day one.

We do this due to the fact that it's not exactly scalable. We build it bigger so organizations can grow into the solution quite a bit. Users are restricted by the model of the firewall, so if you choose something that's too small, it won't be able to meet your needs and you'll have to start over and trade up to a bigger model.

If a TZ series can handle 500 users, and a company currently has 200 users, they'll be able to scale up, technically speaking, to about 300 more users before they hit their threshold.

Basically, the scalability is not infinite. It's quite limited to the capacity of the model itself.

We've never dealt with technical support. We've managed to handle any issues ourselves, in-house. I can't speak to the kind of service they provide.

I also have experience with Sophos XG.

I find that there aren't too many differences between firewalls, as everyone has the same platform and goals.

The initial setup is not complex. It's very straightforward. We found it to be quite easy.

It may take a while to deploy the solution, at least here in Haiti. It will take longer than a few hours. Depending on the client, it can take anywhere from a day or two to up to ten or 15 days.

It's all dependent on the customer side. What will define the length of time will be is the mobile policy they want to implement on the firewall. That depends on the customer.

You only need one person to deploy and maintain the solution.

We're resellers. We handle the implementation for our clients.

We use this solution ourselves, however, we also deploy it for our clients. We're resellers.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I don't know if I have specific advice, as each customer is different and has different needs in terms of security. It depends on their policies and how they want to implement them. There are almost endless amounts of policies that can be added to the solution.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

SonicWall is perfectly okay for businesses that need to support around 100-150 users.

SonicWall is very expensive in terms of using it for 500 users. It's very expensive compared to Cisco Meraki. Cisco Meraki is half the price with the same features. Even FortiGate is less expensive than SonicWall.

I'd like to see anti-spam included in the standard license. I have to pay more for anti-spam when really it should be the standard feature.

I have been using SonicWall for about two years. 

No issues with stability. There's an automatic update that defines everything and then implements it to where I can see it on the dashboard. I can see all the spam or malware that was detected, as well as the vulnerability. It then stops those issues. 

General maintenance is okay, but if some users require changes, or I have to deploy some policy on the users, then the steps are actually pretty lengthy.

The only issue I have with scalability is the price.

I get in touch with technical support whenever we require the support, the support is okay. We have a toll free number to connect with them. I just connect support and then discuss the issues. They take control of my firewall and then make changes as per my requirement. That's fine. The support is more or less is good. That's not an issue.

I license SonicWall TZ for three years subscription and support. I would say the price is about 20% more when compared to the competition. The standard service for what my company needs is already covered in that license. But if I need more licenses like for VPN or some other filtering, then I need to pay more.

I worked with Meraki and Fortigate. I can differentiate the products in terms of ease of use. If I go for ease of use and deployability, then I would prefer Cisco Meraki in any case.

It's not user friendly as compared to Meraki.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

If an organization has about 200 users with slow growth, then SonicWall would be great. But if the growth is exponential and rapid, they may want to consider other solutions or SonicWall NSA.

We use the solution for work filtering and application control.

The solution has helped streamline our internet usage. Unnecessary sites are blocked. The solution has increased the productivity of the employees, and VPN connections have been added for security measures.

Access restriction and IP whitelisting are the most valuable features.

The technical support has room for improvement. We have had some issues that have not been resolved.

SonicWall TZ can increase the number of built-in VPN connections. I would like to have 30 VPN connections in the next release.

I have been using the solution for one year.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. 

We have 150 people using the solution.

The technical support was not able to resolve some of my issues.

The initial setup for a new user is a bit confusing. I had previous experience with the solution so I was able to complete the setup easily.

The deployment steps were configuring the interfaces, load balancing, policies, access policies, creating groups, and providing the necessary access policies to each group. The deployment took around three days.

The implementation was completed in-house with some support from the SonicWall team.

I give the price an eight out of ten.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

The maintenance is not difficult. I take care of the maintenance myself.

I recommend the solution to others.

SonicWall is our primary internet firewall.

We like the unified threat management for defense-in-depth. We can terminate our site-to-site and remote access VPNs with it.

I would like SonicWall to act as a DNS server to host DNS zones. Our small business clients sometimes have a single DNS server on-premise. If that's the case, we're out of luck. It would be great if we could host DNS on the SonicWall, even as a secondary DNS.

We've been working with SonicWall products since 2007.

SonicWall has been pretty reliable.

I rate SonicWall six out of 10 for scalability. I'd like to have cloud management at no additional cost. Unfortunately, leveraging SonicWall's cloud management capabilities is cost-prohibitive, so we don't use it. They should have a reasonable subscription or offer it to us at no cost as an MSP. The size of our client companies varies quite a bit, but they have devices to scale for various sizes, so it's a non-issue. You buy the appropriate device. 

I rate SonicWall support six out of 10. The tech support could be better. There's definitely a language barrier when dealing with tech support out of India, so it's not ideal.

Neutral

I rate SonicWall nine out of 10 for ease of setup. The deployment time depends on the complexity of the environment. 

You need a network firewall, so it's not a question of ROI. You need air. You need electricity. You need the firewall.

You have to pay additional fees to leverage their cloud management capabilities. That's unaffordable and limits scalability. There are also optional packages and various levels of support or subscriptions.

I rate SonicWall TZ eight out of 10. We use it often. It's an excellent product that I would recommend.

Our primary use case for this solution is connecting offices in different cities together. Also, when the pandemic hit, this solution allowed our remote workforce to connect to the network remotely, from their houses or wherever.

From our point of view, the most valuable feature was the ease of deployment.

I think content filtering is the area this product should improve. It's a little tricky to get put in correctly.

I have been using SonicWall TZ for four years.

I would say the stability of this solution is quite good. However, we did have a few issues.

I cannot comment on the scalability of this solution as we work with mostly small to medium businesses and do not worry about scaling.

The initial setup was quite straightforward.

The deployment does not take long as I can get one out of the box and ready to go for a client in 20 minutes.

The only advice I have for people looking at this solution is to either learn the product or hire someone who knows it very well.

Maintenance of this solution is done mainly by the engineer that sets it up. The only time we really need to use it is to check and make sure that we don't have any vulnerabilities. We keep the firmware up to date. Other than that, if the client needs any changes made, we make those changes. Other than that, you can just set it up and forget about it.

I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.