SonicWall TZ Reviews

We use it for a variety of businesses and schools.

Its ease of installation has improved my organization. That's what I do most. I install the firewalls.

I don't have anything that I would say needs improving at the moment. The small business line has less PPS throughput and that's what you're going to lose on when you use WatchGuard. So they need to improve the throughput of the firewall in the small business line.

Easy to explain : 

                                 WatchGuard T70 vs SonicWall TZ600 
Firewall Throughput :       4Gbps          vs      1.9Gbps
Price :                             610€            vs       973€

I've only ever had one problem. I have a bank that has two NSAs in high availability. The only time I had a problem was with the high availability from the update. That's the only time. And that was last month. I did an update. I disabled the high availability and we reset it, the firewall, and installed the config again. And updated it one by one.

I have no negative impression of the scalability.

I haven't tried technical support yet, so I haven't needed support yet on anything.

Moved to new Employer.

The initial setup is straightforward. I deploy at least one solution a month, to different sites. You only need one person for deployment.

I did the implementation myself.

The pricing is where you might lose to WatchGuard now. I'm looking into moving some parts over to WatchGuard because they are on the small business side. But if you compare the TZ300 and 400 series against WatchGuard series, they are the same, but there is a price difference between them.

I wasn't a part of any decision making in terms of options. 

We use a variety of models, from the TZ300, up to the NSA 2600. For businesses, I recommend TZ400.

I would rate the solution 8 out of 10. I would rate WatchGuard itself 10, because I really like that product, and the ease of use. And when I say ease of use, I mean I know that product in and out. And it's very easy to set up external sites with the system management tool that comes free with WatchGuard.

Currently, I am using SonicWall TZ to connect our branches to the head office. We use it as a site-to-site VPN.

The primary benefit we have found with SonicWall TZ is its cost-effectiveness compared to other products like Palo Alto, which are more expensive.

One valuable feature of SonicWall TZ is the content filtering. Additionally, advanced features like real-time deep memory inspection are available in the head office's 2600 series.

The logs need improvement. SonicWall TZ should include a hard disk to keep log files for at least one week or maybe one month. This feature might be available in greater series but not in the basic product.

I have been working with SonicWall TZ for almost six months.

Stability is very good, even though the firewall has not been restarted for almost one month.

I would rate the scalability of SonicWall TZ a ten out of ten.

Technical support's response is delayed due to our process. We need to go through our reseller, who then contacts the local distributor, causing delays.

Positive

Previously, I used WatchGuard Firebox in my previous office.

The initial setup of SonicWall TZ is complex.

We get initial support from our local partner for the setup. Our team does basic configurations when needed.

SonicWall TZ is priced average compared to other products. We usually compare prices from different local suppliers to get the best deal.

The main competitor I considered was Fortinet.

It's recommended that their logging feature be improved by adding an in-built hard disk to store logs.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

SonicWall TZ is mostly used for firewalls.

SonicWall TZ is a very cost-effective solution that provides good security.

The solution has lost the trust of its customers because of moving from one company to another.

I have around five to seven customers for SonicWall TZ.

The solution's initial setup is easy and not difficult.

The solution's installation is a simple plug-and-play process. You get the internet, and you have to go to the wizard to complete the customization for your network.

The sales of SonicWall TZ have been very low. The solution has lost the trust of its customers because of moving from one company to another. People have lost their trust in SonicWall TZ and are changing to other products. The marketing was very low for SonicWall TZ for some time. SonicWall TZ is a very cost-effective solution that provides good security. People who work with SonicWall more than Sophos find its interface very user-friendly.

Sophos completed its portfolio for security by having its own endpoint and email security. All of these products are synchronizing with each other. This is what gave Sophos a push-up to go through the market. Currently, SonicWall TZ has had its own endpoint for the last two to three years.

We ask customers who have experience with SonicWall TZ to continue using the same solution because it will be better for them. When a user has a better understanding of a solution, it's not good to change them to another product.

When a user changes the solution, they will have a lot of questions, and they will make a lot of mistakes during the installation and configuration. We don't prefer Sophos, SonicWall, or Fortinet, but we sell Sophos because we are a gold partner for Sophos and get a better rate and better margin.

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

In some cases SonicWall is used to outfit a company, replacing existing infrastructure and getting site-to-site VPN set up for easier management. It provides ease of use for VPN setups. We are customers of SonicWall and I'm a senior system analyst. 

The solution offers the right amount of control without being incredibly convoluted and frustrating, or without being too dumbed down where you don't have options to do certain things. It's very to the point with the controls and simplifies things for us. It's great value for money. 

The solution has a lot of robust options and it's easy to use. NSM is a good feature, a single pane of glass security center where you can monitor SonicWall for different clients and troubleshoot without it requiring individual access. The product has good integration with their SMA solution, which we deployed for one of our financial firms, and we've also provided a remote access solution for people with PCs at home who want secure access. It offers good content filtering.

I would probably say their GSM or their Sonic Analyzer could be improved. I have always found it difficult to manage and not very intuitive. I'd like to have better visibility of what each endpoint is doing. That's something Meraki has that is very easy to use.

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

The solution is stable. We're an MSP, so if our clients have any dated hardware, we'll make a plan to switch to SonicWall, otherwise there can be issues with the internet or configuration where we can't get in and troubleshoot. We need to know we can get into the firewalls and make sure that they're online, as opposed to having to schedule someone to come in and deal with the basic physical connections or troubleshoot.

The scalability is very good because if you know how to work the base model, the old solution or the TZ 105, all the way up to the NSAs, they just scale up in terms of features and functionality and you don't change a whole lot. They have good terminology that sticks throughout, so if you work with one, you can work with them all. It means upgrading and scaling is very easy. We manage about 1300 users or so across about 100 different clients. For the most part, maybe 80% of them are on SonicWall, and we try to push that just because it makes our lives a lot easier.

We don't use the technical support very often, but the last call I had with them, everything was resolved within the hour. I spent more time on hold than I did with the person. It was 15 minutes on hold, for 10 minutes to resolve the issue. Otherwise, it's great. 

The initial setup was very straightforward. Deployment time depends on the client but if we're starting from scratch, you can have it updated and deployed within an afternoon without issue. We have our own techs with experience who can get things set up to the best of our ability. Implementation takes one person who knows what they're doing, but we have a team that can help out and troubleshoot if we run into issues. 

I'm not sure of licensing costs, but the price point isn't bad. In addition, you need to buy the hardware. There is also a standard support license, and they offer an advanced security gateway with other intrusion detection, prevention, content filtering, etc. There are some additional options we usually go with, but things like content filtering are hit and miss, and depend on what the client wants.

I've tried Meraki, but their price points are ridiculous and feature functionality is somewhat lacking. After Dell sold SonicWall, things improved a lot, and they've come a long way. There were some things about Meraki that I liked such as endpoint visibility. You can see the list of connected devices and apply a policy. You can get very low network so that bandwidth is not eaten up if someone is watching Netflix all day but they can still receive emails. Those kinds of things are what's missing in SonicWall. I've never been able to do something like that easily on the firewall side. Unfortunately, the cost of Meraki is really prohibitive. We tried a few other solutions and they just didn't pan out. If you want a good firewall, you have to pay thousands of dollars for what SonicWall does in a way that's easier to manage.

I would recommend trying the product, it's not too difficult, whether it's the setup or the cost. If you're looking for a really low-cost solution, you'll probably end up using something like pfSense which doesn't really compare to SonicWall. There are probably better solutions out there, but there are things that SonicWall does better, it just depends on your budget.

I rate the solution eight out of 10. 

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.

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.