Sophos XG Reviews

We primarily use it for web content filtering, spam filtering, and VPN.

The setup and the control management are easy enough. For the most part, the features that it offers work well. 

Web filtering is easy enough to deploy, manage, or make exceptions to. 

The logging side of it could definitely be better. Some of the logging lacks, and the information that they provide you, especially in the spam filtering section, could be better.

We're going into our third year.

For what we use it for, it does what we need to do with little to no issue. It is not overly complex for us to be able to deploy what we need.

We're a school. We have 150 staff and 700 to 800 students.

I haven't had any problems with their technical support. Every time we've had to call them, they have been fairly reliant. They have been able to solve the issue or the question that we had.

I've been through a few.

Its setup is easy enough. 

Because we're in education, Sophos gives us a very competitive price for it.

When we first got it, we were on version 17. We have now upgraded to version 18. There was a significant change between versions 17 and 18. Once you get your head around those differences, it is not that complex. Now, version 18 does some stuff that some of my older firewalls used to out of the box. So, that in itself was more of a nicety. It makes things a lot easier. 

I would rate Sophos XG a nine out of 10.

I'm providing services to my customers. They are using Sophos firewalls, and a few of them are also using antivirus.

Content filtering and intrusion prevention are most valuable. Our customers are fully satisfied with the performance of Sophos. It has all the features that they require in a firewall. 

They need to do more quality checks before they release firmware upgrades. Currently, a few Cyberoam firewall customers are facing some issues while upgrading the Cyberoam firmware to Sophos. After the new firmware is installed, they are seeing some performance issues, which require some bug fixes. The performance is fine after getting the required support. Customers who are already using Sophos hardware are quite satisfied with this solution. 

Their support should also be improved. We are facing difficulties getting support on time through email or phone.

I have been using this solution for three to four years.

I regularly contact them. Connecting Sophos support is quite a difficult task during the pandemic. We are facing difficulties getting support on time through email or phone. Sometimes when a problem comes, it has to be sorted for the customer quickly, but it is taking time. One of the customers has just upgraded a firewall from Cyberoam firmware to Sophos, and it took them around ten days to get that firewall upgraded from Sophos.

Most of the customers compare Sophos with Fortinet. In comparison to Fortinet, people are more satisfied with Sophos. Sophos has a big customer base in India. Therefore, they are good in terms of performance and customer satisfaction.

I would rate Sophos XG a seven out of ten. We are satisfied with its performance.

We use the SRX from Juniper as the second firewall, and Sophos is useful as a first firewall facing the internet edge. We also use it as an SD-WAN, and we're going to use it as a load balancer instead of a BIG F5 load balancer. All of the things like web filtering and internal email filtering will be inside Sophos XG.

Sophos is a stable solution, and we haven't had any bugs or limitations.

The GUI and support could be better. I think there are other products that we are going to deploy instead of Sophos. We have already upgraded a month ago because the interfaces and support for Sophos are really weak. But other products like Juniper, Cisco, or FortiGate are better than Sophos. It's also complicated, and the end-user or client does not understand it.

The interfaces and the GUI design are not easy, and when you do something, unrelated things are in the same configuration site. There are different sites to visit to configure Sophos. This is even more than other products. Many features can be improved, especially the VPN and web filtering features.

We have been using Sophos XG for about five years.

Sophos XG is stable. 

Technical support could be better. I already opened a ticket three days ago, but they are not interested or have not cooperated with the end customer. But Juniper and Cisco are fast to respond compared to Sophos. Sophos is really complicated, and it's not fair to buy the annual support when they don't provide any support quickly when you request it.

The price is fair.

I would advise potential users not to use Sophos if they are not buying the appliance. They should use another product like FortiGate, Check Point, or Palo Alto.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Sophos XG a six.

We primarily use the solution as a comprehensive security device.

The VPN capabilities are quite good.

The solution is very good at web and application filtering.

It's quite a comprehensive security solution.

The performance the solution offers is excellent. Compared to the older solution, and especially on the cloud, it can reach very good performance. It depends on the licenses, of course. 

The graphical user interface is excellent. 

The intrusion protection module is very useful.

You can easily connect the solution to cloud management.

The stability has been excellent.

Technical support could be improved. They aren't as responsive as they could be.

It would be ideal if we could have a more populated and detailed knowledge base. Generally, the new features must be tested before applying them to the production side. I would like to see more case studies, more application notes, and so on.

We would like to see an improvement in mail management. When passing from FG Series to XG Series, some mail features have been lost. We would like to regain them.

We've used the solution for many years - before it was even Sophos. Sophos, some years ago, was Astaro AG. Sophos acquired Astaro AG. We have at least ten years of experience with the solution.

We've found the stability to be very good. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no glitches. The performance and reliability are excellent. 

Occasionally, we do have to do a debug, however, that's typical of all firewall solutions.

The scalability of the solution is very good overall. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

We have about 200 people using the solution.

The reaction times of technical support are slow. They should be more responsive. We're not completely satisfied with the way they handle it.

In the past, I've had some experience with SonicWall, Fortinet, and with a Linux solution. However, compared to other solutions, we prefer Sophos.

It's better to be certified to install in a good manner. You need to understand what you are doing. Sophos offers the chance to certify at different levels. There are commercial levels and technical levels.

The time it takes to deploy depends on the complexity of the setup and environment. It can take a few hours or a few days. It can even take a week if the architecture is very advanced.

Generally, you need to be an engineer to handle maintenance. We have three people at our office that can handle implementation and setup as well as maintenance.

You need a license to use the solution. We offer the license as a box license, or we can offer a license like an MSP, as a service provider. We often acquire the licenses and we give them to our customers as an MSP.

We are an authorized partner for Sophos.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I'd recommend the solution, especially over, for example, Cisco. 

I'd rate the solution ten out often. It's really worked well for us.

We are using it at a gateway level. We are using Sophos XG Series 135. 

We find it easy to use. Its internal configuration is very easy. It is not complicated in terms of use and configuration.

It has been fairly stable, and it is also scalable.

They can simplify its interface so that it is mostly drag-and-drop. There was an SQL injection attack on some Sophos devices. They just need to harden their devices a little bit so that they can't be hacked very easily.

I have been using this solution for three years. 

It has been fairly stable.

It is scalable. We had scaled it for the number of users that we have, and it has worked fine for us. We have around 40 users.

We rarely contact their technical support. There was a time when our head office contacted their technical support. It was an issue in 2008, and they provided a patch.

We used Cisco ASA five or six years ago.

We found it easy to install. Its installation took around one to one and a half hours.

I did it myself. I have had some training on the product. In terms of support, we have just two guys who handle the support. Two people are enough for its deployment and maintenance.

I would recommend this solution. It is a fairly stable and good solution. We will keep on using it.

I would rate Sophos XG a seven out of ten.

We use the solution for application control and web filtering. We also use it as a VPN point, and we use it on other occasions for tracing and reporting about usage and high application rates.

We are able to trace any user and pinpoint any vulnerability or any malicious software. We are able to synchronize between the local and active directories so we can catch users easily through their login names and IDs.

The reporting on the solution is excellent.

There needs to be a way that we can distinguish between educational institutions on Youtube and other Youtube videos. You can do this on Fortinet. Basically, they can block all other Youtube videos besides those that are from educational institutions. With Sophos, you either allow for all Youtube videos or none at all. They need to allow for more specification on different websites.

They only have one single location for training videos. They must offer them elsewhere as well. When the site goes down, everything stops, and you can't access the videos when you need them, so they need to diversify that. It's limiting.  

The stability of the solution is excellent.

The scalability is good. We could only handle around 5,000 users but even when we reached 3,000 users, Sophos only consumed around 24% and 40% of Prime usage. 

The solution's technical support is not the best. When I take a step to open a case with Sophos support I can't understand them at all; I can't understand their accent. I always appreciate if they can communicate with me through e-mail instead, which makes it much easier. 

Many cases take a long time to be resolved. Some cases they seem to ignore or don't reply to for a long time so I have to remind them that the case is still open before they will respond. 

The initial setup was straightforward. The implementation took about a day. There were only two people needed for deployment.

We had a consultant assist with the setup. They were very good.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a very good firewall. It helps a lot with protection, and every organization needs a firewall to ensure they are protected.

Our primary use case of this program is for antivirus and security purposes.  

What I like about this program is that it is easy to use and easy to manage.

Sometimes we experience difficulties with our server and that is usually due to a bug. Somehow bugs seem to find their way through Sophos' security. The issue is usually resolved when we contact technical support. In the next version, I would like to see an improvement in this. The developers should test everything after any update to ensure that bugs don't come though with the update.

I've used FortiGate before and I would say that Sophos is just as stable, both being around 70% as stable as other products on the market.

The scalability is good. We have 300 to 400 antivirus end users, and our company has around 1,000 users. We do have plans to increase usage because we are growing our projects around the world to countries like the US, Germany, Pakistan, India, UAE (Dubai) and Egypt.

The technical support is okay. Whenever we call them with an issue, they come to us and resolve the issue. Sometimes they take time, but I still think it's good. I will rate the technical support eight out of ten.

We only use Sophos because it can integrate with other product like FortiGate and we can easily connect the two programs. This makes the program scalable and easy to use. Many other products on the market are not compatible with each other and that is why we chose Sophos. 

The initial setup was rather complex but we had no issues with the deployment.

We bought a license for three years and we will renew it but I think the price is too high. If it could be less expensive, more end-users or partners will be able to afford it.

It is a good product and I will definitely recommend it. I rate this product a seven out of ten. In the next version I would like to see an advanced level and not only a basic level. Nowadays it is a very useful feature to be able to upgrade.

For one, its ease of use is the most valuable feature. It's very easy to look at the logs and troubleshoot issues as they arise. Things just make sense and it is a very intuitive interface.

It is easier to use than Cisco ASA, so it has reduced our SLAs by a considerable margin.

The VPN and central management need to be improved, but that's being nit-picky.

The IPsec VPNs are a little on the buggy side and you sometimes have to jump through hoops to get it to work. When I looked at them last, they were still in development for the centralized management of the firewalls, so when I saw it, it was very much in its infancy.

One more thing to add to what they can improve is the firewall policy presentation, they have their own special way of doing it which takes time for some to get used to, especially if you’re used to Cisco ASA.

I have used this solution for about a year.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues, it is very scalable.

I would rate the technical support a 10/10; they are very professional. I know a couple of those guys over there on a first name basis.

Previously, we were using another solution. However, we switched as we needed to upgrade our infrastructure.

The setup was pretty straightforward. They had someone come in, walk us through it and train us on the platform.

Get the professional support contract; it is well-worth it and those guys know their product very very well.

It is a very solid product, easy to use and implement.