Sophos XGS Reviews

We use Sophos XGS in 15 locations with 15 firewalls for the XG. We dedicate one person to maintain the solution.

The most valuable feature of Sophos is the VPN solution. I also value their threat management, IPS, IDS, and login features with single sign-on.

Sophos XGS needs improvement with the threshold values. Other solutions have the capacity to handle more users.

I would like to see virtualization security included in the next release.

We have been using Sophos XGS for more than two years.

Sophos XGS is stable as long as the capacity is not exceeded, then it becomes slow.

Scalability needs to be improved by increasing the threshold value. The bulk capacity can handle 300 users, if you have more users, it does not work well.

Technical support is okay. They are responsive but limited with knowledge and need to escalate to the upper levels. It takes time to resolve issues.

Positive

The initial setup of the solution was straightforward. It is easy to use and convenient.

The license for Sophos XGS is for three years, paid on a yearly basis. Everything is included with the license; there are no additional fees.

Sophos SGS is a nice solution. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

The solution provides firewall protection.

The solution is easy to use and configure, once you know how to apply the policies.

The customer service response time can be improved.

I am currently using the solution.

The stability is good. I have not had any problems with it.

The scalability of the solution is good.

The customer service response time is slow and could use improvement.

The setup is straightforward if you know how to do iOS.

The cost is around $50 per endpoint, and there is a one-time purchase fee for the firewalls of $2,500, plus services. It is roughly around $4,000.

I am currently evaluating CrowdStrike. I like it better.

I give this solution seven out of ten.

If you are looking for a low-cost solution, cheaper than Cisco I recommend this solution. You should also look at Fortinet.

XGS' most valuable feature is ransomware protection. 

In the next release, XGS should include mobile features like two-factor authorization.

I've been using XGS for seven years.

XGS is stable.

XGS is scalable.

Sophos' technical support has degraded in the last couple of years. They seem to need to ask a lot of questions, even with simple problems, and take a long time to provide solutions.

Neutral

The initial setup is simple.

XGS' price could be lower, though it's moderately priced in the market.

I also evaluated SonicWall and FortiGate.

XGS is a perfect product for small and medium businesses. I would rate it as eight out of ten.

I am a cyber professional. I support customers with this solution. Sophos XGS is primarily a firewall. The product allows my customers to manage their internet access for their employees while protecting their environment from things like malware.

The solution requires one administrator as it does not require much maintenance. It depends on the usage and the environment. For example, in some account configurations, the environment has only four or five rules, other times there are over 100 rules. More rules will require more maintenance. 

The most valuable feature of Sophos XGS is the application control. I also enjoy the dashboard and reporting that it provides to my customers. 

Sophos helps my customers manage applications from accessing the internet, not only websites. We can ensure there is limited access to applications like Facebook. For example, Facebook is not accessible, but Facebook Messenger for chatting is. This prevents posting and sharing. We make restrictions without prevention.

Sophos XGS would benefit from further development in the SD-WAN area. It would be great if they could give technical people access to all the WAN links that we are connecting to, including inside the SD-WAN. 

They should make available or round robin inside the SD-WAN. This would allow us to move to another link if one goes down.

I have been using Sophos XGS for six years.

There have been issues with the stability of this product. Sometimes it requires restarting. We have looked into the client environment and this is not causing the instability. The problem is common.

Sophos XGS is not scalable. It is a hardware appliance and we should migrate the settings if we need to. In order for it to scale, you require additional hardware.

Sophos' technical support is responsive. There are times we need to push them to accelerate the process because there is a delay in replying. Sometimes, the first stage of first-line support does not have enough knowledge.

Overall, I would rate their technical support a three out of five.

Neutral

The initial setup of Sophos XGS is straightforward. I would rate it five out of five for ease of setup.

The cost of Sophos XGS is based on per unit, per appliance, and capacity. The capacity depends on the environment. Based on the size, we choose the model. The model selected dictates the pricing.

When comparing the pricing of Sophos to the competition, I give them a five out of five. It is competitively priced.

I have worked with Fortinet and WatchGuard. Other solutions have better performance and security value than Sophos XGS. 

Sophos has most of the features. If they don't have the features one year, they are added the next. At one point they did not have SGON, but now they do. It is not performing like Fortinet or Watch Guard, they need to do some enhancements. 

Sophos has the upper hand on reporting on the firewall itself. For small to medium-sized businesses Sophos is better than the competition.

If the organization is small or medium-sized I would recommend this solution. I would give it a nine out of 10 in this case. If the company is enterprise level, I would rate the solution a five out of 10.

Overall, I rate the Sophos XGS a seven out of 10.

We are using it as a firewall to protect and control Internet access, as well as control other access like SAP. Some of our employees connect from remote locations, and our server is on-premises. We use this firewall for access control and also for VPN connections.

It's easy to use, and the service is good. If anything goes wrong, their support system is very reliable.

The renewal process for this box is too frequent. We purchased it five years ago, and it's expiring in 2025. So, I feel they expire it too quickly.

In future releases, this solution could have more graphical elements on the dashboard to make it easier to understand. While there are graphics and a good dashboard, there's always room for improvement.

We have been using Sophos XGS for ten years. At that time, it was new. So somebody recommended us to take this. Our service provider recommended it, and that's why we have taken it.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. We have around 300 end users in our organization. 

The customer service and support has been excellent. 

Positive

We have worked with Cisco and Fortinet Firewalls. It's hard to compare.

Installation and understanding are a bit challenging with Cisco, whereas Sophos is easier to install and use.

We have a FortiGate firewall at another location. We recently purchased it.

The initial setup is very, very easy.

The deployment process took me more than two to three hours, including all the checks. I had a backup of the earlier Sophos firewall, so I just restored it and verified everything.

One person for support and checking, so two in total are enough for deployment and maintenance of the solution.

I would definitely advise to use Sophos. Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution as a firewall.

Sophos XGS is okay. It’s excellent for firewall purposes.

For me, the platform is stable. It's very stable. It works when it's configured. Also, when you're checking, the logs, the graph, and the graphs are easy to read.

I can also use it for other purposes. For example, it's got a DSCP from there. It can be a distribution. I can have other functions work there, so I can do a lot more than just the firewall components.

It gets easier and easier to set up.

It works. However, Sophos configurations are a bit complex. It's not very user-friendly. I don't find it user-friendly when it comes to setting up the firewalls.

The user interface for the technical admin can be better. It should be set forward to configure a firewall. if a firewall has complexities. I don't know why they did that. However, you should be able to quickly set up a rule to minimize the mistakes that a security administrator or a firewall administrator can make and configure. If not, that becomes an issue. One mistake on a firewall could result in a bridge.

It should be more straightforward. If you compare it with GFI Carrier Control Firewall, which is very straightforward, you can see why it’s helpful when it's easier.

I’ve used the solution for about three years now.

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn’t crash or freeze. It’s reliable and the performance is good.

The solution is scalable. However, it depends on the model of the physical appliance. There are virtual and physical appliances, so it depends on which one you use. Obviously, there could be a limitation on the number of interfaces you need to use since you may want to have additional services plugged in. Then, the number of ports available may only be two, and yet you actually need to have 10. Maybe you need to buy a module that plugs in; however, there could be a challenge there.

In our organization, we have three to four security administrators.

I've never spoken to technical support directly the way I've been talking to the Fortinet team. I was working with a local partner to get it set up.

In our case, since we were doing it for the first time, we took about a week to complete everything. We were doing a lot of other things and learning as we went. If I had to redo it now, it wouldn't take me a week as I know exactly what I need to do after learning over a period of time. Also, I have backups that allow me to back up and restore, so I just restore the configuration. It’s much more manageable. The first time there’s a learning curve.

We work with a partner and distributor. We are working with the sales party since it was the first time we used them. They offer us professional services.

I found the solution to be expensive. I pay close to $10,000 per year, which I find to be expensive compared to the other similar solution or equivalent solutions.

It's just that one cost, and it's an annual license. As long as my appliance is working okay, I don't need to replace it. However, it's just that. Of course, within that, there are also support services. You might have technical support costs depending on which one of the tiers you pick.

I'm a customer of Sophos.

We’re using the most up-to-date version of the solution. It’s around version 18.

A new user needs to get trained on the appliance to understand how to implement rules and fully appreciate how to work with it. It's not that straightforward. You need to understand what the different areas are. It's complex in the way the rules are set up. My colleagues in the industry have similar comments about Sophos. It’s more complicated than it looks.

I’d rate the solution a seven out of ten, mainly due to the complexity. If I make a mistake, then that firewall is of no use. It needs to be easier to set up so that it provides me or guarantees me that what I want to set up is what I've set up to secure my environment.

Basically, we are using these products for our waste filtering, then application filtering and bandwidth management purpose.

The major benefit is that I can shape my bandwidth, basically. In Bangladesh, we do not have a lot of bandwidth management or bandwidth capacity. We have a limited capacity and we share the many people in this capacity. I can shape my bandwidth using this Sophos file, so everyone gets a minimum level of bandwidth. If the user is higher-end, then getting the lower end and the user has the minimum level or less than 1000 or 500, and they're getting better than that.

Sophos has a feature for user credentials, which means if users are not logging into the capital portal of Sophos, they're not using any internet. We can advertise some products and features using these portals for our university. Basically, I am working at a university, so the university's different features and the different departments are using this portal. If students see this advertisement and then after they log in to the credential in the capital portal and use the internet.

Sophos is good for a mid-level company, not a large-level one. If the user level is very large, Sophos is not capable of handling such a high level of users. It, therefore, needs to improve the devices so that they work in larger organizations and with a large number of users.

When we use the hardware level of the device, the RAM or other storage capacity is fixed. We could not change the memory or other capacity of this device. If we need some improvement in capacity, we get different types of problems. If RAM usage is too high or capacity moves higher, the Sophos device does not work properly.

Sophos has a number of additional features, however, the user graphical interface, the graphical interface when we are using CyberRoam, the user portal, or user interfaces, are so much smarter than Sophos. In Sophos, the user portal is not user-friendly. This needs to change, the UI.

I've worked with the solution for the last four years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. I'd rate the performance at 75%. Some improvements could be made. 

We have 4,000 or 5,000 people that are connected in Sophos.

It is not easily scalable as it has fixed capabilities and that means C2 RAM is fixed. That makes it not easily scalable.

We use the product on a daily basis. 

Sophos' technical support is not good. I have not been getting better support from their technical people. The response time needs to be better.

I am also using the Cisco Firepower model 4110.

The main difference is basically Sophos is not like a Firepower. Sophos we can call by the UTM device management. For security purposes, we are using a Cisco firewall for different types of attacks. For bandwidth management with filtering and other activities, just normal activities, we are using Sophos.

The initial deployment is not complex, however, it's mid-level. You do need some experience. It depends on the device model. If we purchase the higher model, then the price or other investment is also more.

The deployment takes a maximum of one month. We do maintenance on the devices maybe once a year. 

For the deployment process, the partner helped us deploy the devices and three people were working on the deployment.

The initial price is high and we purchased a three-year licensing model. Every three years, after every three years, we need to renew Sophos. Everything is included under the license. 

The pricing is quite low, and we are quite happy with it.

We're a customer and end-user.

We are using the hardware version of the product. It's the latest version. 

I'd rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as a firewall. 

We have multiple clients. The use case is based on their requirements, for example, as a site-to-site VPN or maybe as an FSL VPN for end users to promote the network access of company systems. Apart from that, it is used for web filtering and URL blocking. Apart from that, it's on a regular day-to-day basis used as a firewall.

It covers most areas that are needed.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The solution is scalable. 

It's stable. 

We've had issues with support. If they improved on the support part, that would be great.

They should customers who are facing issues with their product reviews; they found bots in it. If they can do their proper research and use the user analysis and testing, that would greatly help the clients.

The software release has been giving us problems.

Other firewalls provide better reporting. We need admin and activity logs to be populated for the firewall. 

For the Sophos XGS, I've been working with it for the last four years. Overall, for firewalls in general, I've been working with solutions for more than ten years.

The solution is stable. We haven't really had any issues until a bug hits the firewall. 

We are the service provider to the client, so we have a total of 28 people, excluding the team lead and the presale technical support or maybe a presale technical person. They are working directly on Sophos XGS. e tend to deal with enterprise-level customers. We don't have small-scale organizations under our portfolio. This solution is best suited for mid-range companies and larger. 

The solution is pretty scalable. I'd rate it a three out of five in terms of ease of scalability.

Support has been very poor.

Neutral

We have three major products, which we offer to clients. They are Palo Alto, Cisco ACI, and Sophos XGS.

There are many major differences between Sophos and Palo Alto. This product is not comparable to Palo Alto right now. Maybe the basic models of the Palo Alto can be compared with the Sophos XGS firewall, however, not the higher-end ones. Palo Alto is much more advanced. 

The solution is straightforward to set up. It is not overly complex.

How long it takes to deploy depends on how the implementation is requested. It won't take more than one hour if it is a basic implementation like setting up the firewall with ISP connections and all those things. However, if it is a complete setup with implementations, other tests, and all those things, it takes around six to seven hours.

After the installation, we do the software updates periodically along with the model which the client has purchased Apart from that, we also do the maintenance of the various policies and other configurations. We do make changes to the firewalls based on changing industry standards, et cetera.

I'd rate the ease of implementation a four out of five. 

If the customer requests assistance with the initial setup, however, we will provide an engineer to them. They'll come to the implementation site and assist.

I don't take care of the licensing part. There is a separate team.

We are a Sophos Gold partner. 

We have multiple firewalls on multiple OS versions. Basically, we do have two major pieces of software installed in the firewall, which are 1854 MR4 and the latest release, 1801.

There are multiple criteria when making a decision about whether to go with Sophos or maybe another firewall. It depends on the client's requirements as well as their budget. 

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.