What is our primary use case?
We are using it for firewalling and providing wireless network connectivity for access points. It is a standard product for our infrastructure.
How has it helped my organization?
We can implement it very easily. There are some standards that we can explain to our colleagues. It is easy to maintain the same type of installation at various customer locations. It is easy to pass on the information to our team about how to implement it in the same way.
What is most valuable?
The ease of use is most valuable. You can quickly train someone who hasn't seen a firewall in life. You can get people up to speed, and in a few months, they are able to manage this product very easily. It is a very user-friendly, scalable, and stable product. Its price is also spot-on.
What needs improvement?
Its documentation could be improved. Sometimes, you need to search a bit longer to find what you are looking for.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution since 2014.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a very stable product. Usually, we have several years of uptime on WatchGuard Fireboxes. They can run for very long without any issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is very scalable. We have several customers with several sites, and we can easily extend the network by using Fireboxes at several sites with site-to-site tunnels. If you use the WatchGuard system management software, you can even drag two Fireboxes together, and they automatically make their own tunnel. You don't even have to perform any additional tasks. It is very user-friendly in terms of scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
We get good support. It can take a bit longer only in the case of a specific problem that even they are not aware of, but that's the case with many of their competitors. In general, their support is very good.
How was the initial setup?
It is fairly easy to deploy. You can also deploy it remotely. It provides a very easy and out-of-the-box experience.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It has a very good price. It is not the most expensive one, and it is also not the cheapest one. It is just spot-on in terms of price.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Fortinet and Cisco. We chose WatchGuard because we wanted our engineers to be able to learn and work with the product in a very short amount of time.
When comparing Fortinet and WatchGuard, in the past, Fortinet was before WatchGuard in providing the features for directly resolving DNS names and hostnames and making additions to the rules. A few months later, WatchGuard also implemented these features. Nowadays, it goes both ways.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others to definitely take the WatchGuard Essential Security training course, which is a four-day or three-day course. It really gives a broad overview of the product. You get a good, basic, and overall feeling of the product. You can take it in groups. We normally go with four to five engineers of our company. Most of the time, after that course, you can implement the basic product and even scale it out to many more locations without requiring additional training.
I would rate WatchGuard Firebox a nine out of ten. I am pretty satisfied with this solution.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: reseller