SonicWall Netextender Reviews

Getting to local resources on a customer's network is my main use case with SonicWall Netextender or SonicWall SSL-VPN.

As a managed service provider, all my customers have SonicWalls and I get into their networks via SSL VPN to get to their resources locally.

Easy to use is one of the best features with this product. It's an SSL client that allows you to keep a history of all your connections. It makes it easier to bookmark things and is very secure. It gives you a lot of information on the client itself about routing, security, connectivity, and what you have access to. The client is very detailed.

The SSL-VPN encryption has been fantastic for my organization's data confidentiality and integrity. We've done extensive testing with third-party cybersecurity testing while connected and it has passed with flying colors.

SonicWall Netextender has not helped with compliance, as it is not applicable for what I'm doing.

I've put several feature requests in over the years and they've implemented them all, so it currently encapsulates everything I need. There's nothing I can think of that would make it better at this point.

I have been dealing with SonicWall Netextender forever.

When buying the appliance itself, there is one downside that isn't exclusive to SonicWall. When you apply all the security settings, many people have one gig connections for internet ISP. If you're bringing in a one gig connection, you have to have a more robust SonicWall to handle that throughput with all your security settings turned on. It gets pretty pricey upfront if you're bringing in a one gig connection. If the customer starts with a two, three, four, or 500 meg connection and has a small unit, they have to replace the whole box when upgrading to a gig, so scalability there is atrocious. However, this issue exists with pretty much any appliance.

The product is great and the manufacturer support is bar none compared to all the other providers. The main differences between other brands such as Cisco and SonicWall are that the big companies make it very difficult to do business with them. SonicWall makes it very easy.

I would rate their customer service or technical support as exceptional.

Positive

I've been a SonicWall user since the nineties. I used a different solution before SonicWall for SSL-VPN. I've had different customers experiment with Merakis, Ciscos, Fortinets, and various other clients, but my choice is SonicWall.

My initial setup can be completed within seven minutes, making it straightforward.

The pricing for my experience with the setup cost and licensing of SonicWall Netextender is fair. The Netextender itself has no cost. It's the SSL licensing that is attached to the SonicWall.

It uses concurrent SSL licenses sitting on the SonicWall that allows you to connect Netextender. By default, the firewalls come with two licenses. If you need more than two concurrent connections, then you have to buy additional singles or five-packs to connect more people simultaneously.

I am still dealing with SonicWall every day.

I do not have experience with SonicWall Network Security Virtual. I am a physical firewall specialist, focusing on VPNs, SSL, and security services on those appliances. I don't deal with switches or Wi-Fi.

I work more with IPsec and SSL, not Global. I do not have experience with SonicWall NSSP or Global VPN Connect.

I integrate SonicWall Netextender with SonicWall firewalls. I configure SSL on the firewall and then Netextender is the Mac or Windows client that connects securely to those appliance firewalls.

I would assess Netextender's multi-OS compatibility as very helpful because we deal with Mac and PC. I can even access it on iOS or Android simultaneously.

I use the comprehensive logging when necessary. The typical logging and reporting features I have used are very detailed. When there's a problem, I activate logging and can pinpoint and troubleshoot issues within moments.

Review Rating: 10/10

The use cases I had for the SonicWall Netextender were mainly to allow workers to work from home or at remote locations. Most of the time, it was for hybrid work and similar situations.

We implemented SonicWall Netextender across different industries. We had insurance providers, healthcare providers, and school systems where the administrators would use it. Those were the major implementations.

The impact of SonicWall Netextender's comprehensive logging capabilities on my organization's ability to meet compliance and auditing requirements was significant. Being able to thoroughly dig through the logs and audit them as needed was really helpful, especially when it came to compliance.

The SonicWall Netextender impacted my organization positively because it made us more compliant since we had to follow those standards, and we were able to easily look at those logs and reports as needed, especially if an end user requested it.

The best features of the SonicWall Netextender were its ease of use. It was really easy to set up and then demonstrate to end users even if they weren't tech savvy. It was simple to educate them on how to use it, and they could use it consistently after that.

We were utilizing the advanced authentication support feature for two-factor authentication. It improved over time, and we used it to implement multifactor authentication for users.

The advanced authentication support feature helped my organization ensure secure access for authorized users significantly because that's almost an industry standard nowadays. When using any kind of SonicWall Netextender or VPN software, you want to ensure it has two-factor authentication.

I cannot think of specific areas that could be improved with the SonicWall Netextender. The main focus should be on continuous improvements to address any CVEs or vulnerabilities to ensure they're handled as quickly as possible.

The last time that I used SonicWall was approximately three months ago.

The SonicWall Netextender is definitely stable.

In my opinion, the SonicWall Netextender is very scalable. It's really easy to add licenses to it. You can add them on the fly without having to reboot anything. If the end user needs more concurrent users, it's really easy to add those.

I would evaluate SonicWall's customer service and technical support as pretty good. We usually get through to them pretty quickly and they're helpful. I'd rate them a seven out of ten. Sometimes you can get bounced around through the departments until you find the right one. Sometimes if you don't have the most current support contract or your license is out of date, they won't even talk to you. But if you call right back, you might get another representative that will at least give you some useful information. They could improve in that aspect.

Positive

I still have experience with SonicWall in this new role, but we don't use it here. Not by choice - I probably would switch them over if I could, but we use majority of Untangle and Ubiquiti products.

Overall, I would say the initial setup for the SonicWall Netextender, almost all VPNs are a little complex, but SonicWall's are pretty straightforward compared to most. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We did deployments and setup for the SonicWall Netextender in house. Really only two of us set it up - myself and another person. Then I trained some other technicians on it, and they went and set it up for other clients.

I would be willing to provide a review for Untangle or Ubiquiti. I am more familiar with Ubiquiti than Untangle.

I rate SonicWall Netextender a 9 out of 10. My most recent experience with the SonicWall Netextender was four or five months ago.

We implemented split tunneling capabilities with one customer. This was beneficial as it prevented routing all traffic through the VPN, allowing only business traffic to be routed.

We are the system integrators. We don't SonicWall ourselves, but we are responsible for the implementation to the end customer and provide three years of support.

It can be used by users who work outside of the office, wherever they are in the world. It is part of the SonicWall VPN, and SSL-VPN is configured to the particular application. Netextender is a SonicWall application, and the VPN is also proprietary to SonicWall.

It is very good because it's easy to use, and customers can easily understand it. It was very handy to use. It is a simple application and very easy to use. There were no challenges regarding this particular application.

It can support multifactor authentication. Also, it is a very basic application. We can connect with just the username, password, and server address. Another thing is that we can use a custom port for the VPN.

In the past, customers wanted an application that could run directly upon starting the PC, automatically connecting to the firewall. We were not able to do it in NetExtender. This was something customers wanted, but we couldn't provide due to NetExtender's limitations. I feel NetExtender might have rolled out this feature.

In future releases, introductions of AI features would be really helpful. For example, we faced a situation where a customer wanted to allow Office 365 access without any kind of internet, just through the local internet. Office 365 has multiple dynamic IPs and URLs that can be updated daily, making it difficult to allow. 

If there were an AI-based solution that could bring those URLs and new IP addresses to the firewall and add them to the rule, that would be very helpful. That is just one scenario; there are multiple things AI could help with.

We have been implementing it for about six to seven years now. 

It is stable. But sometimes, we face issues with some Windows versions. For example, some users are still using Windows 7, which is expired and no longer supported by Microsoft. In that case, we cannot install and run NetExtender properly on that system.

It supports scalability features. It is easy to scale. 

It is very satisfactory. They are always available. When we call, they are available within 10 to 15 minutes.

Positive

Currently, I work with Check Point. But it is a new start for me. For the past two months, I've been working with the product and trying to gain knowledge about it.

The functionality and features are also different, not just the price.

One thing I found with SonicWall is that when customers require configurations regarding user-based authentication URLs, and if they want to bind bandwidth to a particular username or do routing on a user basis, it is not possible with SonicWall.

It is very easy to install. You just need to click next-next-next, and it will be installed like any other application.

It is compatible with various other systems. No issues. 

Maintenance is not required for the application itself. Once installed, it will continue to run. However, we recommend users update the application when any updates are available.

It is cost-saving because it is comparatively cheaper. Also, if we buy it once, it will last for five to seven years because they come with the latest generation. If you buy it once, I'm sure it will last for the next seven to eight years because the hardware is capable of that.

Pricing is a simple thing. We have the key, and we need to enter it in the SonicWall official portal. That's all.

Compared to others, it is cheaper. When we compare it with Palo Alto, Check Point, or Fortinet, it is a little cheaper.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

The solution is used for remote connection for workers.

The tool was a huge benefit during COVID-19 when everyone had to work from home. We had a little jump in front of most businesses because we had Netextender set up, and it allowed most of our workers to continue doing business as usual whenever they had to work from home.

The product has two-factor authentication. It is pretty easy to use. We can connect it to our domain. We can use the same credentials as Active Directory with Netextender. It is a lot more secure.

The UI could be a little better. It's not too bad, but it could be improved.

I have been using the solution for more than five years.

The product is pretty stable. From an IT standpoint, we must ensure our firmware is constantly updated. Usually, they'll let us know pretty fast if there's any vulnerability or if we need to get on the firmware updates. I haven’t had any issues with outages or anything like that.

The tool is pretty scalable. All we have to do is buy more licenses. If a business needs 10 to 15 more users, they can buy a pack of licenses, type the authentication code in, and are good to go.

I rate the technical support a seven or eight out of ten. Sometimes, we get people who don't fully understand the product, so they transfer us around a couple of times. Since we are in IT and cybersecurity, we don't have to call as much as most people do. I wouldn't be able to tell for sure how good they are.

Neutral

We might have used other solutions before, but SonicWall is more stable and easy to use

The initial setup is pretty easy.

The solution has a pretty good price.

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

My use case is around enterprise private access. And as a VPN solution.

The solution is stable. The version releases are also good, making it a pretty stable product. The feature set is also pretty good.

There is room for improvement in terms of some functionality provisioned. Basically, they can provide some additional functions related to SaaS and other aspects. SonicWall is not concentrating on those particular newer solutions. SonicWall was good earlier and went through an acquisition, but the newer generation solution is not receiving adequate focus.

I have been using this solution for five years now. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is not so efficient in scalability. There are 4,000 end users using this solution in our company. 

The customer service and support are good. They do take some time when they have to go back to the development team. Otherwise, they are good. 

Neutral

Our company used Pulse Secure. Pulse Secure was getting outdated, and we were looking for an alternative option, and then this turned out to be an improvement towards green in most of the POCs we did at first.

My company opted for this solution because it can individually perform. Basically, we don't require load balancers and all those additional feature sets or additional devices that might be required. The solution can handle the certificate, DNS queries, and all that stuff individually. 

And the other reason might be the cost. The solution's pricing is pretty competitive compared to other vendors here.

The complexity of the initial setup is average. 

The solution is cheap itself, not too costly.

I would not recommend too much on it because of the changing zero trust and all that particular stuff. This solution is not up to the mark to provide a complete whole solution. But if you are looking for only a weekend solution, then it is really good.

I would rate around six out of ten based on the overall features set and usability. Basically, the major reason to go up is the solution's stability. It doesn't have many vulnerabilities, and the feature sets as well. It can perform with high stability individually without many more dependencies and other products to support it. 

But the only concern I do have is with the zero trust, and the solution is not coping up with the newer technologies as much as it needs to do on that particular factor.

I use the solution to access the Tally server and other internal application servers.

The solution provides high availability. It provides enterprise services.

The product does not work well. A product that doesn’t work is not useful for the organization. SonicWall Netextender is not a good tool.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The scalability must be improved. We have around two to three people using the solution in our organization.

Initially, we faced multiple challenges with support. The support personnel do not respond on the web portal. They only respond if we connect with them through phone calls. The technical support team cannot identify the root cause of the problems.

Neutral

The deployment is very easy. The product can be deployed within a day. One person can deploy the tool.

We pay a yearly license fee for the solution. We have to pay for OEM support.

Depending on how much we will have to pay for high availability, we might replace the solution with Sophos or Fortinet. There is a 90% chance that we will retain SonicWall. The vendor must conduct more R&D on the tool and find the root causes of its issues. It gets stuck sometimes. They must find out whether the issue is on the user’s end. They also must find out why certain applications do not work with it. Overall, I rate the solution one out of ten.

Our primary use case is client-to-site VPN. We are customers of SonicWall. 

The best feature is that employees can connect to our LAN, and have access to our network from home. 

The solution takes more bandwidth these days and it would be helpful if that was reduced. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable, we had over 300 users during the peak of Covid when everyone was working from home. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

SonicWall has a one-time license fee, it's a moderate cost.

We went with NetExtender because we use SonicWall firewall, it was a practical option. I recommend this solution and rate it eight out of 10. 

We used the product as a VPN for remote users.  We are a small office with a single server (HP Proliant 360p) environment running Windows Server 2019 and previously employed the use of a SonicWall TZ500 as our firewall.  

We had, at most, three remote users and six office users connecting at any given point in  time. NetExtender was the VPN solution provided by SonicWall. The setup for Net Extender was tempermental (it had issues connecting to LDAP for authentication) and the overall experience was a nightmare. We ended up switching to another provider for our firewall and VPN. 

NetExtender did nothing to improve my organization - in fact, it was quite the opposite. Users constantly complained of lag and unbearable sluggishness (with a max speed of 10-30kbps) through the VPN, even though we have relatively high bandwidth for a small office (400mbps). With a total of about ten users, only three would ever need to access the network through NetExtender. 

The initial setup was difficult with support never able to provide a decent solution.  

NetExtender was extremely slow even with low network congestion and high bandwidth.  

Luckily, we switched to a different provider just before the pandemic began.

I found nothing of value in this solution. In fact, it did quite the opposite.  Productivity for my remote workers went up dramatically once we switched providers. 

It has been a known point of frustration for many IT professionals using SonicWall devices for years on the discussion boards and with support and they won't fix it.  

It is rather disappointing as we had been using SonicWall devices for almost 15 years. We had just upgraded to a TZ500 less than a year before we had to start preparing for the pandemic. What should have been an easily managed solution proved to be quite the dud.

The ease of setup needs improvement and they need to fix lag/connection issues. They need to rewrite the software to make it a usable product. There is no reason this product should be this slow.  

Technical support and software engineers need to listen to people who have been raising the issue instead of redirecting the blame to ISPs, traffic, and literally anything else other than their product. 

They should improve technical support and train technicians on how to listen to the client and troubleshoot issues. Most of my calls with technical support ended with the techician troubleshooting an issue and realizing 45 minutes to an hour later that couldn't be the issue after I had repeatedly told them the steps I had already taken.

We used NetExtender for approximately two years.

NetExtender was the straw that broke the camel's back between my company and SonicWall.  

NetExtender has issues even with a minimal amount of users. I would not call it scalable.

The lack of knowledge and failure to listen led to dramatically increased call time. Not much ever got resolved.

Negative

We did not previously use a different solution.

It should have been straightforward, but ended up being extremely frustrating.

We handled the setup in-house.

As NetExtender is provided as a free solution for companies using SonicWall devices; there is no ROI to consider. However, considering that NetExtender is almost impossible to use due to connectivity issues, I would say there is a negative ROI.

The pricing and licensing are on par with other providers.

We evaluated other brands but chose to stick with SonicWall due to the relative ease of setup and a previous relationship.

We primarily use the solution for file transfer due to the fact that our exchange is in the cloud. We don't need it for our Outlook, however, we do have large files, being a construction company. We set it up at job sites and wherever anybody needs it remotely, it comes back in securely and we don't have that many latency issues We're doing very good with it.

The security on offer is excellent. 

There's not much latency with it. With WatchGuard, for example, we did have latency sometimes.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The product is stable.

From my experience with using it, we do have problems sometimes with the credentialing-saving parts of it.

It resets sometimes, however, it still saves the ISP and the tunnel information and the port and everything. That's okay, for the most part. We just have to type our names in.

Likely, the average user would have trouble deploying the solution, if they don't have a bit of IT experience. 

The Netextender application itself doesn't really look pretty, however, we can still use it. We don't care what it looks like. That said, if they did a cosmetic update, that would be fine. They don't have to. It wouldn't affect the usability. 

We've been using the solution for two and a half years at this point.

We very rarely had times where, at the server or the firewall level, it'll disconnect, and we need to reboot. This has been the case for two and a half years. It has maybe happened to me twice. It's extremely rare that there's a problem where they have to go and reset something. Usually, it's just rebooting the computer, clearing whatever it was. For the most part, the solution is very stable. 

I'm not sure about the ability to scale this solution. I haven't tried to scale it. We've only got 12 users using it. I know it works and it's cost-effective for us at this size. I imagine it could go up quite high, however, from personal experience, I really don't know.

I don't deal directly with their technical support.

We did use WatchGuard, however, we found we had latency issues with it in the past.

The implementation process is pretty straightforward. I have had to add it without the IT company telling me what to do and I've been able to do it.

I know our average user probably wouldn't be able to handle it, however, that's due to the fact that they're not first in the applications, they're just building buildings and using the computers as support.

I can't speak to its exact pricing as it comes bundled together with our firewall. Right now, we have one firewall solution, and that costs us less than $1,000. That covers all the support, the total support on it, the VPNs, the firewall setup, and updating.

We're just a customer and an end-user.

We're using the most recent version of the solution. We've gone through a couple of versions or updates. They take care of the updates, however, we do stay current.

Overall, it's a really good product. I'd rate it at a nine out of ten. It would be a perfect ten out of ten if it offered better UI.

I do a fair bit with the virtualized SSL VPN appliances to keep the VPN termination off of the firewall because it's a heavy load on the firewall. It also allows for better integration with so many customers being on the Microsoft 365 portal.

We can't do SAML integration/authentication on VPN clients that are loaded on the firewalls, but we can do that when we put them on VPN-specific appliances.

When we started to change from IPsec-type clients that were predominantly built right into the firewalls to this approach or deployment style for SSL VPN, the amount of time that our techs spent helping people with VPN issues was probably cut by more than half. It's a model that's easier to support. We have fewer headaches than we used to have when more of the clients were built into the firewalls.

The most valuable feature for the Netextender is the ease with which we can integrate it with SAML. This means that rather than needing to deploy other things like Duo, for example, for two-factor authentication and rather than needing to maintain and support server infrastructure for radius services, we can just integrate it with the Microsoft identity management that is already part and parcel with moving into exchange online.

It is stable and scalable.

It is also easy to install.

If we could do licensed pooling across multiple devices, it would make it easier to build more resilience into the solution in terms of multiple internet providers.

Right now, you have to load each license on to an appliance. You can't pool across multiple appliances. So, you end up having to do a lot of administrative work to recover if an internet provider goes down, and you cannot leverage it as easily into a DR solution.

I've been dealing with SonicWall Netextender in the current format for about five years.

The deployment model varies. Sometimes, the customers still have a server room, and sometimes, they do hosting with us. Increasingly, we're also starting to see these SSL VPN appliances being deployed in Azure.

It is a stable product, especially because more people have been working from home and have better internet providers.

We have had no problems with scalability within our customer base. Scalability becomes more of a question when you are dealing with accounts with 10,000 seats.

Our network engineers are very happy with SonicWall technical support.

The appliance is easy to set up, and it's become second nature for our temporary staff.

Cost wise, it would be a few hundred dollars for the base appliance with the first five clients. Then from there, your cost per seat depends on how many you're getting. It's a one-time cost, and then you have a few hundred dollars a year for the maintenance contract once you get the one-time seat costs out of the way.

Until such time as people start using web application proxies for everything, right from cloud services, SonicWall Netextender is the way to go. It will reduce your support costs and the amount of headaches, and it will allow you better integration with identity management coming from the cloud services and portals.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate this solution at nine.