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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs KerioControl comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KerioControl
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (28th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KerioControl is 3.0%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.0%
KerioControl3.0%
Other94.0%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2772102 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Logging and customizable rules have helped improve threat monitoring and detection
The logging is mainly what I consider one of the best features with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. Being able to log and store it in a file allows you to push it to a centralized repository. The logging and reporting help improve incident response. You should always be logging threats, any sort of misconfiguration, and anything that could be an issue. It's important to at least log and monitor it. The basic rules provide a good baseline in assessing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT's ability in providing real-time analytics for threat detection, but as a professional, you should look to constantly modify that baseline. They provide extensive customizability so you can define your own rules. The customizability allows it to be adaptable in protecting against diverse network threats to the constant change.
Constantnos Achilleos - PeerSpot reviewer
Product manger at Asbis Mediteranean
Leveraging geo-tagging and web filtering for enhanced network security
The solution is used for site-to-site VPN connections and it is valued for its cost efficiency and easy connectivity. It is especially beneficial for multi-site VPNs and is used in about fifteen different components KerioControl has provided a financial benefit as it allows purchasing one license…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Users have access to intelligent security automation as one of the features, which can easily automate your event impact assessment so your IPS policy tuning can be done as well as your network behavior analysis, and you can do real-time contextual awareness with correlation of events created on your applications, user devices, operating systems, or vulnerabilities, with all of this real-time data captured including your apps and port scans."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"The solution can be integrated with some network electors like Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco ISE, and Active Directory to provide the client with authentication certificates."
"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"It has a huge rate of protection. It's has a low level of positives and a huge rate of threat protection. It's easy to deploy and easy to implement. It has an incredible price rate compared to similar solutions."
"The solution’s firewall and intrusion detection features are quite good because you can see exactly who is attacking you and who is getting blocked."
"Kerio Control has saved time for the members of our team who manage security, we've increased the amount of clients that use VPN, and there has been a 50% increase."
"All of the features of Kerio Control are equally good. Most valuable to us are the firewall rules, the intrusion detection system, and IP address features."
"The comprehensiveness of the security features that Kerio Control provides us with is good. Before GFI had it, they would have more updates. The updates have been slower, but I like the things that they keep adding like the ability to block by country. I use pretty much every feature."
"The tool shows what has been blocked externally. It's very good because once installed and correctly set up, it allows you to work from home as if you are in the office, without any errors or issues. It's very simple to use, click to connect or disconnect."
"The top features are ones that we're not using yet but we soon will be because we've just had broadband upgraded in Australia. We've got something called the National Broadband Network, which is forced onto you, so you have to take it when it arrives. We'll be trying the high availability out soon. We tried that with some load balancing, it didn't quite work as we expected, but I think that was more of a configuration thing rather than a product thing."
"I want to have access to my computer from the outside and Kerio Control plays a role because it has a VPN... It is more reliable because it's a smaller group of computers to target for hackers and the like. The VPN works very well. I use it to work remotely very easily and exchange information, both to and from the location where it's deployed, and there have been no problems there."
"Our clients see ROI with Kerio Control, as they are saving bandwidth costs."
 

Cons

"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."
"The implementation could be a bit easier."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT can scale, but if you have too much, you could fill up your log files, which I consider when discussing scalability."
"The cloud can be improved."
"The utopia is to see everything from one dashboard, but sometimes that's not very possible."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that. Whenever I go to the technical community with an issue, they will usually say that it is not there yet, but the technical team are working on it. The issues are not insolvable. I think they should just keep working on the product to make sure that the product can become very stable. The technical support is great. I appreciate that. We have a lot of communities supporting Firepower now, so you can find help for whatever issue you have."
"One of the problems we do have causes problems with the VPN. The software slows the throughput down too much."
"It's too expensive. The license, in the last year or so, has gone up by over £100."
"The only issue that we had is when they changed versions, they removed a security feature and blocked out all the old VPN connections."
"At the moment, our workaround is just to reboot the box every two weeks, which is inconvenient, but if they're going to solve this, then we just have to wait."
"If you put the appliance in Fail-Over mode it will simply FAIL, and will bypass your routing rules."
"There were certain things I didn't know about it, but I've always been able to just contact our IT company."
"I would like it if the interface section had multiple failovers. Although I do have three connections, just in case our physical cables get disconnected, I can only set up one failover as a backup. So, if for some reason our fiber and our AFM went down together, I would have to have it search for our 4G modem. I'd love to have extra backups running."
"After the takeover by GFI, one of the things that Kerio built was MyKerio environment. This has not been very reliable because I get many messages that MyKerio is not functioning. For some reason, there are things that they changed and it is not very reliable at this moment, instead I have to connect to the firewall to see what is happening."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"I don't know the exact amount, but most of the time when I go to a company with a proposition, they will say, "This thing that you are selling is good, but it's expensive. Why don't you propose something like FortiGate, Check Point, or Palo Alto?" Cisco device are expensive compared to other devices."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"I am living in Iran and we cannot buy the product from Kerio because of sanctions."
"KerioControl's pricing is good."
"It's pretty expensive in licensing costs, especially if you use the product longer than one or two years. The licensing costs are still high, which I don't think is reasonable for a product like this."
"Search and compare."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. For additional costs, you can add on more features such as antivirus."
"Its price is fair. There are no additional costs."
"The biggest advice that I could probably give people is when you buy the solution be prepared to either buy the unlimited license or buy more licenses than you think. Each user license gives you one employee and each a user gives you five devices. In the world nowadays where everybody has a cellphone, tablet, desktop, and laptop, that's four devices. You still get one more device per person. That covers your servers and back-ends."
"It is a good fit for SMBs because of its maintainability. When you want to keep your costs low, then Kerio Control is a very good solution. It's not an expensive product that is well integrated. It has a complete set of features within it that make it a very strong product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five. There are some other tools in the market that are more expensive than Cisco. There are no additional c...
What needs improvement with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
I have not had much experience with the community-driven rule set while utilizing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. I don't have experience with recognizing zero-day vulnerabilities, but based on my knowledg...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
Endpoint protection is the main use case. The main aspect involves specifying different rules, and when network traffic hits these rules, it will try to block the traffic or at least log the traffi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for KerioControl?
KerioControl offers good pricing as one license covers all features needed without extra payment. The price for the product is rated as ten out of ten.
What needs improvement with KerioControl?
Regarding KerioControl's application awareness and control feature, I have not used it much.
What is your primary use case for KerioControl?
With KerioControl, we usually use them for site-to-site VPNs for most of our clients. With multiple offices, we use KerioControl as our solution.
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CareCore, City of Biel, Dimension Data, LightEdge, Lone Star College System, National Rugby League, Port Aventura, Smart City Networks, Telecom Italia, The Department of Education in Western Australia
Triton Technical, McDonald's
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. KerioControl and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.