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Hillstone E-Series vs Sophos UTM comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Hillstone E-Series
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (40th), SSL VPN (10th), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (24th)
Sophos UTM
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

TahirMahmood - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Zubair Feeds
Offers good features like URL filtering, IPS, and IDS to users
We received an update for the tool in July. The update was provided for the tool as there was a problem with the firewall, where too much memory was consumed, and the firewall was hanging a lot. When we updated the tool's features, everything became okay. The tool only had some memory-related problems. It took the tool a month to fix the issues.
HR
CEO at iSource GmbH
Integrated security tools have supported critical infrastructure and improved network performance
Regarding Secureworks Taegis VDR Vulnerability Management, I do not have all these shortcuts in my head. Perhaps I have to ask my technicians, but we are in full stress because we have to change this entire firewall equipment, also the entire access points, because of the end of life. We also have the full product in for XDR and extensions. We are also part of the webinars from Sophos. It would be better if there were also some important webinars in German. Everything needs improvement, because also the wireless, also RED box and so on. The handling was much easier on the old equipment than on the new XGS. I think there should also be a little more automatic for SD-WAN routing and so on. Because we have to learn some things from the basic completely new because it is different than Sophos UTM, the XGS. The features that could be improved about Sophos UTM include the new features we have in XGS with a simpler interface. For example, in Sophos UTM, we could define IP hosts and use this IP host. We did not have to insert on every, for example, for wide area networks, we had to put the IP addresses from the other side by hand. In Sophos UTM, we could define it under definitions and then use this IP host where we needed it. In the new XGS, if there is a change in the IP address, we have to do it on all, for example, site-to-site VPN tunnels and so on. We have much more work and it is not so easy because we have to check all the definitions. It is also, for example, some of the male technicians like me, we have a biology handicap. For example, male technicians in Europe also have a red-green problem. So we use these light colors on the interface. In some cases, it is not easy to see the, for example, letters or numbers because of the contrast.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the Hillstone E-Series is its user-friendliness."
"Five out of five ROI."
"If an organization is not looking for a web proxy, it's a very, very good product."
"Very reliable solution with good scalability and straightforward implementation."
"I am impressed with the application filtering feature."
"The most valuable features of the Hillstone E-Series are its hardware capacity, innovation, and the throughput that the hardware can take."
"Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients secure connectivity from a remote location to their offices or their servers."
"With Hillstone, TCO and ROI are very good, it's an easy sale."
"Sophos UTM is very user-friendly and has good integration with other solutions."
"The packet filtering's great. You get out what you put into it. It works great as long as you know your security and configure everything adequately. If you just pop one in and it's not configured, then it's basically wide open. It kind of depends on the admin skill, but it's an excellent product."
"I would recommend UTM over XG because it's easier to manage."
"The technical support by Sophos is amazing, especially when I pay for the enhanced support."
"They are all valuable, but the most valuable is the uplink balancing."
"If you'd like to look into a system which is very robust and hardcore, then select Sophos UTM."
"It gives us the ability to manage our firewalls from the cloud and deploy a unified configuration onto them. Other competitors like Meraki have that ability, but they fail to optimize it in the way that Sophos has."
"Sophos is a unified solution. We have anti-virus protection, firewall rules, knotting, and DACC all in one box."
 

Cons

"The current usage reporting is very basic. I would like to be able to access more granular data."
"The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
"The room for improvement would be the SSL VPN license cost."
"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."
"The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand."
"I would like them to move from the Classic Load Balancer to the Network Load Balancer. This would make it easier to do certain things with Amazon. They are able to do some enhancements with Network Load Balancer that they are unable to do with Classic Load Balancer."
"Initially, there were issues with the wireless network as wireless access points were disappearing from the dashboard after some time."
"For the AWS version, it was atrocious. There is absolutely no support when using AWS."
"It's stable, but the reaction time of the GUI is terrible; however, in my opinion, UTM is more stable than XG."
"If you enable the intrusion prevention option in the firewall any Wordpress deployments on a Plesk server behind the firewall slows down to a crawl, and there is no fix yet."
"Sophos should be more user-friendly, have more dashboards, and an easier implementation."
"The technical support used to be excellent but it's no longer as good as it was and we've had some problems getting solutions to the issues that we're having."
"The application control is really bad. It needs a lot of enhancements. The traffic shaping and bandwidth control, and application control need a lot of work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Hillstone's pricing is economical and neither very high nor very low."
"The licensing model is very complex with many subcategories of licenses you can purchase. They could make it more simplified for customers to understand."
"The cost per year for licensing, and hardware, is approximately $850 for the basic plan."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable. It depends on the model. The product's pricing is around 600 USD. You need to buy a software license to activate the features. You need to pay around 150 USD for that."
"The appliance should be purchased and there is a fee for the license."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace is pretty straightforward. Because were entirely on AWS and don't have anything anywhere else. It made the most sense for us as a one stop shop."
"The prices can be better, they could make it a lot cheaper."
"There was an up-front charge of around $70,000, to purchase the hub and license. Beyond the initial cost, licenses are charged for annually, but they are good value for the service we receive."
"The price is something that one will need to consider."
"The biggest issue with Sophos is the pricing. It's definitely more expensive. As I said, we looked at Webroot, which is a big alternative, and Sophos was almost three times the price of Webroot. That's a pretty big difference."
"The pricing and licensing are both good and better than Sophos's competitors. This is why we went with the product."
"Sometimes more is less, meaning if you want more than three features, take the FullGuard licence."
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Comparison Review

it_user216600 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Consultant with 51-200 employees
Jan 3, 2016
Sophos UTM vs. Fortinet FortiGate
I have used both Sophos and Fortinet products in production and I have found the Sophos UTM appliances (hardware and virtual) to be a better fit most of the time -- with a few caveats which I will touch on below. In both instances, the transition from TMG will be mostly straightforward. The main…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business75
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite good. The most valuable features for me are their web and email filtering. I wou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos UTM?
The pricing for Sophos UTM is reasonable; I do not have an issue with it, though I was considering RED because I have different sites I wanted to connect, and instead of doing site-to-site, the RED...
What needs improvement with Sophos UTM?
Regarding Secureworks Taegis VDR Vulnerability Management, I do not have all these shortcuts in my head. Perhaps I have to ask my technicians, but we are in full stress because we have to change th...
 

Also Known As

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bank of China Macao, Instituto Tecnológico Bolivariano, Ministry of Labor in San Salvador, FEDCO
One Housing Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Hillstone E-Series vs. Sophos UTM and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.