KerioControl vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway comparison

GFI and Zyxel are both solutions in the Unified Threat Management (UTM) category. GFI is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.3, while Zyxel is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.0. GFI holds a 3.2% mindshare in UTMU, compared to Zyxel’s 4.0% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of GFI users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Zyxel users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

KerioControl and Zyxel Unified Security Gateway are competing products in the network security solutions category. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway often has the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set that justifies the investment.

Features: KerioControl is known for strong firewall capabilities, easy VPN setup, and effective traffic management. It prioritizes security through constant updates and supports a wide range of protocols. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway provides advanced threat protection, seamless infrastructure integration, and extensive reporting tools. Its feature set is more versatile and comprehensive.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: KerioControl offers a straightforward deployment process with excellent configuration tools and a well-regarded support team. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is slightly more complex to set up but offers detailed documentation and reliable customer service.

Pricing and ROI: KerioControl's attractive pricing model balances cost and value, with strong ROI due to minimal initial costs and affordable ongoing fees. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway has a higher upfront cost, but its advanced features and long-term benefits offer greater ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed KerioControl vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

KerioControl vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

January 2026

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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

Fortinet FortiGate

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Unified Threat Management (UTM) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 31.3%, down from 38.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KerioControl is 3.2%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is 4.0%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Unified Threat Management (UTM) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate	31.3%
KerioControl	3.2%
Zyxel Unified Security Gateway	4.0%
Other	61.5%

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala

Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch

A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service

I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.

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Marcelino Mongcal

Senior Systems Tech/Admin at Samco Software Inc.

Comprehensive Security Features and High Ease of Setup Elevate User Experience

The best features for KerioControl are its proprietary VPN protocol, which does not connect easily with other firewalls unless you enable IPsec. It will only connect to KerioControl. KerioControl is very valuable for business. Key points where KerioControl is valuable include its own anti-spam, intrusion prevention, and antivirus, which is included in the yearly subscription renewals. The VPN capabilities are helpful in managing my remote or distributed workforce, as we create documents and set up a location for clients to download. Clients can download KerioControl's VPN client online, and they just have to log in from the VPN client, which connects easily. I assess the firewall function in filtering both incoming and outgoing network traffic with KerioControl as excellent. Everything is logged, and any intrusion, antivirus, virus, or anything foreign to the system trying to hack in gets logged, and we can easily block those IPs.

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reviewer2399337

Sales and technical consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

User has benefited from stable performance and effective completion of security tasks

I use it mostly for VPN and for some firewall solutions When considering my main use case with VPN, I can say that I got the Zyxel Unified Security Gateway, and it works fine. However, we are thinking about using a different solution based on open source because Zyxel Unified Security Gateway…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The impact of SD-WAN on my network performance is clear, and if we speak about Fortinet Unified SASE, it is effective for me."

"It is easy to install. There is not much complexity involved."

"Fortinet is the best choice for small enterprises because it provides security as per their requirement and comes under their budget, making the pricing very acceptable for medium-level and small-level enterprise customers."

"The most valuable features of the FortiGate firewall include SSL inspection, VPN functionality, and threat intelligence features for preventing threats."

"One of the features I appreciate the most is application control which offers great flexibility."

"The IPS and the application control feature are the most valuable."

"The biggest lesson would be that Fortinet FortiGate provides a high level of security at a good total cost of ownership."

"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."

More Fortinet FortiGate pros

"The flexibility of the system, the capacity to provide the right level of security, and the ability to be integrated into different kinds of infrastructures are the most valuable features."

"One very good thing about the Kerio device is its authentication. I don't have a Windows domain for authentication. Instead, I use the Kerio product because it can separate users by Mac addresses and give them IP addresses based on their usernames, automatically logging them in. This makes for a very simple authentication system."

"I love the VPN that we set up. A few of us have it on our computers so that if we leave, we can still access the stores. And we can work from home if needed. When I sign into that Kerio VPN, it links me like I'm sitting in the store. It puts me in our secure network so that I can sign on to each individual store and I can run numbers... If I have to work from home, it's so much faster than the way we used to do it."

"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."

"In terms of the comprehensiveness of the security features, it does a great job of laying out what it does. It's fairly easy to edit and research. Some of the features were turned on by our IT company and I was able to easily find other features on my own by searching for videos on the internet. I've been able to block certain websites, and content filter, as well as manage some of our bandwidth because we live stream on Sunday. I'm able to dedicate bandwidth for the encoder that goes to the internet. It always has enough bandwidth, no matter how many people are on the network. That's really helpful."

"The firewall and the content filtering options are valuable."

"The most valuable feature is the reliability of VPN capabilities. The VPN has been very reliable and secure. The security has been very good and the VPN connections are reliable in that they stay up. We don't have a lot of problems with downtime and that type of thing."

"Technical support is good. They respond right away."

More KerioControl pros

"The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus."

"The solution can scale well."

"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."

"The Zyxel Unified Security Gateway solution is stable and does its job effectively."

Cons

"The way everything is set up could be easier. Currently, people need a lot of experience and knowledge to administer it and to link it to devices."

"The UI/UX experience can be a little better."

"I would like to see improvements in the IPS/IDS feature to enhance protection against attacks from attackers, including ransomware protection."

"To stay ahead of the competition Fortinet FortiGate IPS needs to think about how to adjust pricing."

"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."

"Previously it had a hiccup around a bug within the authentication VPN due to the firmware, but after updating, it's easier to control."

"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."

"The anti-malware engine could use an upgrade."

More Fortinet FortiGate cons

"The GUI should be changed because it remains the same consistency across versions. However, those who have been using KerioControl for a long time may be accustomed to the current interface. Installing a new version in the same location makes it easy to find, but overall, there are no notable changes between versions."

"One area that confused me a bit when I was building my current network. I use VLANs to have separate functionality on the network, and the appliance I got was the WiFi model, but I discovered that you can't assign WiFi channels to the VLAN. So, you can have WiFi, but its own subnet. You can't run that over the VLAN. Effectively, I can't use the WiFi facility in the appliance and had to purchase a separate web that supports VLANs. In the end, I had to go to GFI support. They confirmed this is just a limited functionality of that device, as it is a low-end device. I don't know if any of their high-end models have a better facility or not."

"They should improve the remote connectivity feature for users."

"I would like to be able to automatically send email from Kerio Control and have it tell me what my external IPs are, because on one of my lines I have a fixed IP address and on the other it is variable. If there were a permanent way for me to figure out, "Okay, my current external VPN and my firm IP is this," it would help. I need to know the IP address to connect with the VPN and, at the moment, one of the lines sometimes changes its IP address without me knowing it. It's a hassle to figure out what it is."

"They should add wireless features."

"The VPN features are the ones that we really like, but we are using a VPN client to be able to use them. We would like to have an SSL implementation for this same feature so we don't need to install anything on the client side. That's a feature I really miss and that should really be embedded in the product. We really would love to use it via a web browser."

"The filtering on the unlicensed version of Kerio Control is inefficient - you have to add each website manually, which isn't feasible."

"KerioControl should add more options in VPN features, such as IPsec VPNs, SSL VPNs, and L2TP VPNs, because KerioControl uses a special VPN for their products."

More KerioControl cons

"Sometimes it reboots when you least expect it, and that's the main issue."

"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved."

"The product has some scalability and data management issues where improvements are required."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is highly competitive when compared to other brands that offer similar functionality."

"The tool's pricing is neither cheap nor expensive. Overall, I find it to be competitive in the market."

"Setup cost may be not so low, as you expect, because it depends on different factors, but TCO for 5 years may pleasantly surprise you."

"When comparing the price of Fortinet FortiGate SWG to other solutions it is expensive. The price could be better."

"It is an inexpensive solution."

"Go for long term pricing negotiated at the time of purchase."

"Fortinet FortiGate gives you most of the features in one license."

"It is not the cheapest one, but its price is very competitive."

More Fortinet FortiGate pricing and cost advice

"It's too expensive. The license, in the last year or so, has gone up by over a £100. We're almost being out-priced by the annual license at the minute."

"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."

"Its price is fair. There are no additional costs."

"Search and compare."

"It gets expensive pretty quickly if you need to purchase license packs."

"My advice is to use your own hardware, and do not use theirs."

"The price of the solution is reasonable. For additional costs, you can add on more features such as antivirus."

"Pricing is good, but the licensing took a lot of time."

More KerioControl pricing and cost advice

"This gateway is pretty cheap."

"The price of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is good compared to other similar products in the market."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Media Company

Comms Service Provider

21%

Computer Software Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

Non Profit

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	357
Midsize Enterprise	133
Large Enterprise	189

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	44
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	3

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?

When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...

See all answers

What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?

From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...

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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 ...

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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 p...

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What needs improvement with KerioControl?

Regarding KerioControl's application awareness and control feature, I have not used it much.

See all answers

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 K...

See all answers

What do you like most about Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?

The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?

I cannot definitively comment on whether Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is an affordable product as I haven't done co...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?

The integration capability is quite challenging. The system is very complicated, and many features are hidden. I'm lo...

See all answers

Comparisons

Sophos Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco Secure Firewall vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 14% of the time

Netgate pfSense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 5% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 4% of the time

OPNsense vs Fortinet FortiGate

Compared 3% of the time

More Fortinet FortiGate Competitors

Netgate pfSense vs KerioControl

Compared 16% of the time

OPNsense vs KerioControl

Compared 15% of the time

Sophos UTM vs KerioControl

Compared 8% of the time

Sophos Firewall vs KerioControl

Compared 6% of the time

Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs KerioControl

Compared 2% of the time

More KerioControl Competitors

Netgate pfSense vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

Compared 12% of the time

Sophos Firewall vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

Compared 11% of the time

OPNsense vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

WatchGuard Firebox vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiOS vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

Compared 2% of the time

More Zyxel Unified Security Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiGate

February 2026

Download Fortinet FortiGate product report

Buyer's Guide

KerioControl

January 2026

Download KerioControl product report

Buyer's Guide

Unified Threat Management (UTM)

February 2026

Download Zyxel Unified Security Gateway product report

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall

No data available

Overview

Fortinet FortiGate is a versatile network security tool offering features like VPN, firewall, web filtering, intrusion prevention, and scalability. It is known for its performance and integration with other Fortinet products, making it a preferred choice for robust cybersecurity.

Fortinet FortiGate stands out as a comprehensive cybersecurity solution with strong performance and ease of configuration. It delivers unified threat management, integrating features such as dynamic routing, SD-WAN support, and centralized management. Despite its strengths, improvements in the web interface's stability, pricing structures, and reporting capabilities are needed. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and automation advancements to enhance the experience further. These enhancements, alongside improvements in bandwidth management and the reduction of licensing costs, are points of interest for users looking to capitalize on FortiGate's extensive capabilities.

What are Fortinet FortiGate's key features?

VPN: Ensures secure remote connections.
Firewall: Protects against unauthorized access.
Web Filtering: Blocks malicious sites and content.
Application Control: Manages and controls applications.
Intrusion Prevention: Detects and prevents vulnerabilities.
SSL Inspection: Enhances security by inspecting encrypted traffic.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Fortinet FortiGate?

Affordability: Offers cost-effective security solutions.
Reliability: Known for consistent and stable performance.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other Fortinet products.
Comprehensive Protection: Provides broad threat protection capabilities.

Fortinet FortiGate is widely implemented across industries as a primary firewall system for securing internet gateways and safeguarding data centers. It supports businesses in achieving SD-WAN integration and enhances cybersecurity by providing essential features like antivirus, web filtering, and application control. Enterprises utilize FortiGate for securing remote connections and ensuring compliance with security standards, making it adaptable for different network sizes and industries.

Fortinet

Kerio Control is a popular security product for small and medium-sized businesses. It is a next-generation firewall that provides unified threat management without complexity. Kerio Control provides advanced anti-virus protection and industry-leading web and content application filtering, and has a secure VPN.

With Kerio Control you can:

Preserve the integrity of your network.
Manage bandwidth to streamline traffic flows.
Improve productivity with filtering capabilities.

Kerio Control Features

Some of Kerio Control’s most valuable features include:

High availability, deployment flexibility, deep packet inspection, advanced routing, usage reporting, quick administering, intrusion detection and prevention (IPS), gateway anti-virus, VPN, web and content application filtering, and centralized administration with MyKerio.

Kerio Control Benefits

Eliminate downtime risks: Because Kerio Control offers high availability and failover protection, you can eliminate the risk and cost of connectivity or threat protection downtime.
Detailed reports: Kerio Control makes it easy to view individual users’ internet activity through detailed reports.
Traffic monitoring: Traffic monitoring allows you to manage bandwidth and makes it possible for you to control access to streaming video and peer-to-peer networks.
Server protection: Using Kerio Control’s advanced networking routing and deep packet inspection, you can protect servers.
Easily create policies: With Kerio Control, you can create both inbound and outbound traffic policies, and can also restrict communication by specific URLs, applications, traffic type, content category, or even time of day.
Snort-based analysis: Kerio Control gives you the ability to add a transparent layer of intrusion prevention with snort-based analysis along with a database of rule and blacklisted IP addresses that is regularly refreshed.
Optionally integrated anti-virus: WIth this feature, you can prevent viruses, Trojans, or spyware from entering your networks.

Reviews from Real Users

Here is some feedback from some of our users who are currently using the solution:

PeerSpot user Brian C., Senior Technology Specialist, VP at Unified Technology Solutions, writes "It is very comprehensive and simple. It has all the active protections. It's updated. We love that you can set how often it is updated so you can work on what is right for you. A large company with a lot of bandwidth can update the virus definitions and security definitions hourly, if they want. A smaller site that's remote, where maybe updating the definitions will eat into the bandwidth, we can schedule those more to go later at night. It's very flexible and works for us in all types of situations. This is great because then we don't have to learn seven different products to be able to work with seven different scenarios."

Andy D., IT Manager at Flare Technologies, praises how easy it is to use and says, "One thing we use quite a lot, as well, is the DHCP Server, because we do a lot of work where all our devices need to have static IP addresses. Rather than going around and configuring every box, we do it all through DHCP reservations. It's easier. We've got a record of it. We can manipulate it if we need to change something or change some hardware. It's all easy. Even guys who are not used to using it can pick it up quite quickly."

GFI

ZyWALL USG Series delivers high-access quality to help businesses satisfy the demand for always-online communications. For internal deployments, the ZyWALL USG Series provides active-passive High-Availability (HA) service to support device or connection failover.

With Device HA Pro service, the ZyWALL USG Series also supports instant failover, so connections are always maintained when a failover event occurs. For external deployments, the ZyWALL USG Series features multi- WAN load balancing/failover and a comprehensive mobile broadband USB modem support list for WAN backup operations. The ZyWALL USG Series also supports IPSec load balancing and failover, providing additional resilience for mission-critical VPN failover with VTI Interface deployments.

ZyWALL USG110/210/310 thoroughly protects networks with industry-leading firewall, Anti-Malware/ Virus, Anti-Spam, Content Filtering, IDP, and Application Patrol functionality. Regulate unauthorized use of Web applications over your network, such as Facebook, Google apps, and Netflix, among others. Zyxel security measures are enhanced with SSL Inspection, blocking threats hidden in SSL-encrypted connections while facilitating deeper policy enforcement. Furthermore, newly improved Content Filtering 2.0 enhances HTTPS Domain Filter, Browser SafeSearch, and Geo IP Blocking for an array of security enhancements to ensure clean Web connections.

Zyxel

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya

Triton Technical, McDonald's

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

KerioControl vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

January 2026

Free Report: KerioControl vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway

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