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Smoothwall Firewall vs Sophos Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

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

Smoothwall Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
43rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sophos Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Smoothwall Firewall is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Firewall is 6.2%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sophos Firewall6.2%
Smoothwall Firewall0.4%
Other93.4%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Himanshu-Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at Qualic
Offers good scalability and monitoring features
There is room for improvement in the UI. They can improve it by making it so that everything is in one place, so we don't have to jump around to different pages. For example, if we're creating a rule, we should be able to do everything on the same page. Just a drop-down thing or something. This would improve productivity.
Ashutosh Jha - PeerSpot reviewer
Project engineer at IT Solution india private limited
Robust protection has blocked external threats and provides clear visibility into user activity
Sophos Firewall offers multiple features, including IPS, IDS, ATP, NDR, XOps, web protection, application protection, web server protection, and many more. Out of all those features, I find web protection and application protection to be very helpful and valuable in my daily work. Sophos Firewall has positively impacted my organization by preventing outside threats, allowing me to easily monitor my users, and configuring any rule for any user regarding what they need to use and what I am restricting for the particular user. I can share that it has improved productivity because if anyone could ransom my network, they could demand money to decrypt the files, thus saving us money, time, and providing reliability.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It was easy to initially deploy it."
"My experience with the Sophos technical team has been fantastic."
"The most valuable feature is the central dashboard, as it provides us with good performance."
"Sophos isn't expensive; it's a mid-range solution that's cheap but not too much cheaper than competitors, and it's a good price that meets all our compliance requirements."
"The Multi-Link, or the Multi-Wan, SD-WAN, is extremely valuable to our organization."
"Now, version 18 does some stuff that some of my older firewalls used to out of the box, so that in itself was more of a nicety and makes things a lot easier."
"Spam filtering is what I love most about XGS."
"The most valuable feature is that it scans all of the data for any kind of malware."
"For the past seven years, we haven't had any issues with the hardware or software."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the UI. They can improve it by making it so that everything is in one place, so we don't have to jump around to different pages."
"One drawback I've noticed with Sophos XG is that sometimes, the platform can become unresponsive. I've observed that it occasionally hangs, causing traffic to get stuck. During these times, users cannot access the internet or any services routed through the Sophos Firewall. This issue happens randomly and isn't something we've encountered with other firewalls like FortiGate, which we used in the past."
"The interface should be changed; it should be more user-friendly, and they should also update the policies and statistics because Fortinet is better, but Sophos could grow."
"We also had a negative experience with the sales team of Sophos, which offered a three-year renewal to our customer."
"I do not get notifications regarding ISP downtime."
"The endpoint, however, is expensive."
"Because of the problems that we are having, I cannot recommend this solution to anyone at this time."
"The GUI and support could be better. I think there are other products that we are going to deploy instead of Sophos."
"There have been some issues when upgrading. For some reason, parts of the configuration become unconfigured, I then have to reconfigure it. I should not need to keep reconfiguring it after upgrades."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price is good for the moment."
"Currently, we have a contract for three years. It would be good if its price is reduced before we renew the contract. We will buy the equipment if it is cheaper."
"When you compare with Barracuda, Sophos is quite a bit cheaper."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"Sophos XG is expenses."
"There are additional costs involved apart from the licenses."
"We pay about $150."
"This is a budget-friendly product with reasonable pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
16%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business210
Midsize Enterprise61
Large Enterprise53
 

Questions from the Community

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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 the firewalls change every 5 to 7 years as stated but you really do need to upg...
Which is better - Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls or Sophos XG?
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls have both great features and performance. I like that Palo Alto has regular threat signatures and updates. I also appreciate that I can just import addresses and URL...
What are the main differences in features between Sophos XG and FortiGate 80F?
Hi Arvind P , The Sophos XG firewall has a number of models right from XG86 to XG135w under the 1U Desktop Form Factor. The Sophos XG appliance that offers a direct competition to the Fortigate 80...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Sophos XG, Sophos XGS
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Cisco and others in Firewalls. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.