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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
45th
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 November 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 5.6%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sophos Firewall5.6%
Smoothwall Firewall0.4%
Other94.0%
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."
"The security of Sophos XG is very good."
"The solution is cost-effective and easy to manage."
"The heartbeat system, the reporting management, and the electoral control that is achieved when the Sophos XGS is integrated with the Sophos endpoint is great."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"Some features are free."
"I recommend Sophos XGS as it is easy, reliable, has good support, and is flexible and stable."
"The application filtering, especially cloud filtering, is valuable."
"The interface is great."
 

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."
"They need to do more quality checks before they release firmware upgrades. Currently, a few Cyberoam firewall customers are facing some issues while upgrading the Cyberoam firmware to Sophos."
"Over the last six months, we have noticed that the hardware is slow, especially the VPN connections."
"They made some changes to the firmware update sometime last year, which moved some of the policies from where they were before. Some of the policies, such as NAS policies, were separated, which made it a bit hard for people to trace the policies they had configured."
"A feature that could be improved in Sophos XGS is the ability to perform internal vulnerability checks."
"The main improvement needed is in the pricing. It is a little higher when compared to competitors like Huawei."
"Sophos XGS changes every two years, so we must update our knowledge. We can only test it with real requirements or problems to find scalability and reliability. We can't find these in normal testing. We can see reviews based on Gartner reports, but sometimes, we really feel problems. It can create many issues, even compatibility problems with fiber modules. Only system integrators or installers find these problems."
"They could work on their SD-WAN solution. I have seen it. It's not that competitive compared to other vendors."
"In the next release, I would like to see improvements made to the policy and simplify the policy-making, as the complexity of it makes it really tough."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Licensing fees are on a yearly basis."
"I live in Bolivia and the price of Sophos XGS is high. However, they have adjusted their price a little over the past while but the price could still be less expensive to be affordable."
"This is a budget-friendly product with reasonable pricing."
"There is a license required to use this solution and my customers pay for it annually."
"The product is expensive."
"Sophos XG can be considered as an averagely-priced tool in the market."
"Once you pay for the Sophos XGS hardware there is no license required. There are additional costs if you want the support. We have purchased support for three years."
"Its price should be better. Initially, the clients have to pay for the appliance. Then, they have to pay for the software that is installed on the appliance. Depending on whether they have a one-year, two-year, or three-year license, they just have to renew the license of the software after it expires. They don't have to renew the appliance license. So, they have to pay for the appliance only once, and after that, they just renew the software license. That's all."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
17%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

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, Cisco, Netgate and others in Firewalls. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.