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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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
592
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Smoothwall Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
42nd
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
3rd
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 June 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 15.1%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Smoothwall Firewall is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Firewall is 7.1%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate15.1%
Sophos Firewall7.1%
Smoothwall Firewall0.4%
Other77.4%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Mageshwaran S - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at airtel
Enables customers to manage security effortlessly with intuitive features and easy integration
In terms of improvements for Fortinet FortiGate, they could offer evaluation licenses, as compared to Meraki, which provides a 90-day evaluation. In Fortinet FortiGate, they do not provide standard evaluation licenses; instead, we need to request them from the OEM through the account manager for POCs. If we want to conduct a demo, we need to work with real hardware. In comparison to Cisco, we have DCloud, which helps with providing demos to customers, but in Meraki, I need to reach out to them, book a lab, and they need to provide all the hardware. I need remote access and L3 engineers to program it; only then can I offer a real-time demo to the customer.
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
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

"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall has IBS/IPS systems"
"Our company uses the solution to prevent traffic that is not supposed to be traveling through our firewalls, and when we find log issues, we easily fine tune the IPS to block that traffic so it cannot penetrate our environment."
"The solution is pretty expensive, but it provides great value to our organization."
"With Fortigate, I find fewer attacks and the console easily alerts me about possible attacks so I can prevent the malware attacks."
"The product is highly stable."
"The product is very user-friendly, it is quite scalable, I love the interface, the power is great, and I have a limited embedded team in IT with one man on the team for 1,000 users who can manage all the infrastructure due to the fact that the console is very easy, and the people are very happy with the results pertaining to that interface."
"We replaced Sophos with FortiGate and found it better than the Sophos product, with better control, insights, and prevention from crypto malware and other threats."
"The solution offers very easy usability, the product can scale well, the solution is extremely reliable, the pricing and licensing models are pretty good, and the user interface, both the web and CLI versions, are very good."
"It was easy to initially deploy it."
"The interface is great and easy to understand, and the language presented on various features and the in-built help is very intuitive so if you have a problem you can figure it out there and then, resulting in less probability that we'll call tech support."
"The most valuable features are its protection capabilities like threat prevention, malware security, web protection, and web security."
"Setup was straightforward. One person is enough for deployment."
"The product is very easy to explore. It has a very good layout."
"I have found configuring the ports to be easier in Sophos XG compared to the other devices."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos XG is its routing and network routing capabilities."
"The application filtering, especially cloud filtering, is valuable."
"The dashboard is customizable as well. It gives you the feature of including what you need to see as soon as you open the dashboard and to remove the non-necessary stuff, which varies from one organization to the next and from one IT manager to the next. And it has a wide variety of reports as well, template and customizable reports."
 

Cons

"Customer service is poor."
"The firmware updates are sometimes not stable. The stability issues can vary, sometimes happening once a month or quarterly. New firmware updates can occasionally introduce bugs, causing some policies to fail. We then have to raise a ticket, and Fortinet usually provides a fix within a few days."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"Deploying FortiGate is hard."
"We'd like to have multi-factor authentication via fiber."
"Its web interface needs to be more stable, and more functional, through the variety of browsers."
"There are some issues with security features and aspects like logs not being up to the mark."
"They can probably improve the reporting feature. Reporting and report alerting are the main key features of this solution. They can always find ways to improve these."
"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."
"The VPN capability needs some improvement in Sophos XGS."
"However, as far as infrastructure is concerned, if I have to apply this as a device in my data center or at any critical point, this device fails to perform."
"The interface could be improved by simplifying it and making it much smarter."
"The user interface has improved significantly over the past few years, and having a more competitive price model could make it a preferable choice for customers."
"The support service level agreement in regard to the amount of time needed to upgrade things is too low. It should be higher."
"I would like to have a more efficient login process."
"Some of my friends and colleagues have had unfavorable experiences with the tech support taking too long to close their ticket."
"These applications are really a nightmare; once they are on the network and not detected, or the appliance is not really successful in capturing them and unblocking them, the bandwidth gets wasted all the time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"By default, they give SD-WAN along with the firewall. They don't have separate licensing for the SD-WAN functionality. However, they have security licenses that are sold separately on a subscription basis. Customers can consume these security features to protect their users from internet traffic."
"This is not a cheap solution but it isn't expensive, either. It's a good solution for the right price."
"Although the solution's pricing is high, compared with other products, it may be cheap."
"We are on an annual license to use Fortinet FortiGate."
"FortiGate's pricing falls within the mid-range when compared to other leading firewall solutions."
"It has a competitive price."
"No comment."
"The product is expensive. I rate its pricing a six out of ten."
Information not available
"Because we're in education, Sophos gives us a very competitive price for it."
"There is a license required for this solution that is priced well and all the features are included."
"The price of Sophos is reasonable. It's not too expensive — I think it's worth it."
"We have a three-year license."
"Sophos XG is not expensive for a firewall, especially when you compare it with Check Point."
"There is a license required to use this solution and my customers pay for it annually."
"The price can be a bit steep but for the number of features, it is worth it."
"My customers pay a license for one or three years to use Sophos XG."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
16%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business370
Midsize Enterprise138
Large Enterprise195
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business209
Midsize Enterprise61
Large Enterprise53
 

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...
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...
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 ...
Ask a question
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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 si...
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 Fact...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos XG?
The pricing is a little higher compared to Chinese products like Huawei. For those on a limited budget, I sometimes p...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
Sophos XG, Sophos XGS
 

Overview

 

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
Information Not Available
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Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Sophos and others in Firewalls. Updated: May 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.