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Sophos Firewall vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway 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

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
592
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
Sophos Firewall
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
304
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (3rd)
Zyxel Unified Security Gateway
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

PD
IT Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Cloud features enhance security measures and simplify network management
I've dealt with many firewalls, such as SonicWalls, UniFi, pfSense, and Cisco. We found SonicWall very confusing for the average network engineer or network administrator. I don't recommend SonicWall due to its hard-to-find auditing process for exploits. Although they have fewer exploits, when they do occur, they're significant. With Fortinet FortiGate, you can access the whole firewall, with no hidden spots. pfSense is great, however, it requires a lot of manual work and has no Cloud Connect or easy management from an MSP's perspective. Palo Alto is another option that's great, but their price point isn't for everyone, especially for medium and small businesses; a $10,000 investment doesn't necessarily fit into most budgets. UniFi is another product we've started to use more alongside Fortinet FortiGate, as they have almost all features without a license, with advanced rules that are relatively inexpensive compared to Fortinet FortiGate's $1,500 a year. Fortinet FortiGate and UniFi are the two firewalls we primarily deal with. My opinion is that UniFi has better integration and oversight of the environments compared to Fortinet FortiGate.
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.
reviewer2399337 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"When I survey FortiGate products, I see that they have a good performance, especially in terms of next generation firewalls."
"Fortinet FortiGate provides superior protection compared to other firewalls, with high processing capabilities."
"Good performance, stability, and virtual domain ability."
"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate are the integration of SD-WAN capabilities with Fortinet Unified SASE."
"We find the solution to be quite stable; it's very reliable, we don't have to worry about bugs or glitches on the system, and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"The solution is very, very easy to use, the user interface is very nice, the product offers pretty good customization, configuration has been straightforward and simple, the reporting is quite good, the initial setup is straightforward as well, and we've found the pricing to be pretty good."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"The product is very easy to explore. It has a very good layout."
"Sophos offers a centralized system available to everyone, even for their smaller models."
"The solution has a variety of very good, very useful features, the stability is good, technical support is helpful, and the pricing is reasonable."
"Overall, I find that this is a good product."
"We use XGS as a firewall, for web filtering, and network control."
"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."
"Valuable features include: the ease of setting up the VPN connection; the fact they have the cloud management option, so I can manage the firewall on a cloud platform from anywhere I am; the user interface is very user-friendly, so it's very easy for the administrator to make any policy changes."
"The most valuable features are the reporting, dashboards, and graphical user interface, as it gives a good overall picture of what is happening over the network."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus."
"The Zyxel Unified Security Gateway solution is stable and does its job effectively."
"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."
"The cost is very low."
"The solution can scale well."
 

Cons

"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"I think they could improve the monitoring."
"The configuration part was challenging, especially converting configurations from another OEM to FortiGate."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"The major problem with Fortinet is the support. We have often hardware malfunctions and software bugs and the support is slow."
"It is not a stable solution, and improvements can be made to firmware and hardware."
"What could be improved in Sophos XGS is its connectivity with Azure AD. It's best if it could work directly without using any servers locally, or in the data center, and this functionality should be made available in this product."
"The reporting could be better."
"In future releases, this solution could have more graphical elements on the dashboard to make it easier to understand."
"This is not a product that I can recommend to anybody who wants to implement a firewall."
"The technical support could be improved as it is currently not competent and pretty slow."
"We encounter difficulties while navigating through certain features and functionalities of the product."
"It would be beneficial if the platform provided more flexible support for a variety of devices."
"Sometimes it reboots when you least expect it, and that's the main issue."
"The product has some scalability and data management issues where improvements are required."
"I have never seen it in any company that I've worked with before, and I would advise other companies not to buy it."
"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved. The advanced UI allows me to do whatever I want, but this is where the issue of speed exists."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other firewall products, it's a little cheaper in terms of pricing."
"The product pricing is reasonable."
"Its pricing is good. The advantages of Fortinet FortiGate over its competitors include good pricing and meeting our requirements at a lower cost."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Fortinet is competitive price-wise."
"Other firewalls are more expensive than Fortinet FortiGate, such as the Azure firewall."
"We find the most valuable aspect of this solution is the price. It is affordable, and cheaper than other firewalls."
"It's a year based license."
"I would like to see them reduce the price."
"I pay close to $10,000 per year, which I find to be expensive compared to the other similar solution or equivalent solutions."
"There is a license required to use this solution and my customers pay for it annually."
"There is no need to get one edition, just the licensing, as we are talking about a common bundle which encompasses all the features."
"The cost is comparable to other similar solutions."
"I've had schools running different firewalls with subscriptions and different web filters with subscriptions, and I've found that it is less expensive for smaller schools to run the Sophos XG with its unified threat management instead of multiple appliances."
"For our company, the price was reasonable."
"It is very expensive."
"The price of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is good compared to other similar products in the market."
"This gateway is pretty cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
19%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business369
Midsize Enterprise139
Large Enterprise195
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business209
Midsize Enterprise61
Large Enterprise53
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
What is your primary use case for Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
I use it mostly for VPN and for some firewall solutions. When considering my main use case with VPN, I can say that I...
 

Also Known As

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

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Netgate, Sophos and others in Firewalls. Updated: May 2026.
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