SonicWall TZ Reviews

I am working on SonicWall TZ, Sophos, and FortiGate.

The advanced gateway security features such as web filter, application control filter, IPS, ideas, gateway antivirus, anti-spyware, and botnet filter are valuable. The integrated VPN provides SSL VPN as well as IPsec global VPN and IPsec client. These features have been most effective in enhancing network security.

The VPN license should be improved by providing more free SSL VPN licenses.

I have been working with SonicWall TZ for ten years.

The price is normal. It is a nominal cost for an SMB TZ used for SMB businesses. However, more licenses are required to purchase the perpetual license for SSL VPN and Global VPN. Only one SSL VPN and five IPsec VPN clients are free for the TZ series. The perpetual license comes as a bundle, which makes it less expensive than buying a single license.

I am a partner and reseller, selling these products. I rate SonicWall TZ nine out of ten. The product rating is 9.

Currently, I am using SonicWall TZ to connect our branches to the head office. We use it as a site-to-site VPN.

The primary benefit we have found with SonicWall TZ is its cost-effectiveness compared to other products like Palo Alto, which are more expensive.

One valuable feature of SonicWall TZ is the content filtering. Additionally, advanced features like real-time deep memory inspection are available in the head office's 2600 series.

The logs need improvement. SonicWall TZ should include a hard disk to keep log files for at least one week or maybe one month. This feature might be available in greater series but not in the basic product.

I have been working with SonicWall TZ for almost six months.

Stability is very good, even though the firewall has not been restarted for almost one month.

I would rate the scalability of SonicWall TZ a ten out of ten.

Technical support's response is delayed due to our process. We need to go through our reseller, who then contacts the local distributor, causing delays.

Positive

Previously, I used WatchGuard Firebox in my previous office.

The initial setup of SonicWall TZ is complex.

We get initial support from our local partner for the setup. Our team does basic configurations when needed.

SonicWall TZ is priced average compared to other products. We usually compare prices from different local suppliers to get the best deal.

The main competitor I considered was Fortinet.

It's recommended that their logging feature be improved by adding an in-built hard disk to store logs.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

On-premises

We use the tool for filtering and log management.

The product’s filtering and URL-blocking features are valuable. SD-WAN and VPN are also valuable features.

The solution must provide more ports.

I have been using the solution for six months.

I rate the tool’s stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a ten out of ten. We have around 100 users. We use the tool daily.

We used Sophos before. We switched to SonicWall TZ because it provides high availability.

I rate the ease of setup a ten out of ten. Setting up the users and accounts according to the groups and categories takes a few hours. The whole setup requires a few days.

We deploy the solution in-house. We need three people to deploy the tool. We need one knowledgeable person who has mastered firewalls to maintain the product.

The product is worth the money.

The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap. I rate the pricing a six out of ten.

We set up new environments and implemented firewall solutions in our organization. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

On-premises

We primarily use the solution as a network security VPN. It's to help with connectivity.

It's helped with connectivity, reporting, and analysis. 

The network security is great. The detection of malware is great, and it is very good at handling suspicious items via filtering.

We have access to in-depth reporting. 

They're up to the mark and advanced in the market.

The solution, on a regular basis, has continuously added improvements to the product itself. 

We have been happy with the level of integration.

The setup is very straightforward. 

It has a very nice user interface that is quite easy. 

I have no notes for feature improvement. 

The monitoring could be improved. 

Pricing could be lowered slightly.

I've used the solution for four or five years. 

The solution is stable. I'd rate it nine out of ten. That said, there are a few loopholes when it comes to monitoring and maintenance.

I have not handled any scaling tasks. We don't have scalability requirements. We have around 150 users on the solution right now. 

I've always had a good response from technical support. They've always provided helpful solutions. 

I've worked with other solutions, including Sophos and Fortigate. I'm more comfortable with this solution than I am with others. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

I was not involved in the initial deployment process. 

We have all of the services we need. However, I am in the process of centralizing all of the remote locations. While it is on-premises now, we are working on getting an enterprise platform on the cloud.

We have one administrator that can handle any maintenance. It does not really require any constant management.  

I can renew products every two years, and licensing is flexible. Considering what you get, the product is not expensive, however, it is a moderate price. We'd like to have it a bit less expensive. 

We are a construction consulting company.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd recommend the solution to others. It has a lot of great features. The support is also very reliable. It's a one-stop solution for all requirements related to network security.

On-premises

We use the solution for work filtering and application control.

The solution has helped streamline our internet usage. Unnecessary sites are blocked. The solution has increased the productivity of the employees, and VPN connections have been added for security measures.

Access restriction and IP whitelisting are the most valuable features.

The technical support has room for improvement. We have had some issues that have not been resolved.

SonicWall TZ can increase the number of built-in VPN connections. I would like to have 30 VPN connections in the next release.

I have been using the solution for one year.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. 

We have 150 people using the solution.

The technical support was not able to resolve some of my issues.

The initial setup for a new user is a bit confusing. I had previous experience with the solution so I was able to complete the setup easily.

The deployment steps were configuring the interfaces, load balancing, policies, access policies, creating groups, and providing the necessary access policies to each group. The deployment took around three days.

The implementation was completed in-house with some support from the SonicWall team.

I give the price an eight out of ten.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

The maintenance is not difficult. I take care of the maintenance myself.

I recommend the solution to others.

On-premises

SonicWall is our primary internet firewall.

We like the unified threat management for defense-in-depth. We can terminate our site-to-site and remote access VPNs with it.

I would like SonicWall to act as a DNS server to host DNS zones. Our small business clients sometimes have a single DNS server on-premise. If that's the case, we're out of luck. It would be great if we could host DNS on the SonicWall, even as a secondary DNS.

We've been working with SonicWall products since 2007.

SonicWall has been pretty reliable.

I rate SonicWall six out of 10 for scalability. I'd like to have cloud management at no additional cost. Unfortunately, leveraging SonicWall's cloud management capabilities is cost-prohibitive, so we don't use it. They should have a reasonable subscription or offer it to us at no cost as an MSP. The size of our client companies varies quite a bit, but they have devices to scale for various sizes, so it's a non-issue. You buy the appropriate device. 

I rate SonicWall support six out of 10. The tech support could be better. There's definitely a language barrier when dealing with tech support out of India, so it's not ideal.

Neutral

I rate SonicWall nine out of 10 for ease of setup. The deployment time depends on the complexity of the environment. 

You need a network firewall, so it's not a question of ROI. You need air. You need electricity. You need the firewall.

You have to pay additional fees to leverage their cloud management capabilities. That's unaffordable and limits scalability. There are also optional packages and various levels of support or subscriptions.

I rate SonicWall TZ eight out of 10. We use it often. It's an excellent product that I would recommend.

On-premises

My primary use case for SonicWall TZ is firewall protection. 

What I find the most valuable is that SonicWall TZ is relatively easy to manage once you know. The newer versions do sandboxing, which is nice.

It is a little difficult to use the DPI-SSL clients. I do not know if there is a way around that, but it is a little difficult to set them up and configure everything.

I am an IT consultant, so I have been using SonicWall TZ for about 20 years.

SonicWall TZ is a stable product. 

SonicWall TZ allows you to scale up by upgrading to a higher level. 

I have had plenty of interactions with SonicWall TZ's technical support. The quality of tech support can vary. Overall, it is not too bad. I have been using this product for two decades, so I have had a wide range of experiences with their tech support. 

Positive

How straightforward the initial setup is will depend on what you are turning on and what you are not turning on. If you just want to get a box up and running, it's relatively easy. If you want to start turning on all the features and configuring it, then it gets more complex. The complexity depends on how far you want to take it. If you want to just have a basic level of firewalling by the fault, then SonicWall TZ will work relatively easily out of the box. However, if you want to get the bang for the buck in terms of its feature set, you have to configure it a little bit.

How long deployment takes also depends on complexity. If you are just deploying on one site, it can take as little as a couple of hours. 

We deploy in-house. We are resellers. 

I have seen attacks that have been prevented by it, so I would say I have seen clients receive a return on investment. The older units do not work as well – you have to upgrade them – but they seem to be handling things pretty decently.

SonicWall TZ is probably consistent with regular market values. In terms of licensing, what generally happens is you get it with a one or two-year license and by that point, they usually have a newer model. They will usually let you upgrade to the newer model for the cost of the licensing.

SonicWall TZ are decent units. Every now and then, there's a glitch, but for the most part they are pretty stable.

SonicWall TZ think it's a good, solid, and stable product. Currently, its price is going up, but the prices are going up on everything. 

On-premises

In some cases SonicWall is used to outfit a company, replacing existing infrastructure and getting site-to-site VPN set up for easier management. It provides ease of use for VPN setups. We are customers of SonicWall and I'm a senior system analyst. 

The solution offers the right amount of control without being incredibly convoluted and frustrating, or without being too dumbed down where you don't have options to do certain things. It's very to the point with the controls and simplifies things for us. It's great value for money. 

The solution has a lot of robust options and it's easy to use. NSM is a good feature, a single pane of glass security center where you can monitor SonicWall for different clients and troubleshoot without it requiring individual access. The product has good integration with their SMA solution, which we deployed for one of our financial firms, and we've also provided a remote access solution for people with PCs at home who want secure access. It offers good content filtering.

I would probably say their GSM or their Sonic Analyzer could be improved. I have always found it difficult to manage and not very intuitive. I'd like to have better visibility of what each endpoint is doing. That's something Meraki has that is very easy to use.

I've been using this solution for over seven years. 

The solution is stable. We're an MSP, so if our clients have any dated hardware, we'll make a plan to switch to SonicWall, otherwise there can be issues with the internet or configuration where we can't get in and troubleshoot. We need to know we can get into the firewalls and make sure that they're online, as opposed to having to schedule someone to come in and deal with the basic physical connections or troubleshoot.

The scalability is very good because if you know how to work the base model, the old solution or the TZ 105, all the way up to the NSAs, they just scale up in terms of features and functionality and you don't change a whole lot. They have good terminology that sticks throughout, so if you work with one, you can work with them all. It means upgrading and scaling is very easy. We manage about 1300 users or so across about 100 different clients. For the most part, maybe 80% of them are on SonicWall, and we try to push that just because it makes our lives a lot easier.

We don't use the technical support very often, but the last call I had with them, everything was resolved within the hour. I spent more time on hold than I did with the person. It was 15 minutes on hold, for 10 minutes to resolve the issue. Otherwise, it's great. 

The initial setup was very straightforward. Deployment time depends on the client but if we're starting from scratch, you can have it updated and deployed within an afternoon without issue. We have our own techs with experience who can get things set up to the best of our ability. Implementation takes one person who knows what they're doing, but we have a team that can help out and troubleshoot if we run into issues. 

I'm not sure of licensing costs, but the price point isn't bad. In addition, you need to buy the hardware. There is also a standard support license, and they offer an advanced security gateway with other intrusion detection, prevention, content filtering, etc. There are some additional options we usually go with, but things like content filtering are hit and miss, and depend on what the client wants.

I've tried Meraki, but their price points are ridiculous and feature functionality is somewhat lacking. After Dell sold SonicWall, things improved a lot, and they've come a long way. There were some things about Meraki that I liked such as endpoint visibility. You can see the list of connected devices and apply a policy. You can get very low network so that bandwidth is not eaten up if someone is watching Netflix all day but they can still receive emails. Those kinds of things are what's missing in SonicWall. I've never been able to do something like that easily on the firewall side. Unfortunately, the cost of Meraki is really prohibitive. We tried a few other solutions and they just didn't pan out. If you want a good firewall, you have to pay thousands of dollars for what SonicWall does in a way that's easier to manage.

I would recommend trying the product, it's not too difficult, whether it's the setup or the cost. If you're looking for a really low-cost solution, you'll probably end up using something like pfSense which doesn't really compare to SonicWall. There are probably better solutions out there, but there are things that SonicWall does better, it just depends on your budget.

I rate the solution eight out of 10. 

On-premises