Sophos Firewall Reviews

We are integrators. We integrate solutions for other our client's companies.

The most valuable feature is the central dashboard. It provides us with good performance.

When you utilize the processors, the device hangs. Many firewalls hang because of the high volume of loads.

If we are using the HP policy and the user policy at the same time, the firewall gets hung and it means that we cannot get clear reports.

We have mitigated the firewall with Palo Alto because Palo Alto is working on multiple environments. 

I would like to see the performance improved.

I have been working with Sophos XG for three years.

Currently, we are using the MR4 v18.

It's a stable solution.

This product is scalable. I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

So far we use this solution for SMB and enterprise companies.

Technical support is very good.

We are also working with Fortinet FortiGate and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls.

Palo Alto is the best product from a compliance point of view, and security. Fortinet is the second and the last is Sophos XG.

I have installed Sophos XG in multiple organizations.

The initial setup is very easy.

It took less than 10 minutes to deploy.

Sophos is very good for small companies because of the cost of the product compared to other solutions.

The price is reasonable.

I prefer Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to Sophos. Palo Alto is very good and the customers are happy. The hardware is customizable with multiple firewalls. I think that it is the best.

I would rate Sophos XG an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is for protection and to have better governance for our LAN usage. I've got a lot of people working from outside on the corporate infra and all policy based decisions happen there. The solution is basically a firewall that protects us from various internet threats, but other than that provides controlled and properly managed access using various rules of VPN and other fingerprints of people logging in. I'm the CTO of the company and we are customers of Sophos.  

The interface is great and easy to understand. Any firewall engineer who has medium to moderate experience on bylaws, can easily understand the UI. The language presented on various features and the in-built help, is very intuitive. If you have a problem you can figure it out there and then. As a result, there is less probability that we'll call tech support.

The solution really needs some additional features like network access control. If they could incorporate some user profiling and present the analytics of the login user usage patterns, or a typical proper management dashboard to take a decision on the firewall rules, that would be useful. Basically, MI's and the dashboard could be more user friendly. The information is there but the dashboards are not in a graphical format. In short, I'd like to see network access control, user profiling and analytics dashboards. It would make the solution a more competitive product on the market. 

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

This is a stable solution. I haven't had any firewall crashes or any non-performing rules for over two years. We are a hospital so all the lights of all the devices should be on 24/7, 365 days a year.

We manage and control around 250-300 internal users. There would probably be another 75-100 logging in externally.

This is definitely a scalable solution. The way we've configured it, if a device goes down, it can be shut off and removed from the network for repairs or updates and our second firewall automatically takes the load.

We only used technical support during our initial deployment. After that, we didn't need support because the product was working perfectly well. We trained ourselves on the newer software and we are capable of managing and maintaining our own firewalls. In addition, Sophos provides online documentation which is very user friendly. If you follow the steps you get the result. 

I previously used Cisco's firewall ASA and it was extensively implemented in my earlier role. The main reason to migrate to Sophos was due to their aggressiveness in terms of pricing but also the fact that they had features that Cisco did not have.

The initial setup was very straightforward. Deployment took somewhere between six and eight hours. 

There's no annual licensing fee. When we purchased the product, it was with a five year agreement bundled in with the product price and the recent rollout is not yet five years old. When we renew, we'll renegotiate. I can't differentiate between the product costs and the licensing costs at this point. We're very lucky that we get one of the best deals in the country in terms of pricing. The Sophos-backed pre-sales and implementation team were very cooperative and collaborative which really helped us make the decision to choose Sophos.

I would definitely recommend this solution but it's only suitable if it fits the needs of the company so I would suggest carrying out some research. Why does the company need a firewall? What rules do they want to deploy on the firewall? Based on the answers to those questions the company can make a call. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We use Sophos XGS mostly for website blocking, application blocking, and site-to-site VPN.

Compared to other products, Sophos XGS is a user-friendly solution.

It would be useful if Sophos XGS included DDNS-based features.

I have been using Sophos XGS for four years.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for stability.

Sophos XGS is a scalable solution. We have more than 50 users in our organization.

Sophos XGS provides good technical support. The support team has good knowledge of troubleshooting and fixing our issues.

The solution’s initial setup is complex.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team. The solution’s deployment takes half an hour to one hour.

Sophos XGS is a cost-effective solution.

I would recommend Sophos XGS to other users because it is more cost-effective than other products.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The best use case of Sophos XGS is for customers who use CMGs that manage the gateway of Microsoft, which was made obsolete years ago. Clients want to replace their proxy with some solution, and Sophos is one of the best bets.

The solution is good for web filtering. It's also possible to use it as a load balancer and a destination firewall and site-to-site channeling. Remote users can gain access via Sophos. It solves for a variety of uses that the client needs. 

In our market, they offer a web filter SSL VPN and they are very useful for the customer.

The initial setup is very simple. 

It's stable and reliable. 

We can scale the product.

Some firewall names like Palo Alto and FortiGate are very famous for security. People find them very secure. While Sophos is fairly secure, they aren't known for their security, and it's not an obvious selling point. Unfortunately, on Gartner, Magic Quadrant, and Forrester, Sophos doesn't have a good presence. They need to get better at marketing their abilities and expanding what they can do.

I would like to see them in third-party evaluation reports like Gartner, Magic Quadrant, or Forrester to make it easier for us to show our customers that Sophos is a leader in the market. It will be easier for us to sell them. Our market depends on what products are currently in Gartner and Forrester, and these platforms. 

We've been working with the solution for five to six years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product is scalable. 

We have more than 100 clients on Sophos. 

Technical support is good and above average. 

Neutral

It is easy to set up the solution. It's not a complex process. 

While it depends on the magnitude of the customer's environment, normally the deployment only takes a day or two.

We do not require any outside assistance. We can handle the setup ourselves. 

If the client needs us to, we can deploy the solution for them. Since we sell the solution, we have a good understanding of the process. We have been doing implementations for years. 

The pricing is moderate. It's not overly expensive. They offer good licensing. 

We are using and selling the solution. We are deploying it for different customers.

When the customer wants to buy an appliance, definitely it's an on-prem solution. However, when it comes to an endpoint or a firewall as a service, they offer cloud solutions as well.

I'd recommend the solution to others. 

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

We did buy access points, and we did use the WiFi configuration. We did create a configuration for the WiFi to the access points on the same interface. It's great for access point integration.

The user interface is fine.  

The configuration and customization capabilities are good.

It is very lovely to work with Sophos in general. It's easy to use and user-friendly.

There is a lot of great documentation available to users. 

The stability is good. 

It's scalable. 

The licensing prices are too high.

There are a lot of false-positive cases. 

We'd like to see access point integration. 

I've been using the solution for four months.

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product can scale. 

We have about 150 users on the solution right now. 

I have not used any technical support services. There is so much documentation online, I do not need assistance. 

I also use Microsoft products. I prefer Sophos for on-premises and Microsoft for cloud and antivirus products. 

Microsoft Defender and the Microsoft Defender cloud panels admin portal are native, and we are using many Microsoft products, so it just makes sense due to the environment to use Microsoft products. 

While the deployment was done before I began work in the organization, I reset it and configured it completely.

There are a lot of Sophos post-configuration documents, Sophos videos, et cetera. It was the first time that I configured Sophos. However, it was all good.

The product is very easy to maintain. 

The cost to license the product is a bit expensive. I'd rate the cost at a four out of five in terms of affordability. We pay about $150.

I'm a consultant. I'm using the latest version of the solution.

Sophos is good for smaller companies. It might not be suitable for large ones. 

I'd rate it seven out of ten.

We use it to secure the enterprise endpoint devices, whether they are servers, laptops, or mobile phones.

Security synchronization is one of the best features because it integrates the firewall with the endpoint devices.

It would be nice to have features like the network access control (NAC) that Cisco has for Identity Services Engine.

In the next release, I would also like to see an increase in the performance of the processing units.

I've been using Sophos XGS for about four years now.

The technical support is good. They have a support portal where you can log in a case and have direct support from one of the experts.

They are responsive and follow up closely, so I would give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is very user-friendly because they have graphical user interface options and command line interface options. I would give the initial setup a rating of five out of five.

It has three modes of deployment. You can have it deployed as physical hardware, as a virtual machine, or as software in the cloud.

We implemented it through an in-house team.

The pricing for Sophos is much better compared to that of Fortinet and Check Point. On a scale from one to five with one being expensive and five being competitive, I would rate Sophos' pricing at four.

The pricing can be for the hardware appliance and the license, or it can be subscription-based. It can be around 3000 USD up to 25,000 USD per year depending on the model or series of the hardware you choose to buy.

Sophos XGS is suitable for enterprise customers and SMBs.

Overall, I would rate Sophos XGS at eight out of ten.

I use XGS for filtering and spam blocking. We have 255 users.

Spam filtering is what I love most about XGS.

The reporting could be better. 

I have been using Sophos XGS for about five years.

Setting up Sophos XGS is straightforward, and it took us about four hours to deploy.

I pay for a yearly license for XGS. It's not cheap, but the price is okay compared to other gateway devices. It's in the middle. 

I rate Sophos XGS eight out of 10. 

We are primarily using the product for firewall issues, including protecting the network and so on.

It's much faster than the previous firewall, so you can do the work faster. There are no delays in the internet and network.

The performance is better than the other product that we've had. 

Reporting-wise, it's quite good. IPS detection and ATP is getting better and faster.

We have found the initial setup to be quite straightforward. 

The solution is stable.

It can scale well.

The reporting could always be improved upon. They need intelligent reporting, not just your simple, standard reports. 

I've used the solution for the past three months. 

This is a stable, reliable product. The performance is good. It's fast. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product can scale very well. It's not a problem if a company needs to expand. There are different sizes of products. It's a good idea to pick a larger size if you expect to scale. 

We have around 150 users on the solution at this point. They cover different roles from admins to front and back office.

We have a third-party provider that is giving us support. We don't communicate with Sophos directly.

I previously used WatchGuard. That was at a previous company. When I moved here, the organization already had Sophos. 

The initial setup is very simple and very straightforward. Since it was also migration in our case,  we had to do testing and so on. It took one week to deploy it.

We only need one person to handle the deployment and maintenance process. 

We had a third-party assist us during the implementation process.

We renew the license every three years. We get better pricing that way. There are no other expenses beyond the standard pricing. That said, there are additional subscription modules you might need. However, you pick them at the beginning, and it depends if you need them or not.

We did not evaluate other options. We already had the setup, and we didn't want to make any big changes.

I'm a customer and end-user. 

I've currently using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.