WatchGuard Firebox Reviews

It's our external firewall and VPN solution.

• It allows us to access the outside world.
• It keeps us safe from external threats coming in.
• It allows us to have remote access.

The fact that it just works is one of the most valuable features.

It's fairly intuitive when trying to figure out how to try to get things configured the way you need them. It either works or it doesn't, which means if you have a failure you have a chance to get things fixed.

In addition, I have not noticed any throughput issues at all. The device we have will actually operate at faster technologies than we have available to us.

Management of the solution is great and it also provides us with layered security. It has onboard virus scanning features that allow it to scan before something gets to the host. It will also stop a person from going to a site that is known to be bad.

There is room for improvement on the education side, regarding what does what, rather than just throwing it at a person and assuming they know everything about it. A lot of times, you have to call WatchGuard support to get the solution that will work, rather than their just having it published so that you can fix the problem on your own.

We've been with WatchGuard now for about six years. We've got their XTM firewall.

Their support is awesome. I get a solution to my problem within 24 hours, and if they don't have a solution within 24 hours, they usually have a higher-tier tech working with me until the problem is solved.

The setup was fairly straight forward. We were actually dealing with a failure situation when we received the product. So we had WatchGuard support on the lines from the get-go, helping us get started so that we could get the information. It's something that we would not have been able to do had they not helped.

The main firewall was deployed within a day. The satellites were deployed within a week.

We have two home offices that they're distributed to. Typically, I get the device in, I provision it with the workflows and the exceptions they need, and then they plug it.

I can't say whether Firebox has saved me time. It's a firewall and it does its job. So whether it be WatchGuard, SonicWall, or anybody else, if it does its job and I don't have to look at it, I'm happy. I haven't really looked at a lot of the reporting features. I mainly go in there, figure out where people are having troubles, and fix their problems. 

We were primarily using WatchGuard to control applications that were trying to access offsite network locations.

I am no longer using this solution because it was in my previous job.

This is a feature-rich product.

The most valuable feature is the category control.

This is an easy product to manage.

There should be more reports available on different subjects. There is a set of predefined Dimension reports but there needs to be more available on aspects like security and Wi-Fi.

I have been working with WatchGuard for more than eight years.

It is a stable solution.

We only had a single site, albeit a large one. Scalability was not something that I had to test beyond the one location, but it was good for our environment.

I was in contact with the WatchGuard technical support three or four times. I was satisfied with them and their responses. We had a WatchGuard Gold Support package.

I have also used Sophos Application Control and from my experience, WatchGuard is the better solution. With Sophos, it is not as easy to block categories, and creating firewall rules is much more difficult. 

The initial setup was generally straightforward. We had a little bit of difficulty with our second installation, which was virtualized. It took us two or three days to move from our on-premises deployment to the cloud. It was easy because we already had all of our rules in place. This included testing and not just the implementation.

When we first implemented WatchGuard, we had the help of a solution provider. 

For what we needed, WatchGuard was fine and generally covered our needs. It is easy to maintain and it is a product that I recommend. That said, there is always room for improvement.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use it internally and we are an MSP for lots of other companies that use it as well. Our primary use case is to block applications. 

It does the job of what it says it does. We set it to what we want it to block and then it blocks it. 

They could expand the amount of applications that are on the list, but it's pretty intensive anyway, so it's pretty good.

I have been using this solution for five years. 

We don't get any issues or bugs with it. The stability is good. 

There are two IT guys who use it in our company. 

I have contacted their technical support and they were very, very good. 

The initial setup was reasonably simple. It took us a couple of hours to get it all set up and working with all of the firewalls set. Our own team did the setup. 

It comes in the main licensing costs from the WatchGuard if you buy the license. I don't know about the prices there.

WatchGuard does what it says it does. Definitely use it. If you want to block applications, then definitely use it. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. There's going to be newer apps that are probably not going to be blocked straight away, but then they are in time, so it's not really an issue.

We just use it as a secondary WiFi device. We're a small office and we needed to set up a WiFi device for a few of our employees.

The way it saves me time is that there is no maintenance. Once we set it up, there's nothing else for us to do on a regular basis. It might be saving me about an hour a month.

• It has a good signal.
• We haven't had any security issues.
• The usability has been good. We haven't had any problems with it.
• The performance has been good. We haven't had any issues with the performance.

We have been using WatchGuard Firebox for about two years.

We haven't had any issues with it. We set it up and it's been running since we set it up.

We don't have any plans to increase usage. It just services our one office, with eight users.

We have not had to use their technical support.

We did not have a wireless solution before Firebox. The main reason we went with it was the security protocols. They were more robust on this device.

The setup was easy enough. It was more or less plug-and-play. There weren't a lot of settings that we had to run through. The setup wasn't that complicated. It took about two hours and there was just one person involved.

The addition of the WiFi saves us from usage of our data plan. We have had some cost savings there.

The pricing was in line with everyone else; maybe slightly higher. That's why it's not a 10 out of 10.

It's our perimeter firewall.

We used to have Cisco and Cisco was pretty cumbersome. I actually still use Cisco, but I like WatchGuard for the features it has.

It provides us with Layer 2 and Layer 3 security.

If it didn't work we wouldn't be able to get to the internet and that would be a terrible thing.

All of its features are valuable, although we don't use the antivirus. We do use the web filter.

It's also the ease of configuration that I like. In terms of usability, it just works. And the throughput is 100 Mbps. It's fine.

There are a couple of things I wished that it would do, but I can't think of those off the top of my head.

I have been using WatchGuard Firebox for about 15 years.

It works and just keeps on working.

The scalability is fine.

Their technical support is good. Honestly, I haven't had to call them in five or six years.

We used Cisco previously. Cisco didn't have the features that I needed, like the proxies. A Cisco box would probably do that now, but back then they wouldn't. So we switched to WatchGuard.

The initial setup is straightforward. You just read the manual and follow the directions. It didn't take very long to set up. It was about an hour to have it configured and set up.

I have deployed Firebox to distributed locations. You just plug in the numbers, the IP addresses. That's all you do. It's pretty simple.

We have seen return on our investment. It just works. I may have to reboot it once every two or three years.

The pricing of WatchGuard was pretty comparable to Cisco, but I actually haven't looked at a new Cisco box in quite some time, so I can't say how they compare now.

I would advise that you go with whatever you're more comfortable with. If you're more comfortable with Cisco, then go with Cisco.

Firebox doesn't really save us time because whether you're going to configure a Cisco or you're going to configure a WatchGuard, you still have to configure something, no matter what it is. It is a little easier to configure WatchGuard though.

It takes just one person in our organization to deploy and support it, and that's me. Overall, our environment has about 300 users.

We use it to prevent any unnecessary stuff from getting into our network. It's for the usual security features. We do utilize the VPN and there are quite a few people on the VPN right now.

It gives our business layered security. Attack vectors it secures for us include denial of service attacks, people spoofing our network, as well as preventing malware from getting in — the typical attack vectors. We're satisfied with it overall.

Also, there was a phishing scheme going around a while back. WatchGuard caught it and we were able to mitigate it. That was very good. It keeps us from not having to worry about our network being under attack. It keeps us secure.

It saves us on the order of three hours a month. The solution just works.

• The set up of the VPN is pretty straightforward. Being able to build VPNs on the fly for certain users, if need be, is also valuable.
• The traffic monitoring is very nice.
• I also like the ease of blocking certain websites from getting in or users from getting to stuff they don't need to be at.

We're satisfied with the performance, as well as its reporting and management features.

The usability could be better, but it is definitely manageable. If we have to go to a backup internet connection, that could be a little bit easier. Other than that, I really don't have any complaints about it.

I've been using WatchGuard for three years. That's how long I have been with the company. The company has been using it upwards of 10 years, I believe.

It's very stable.

It's scalable. We are probably going to be doing another area for some of the outer branches and the WatchGuards will be part of that. I can't say how soon it's going to happen, but there have been discussions about it.

I have no complaints about WatchGuard's technical support. If you have a question, they answer it.

As far as I know, WatchGuard is the only one that our company has used. We like the product enough. We're buying another appliance because our support ran out on one of our boxes. We're continuing to buy WatchGuard stuff because it does what we need it to do, it's priced reasonably well, and we like the support and usability.

We have deployed this product to distributed locations. We have a couple of branch offices and we've set them up in all of our locations. We set it up, we configure it to our network settings, we put in all of the information we need, and we go from there. We usually take a configuration from an existing and apply it. It's straightforward. The documentation goes step-by-step on how to set it up. The last time I did one it took about an hour.

In terms of maintenance of WatchGuard there are three people in our department. Whoever sees a problem or hears about an issue takes care of it. Two of us are system analysts and the third is our director of information technology.

It keeps our network secure and that's a good enough return for me.

I feel that the pricing is fair for all of the security you get. That's one of the reasons we went with, and continue to go with, WatchGuard.

Go ahead and implement it and don't think twice about it.

We're not using the cloud visibility feature at this time. Maybe we will in the future.

There are 75 users of our environment, in total. They range from mechanics to accountants to our COO and CEO. Everybody in the organization uses it.

One of the most valuable features is that when we send emails and it gives a warning, you can configure those email addresses so that they can only send outside the email.

WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention could be improved if they would add a pocket-size, meaning limitations on the data size, where for example an email address can only send 25MB for a month.

In terms of additional tools, I would like to see more graphical reporting tools, with graphs, etc., that are very easy to comprehend. This is especially important if you are reporting to top management so they will fully understand what is happening in the firewall. You don't need to use technical terms or definitions, just show them the graph. That would be good.

I have been working with WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention for one year.

It is stable, though there is a problem with the RAM - it's eating up resources. The RAM utilization sometimes reaches up to 80% - 95%, and what we do is just restart the firewall. Maybe WatchGuard could get it higher.

The scalability is fine for small and medium enterprises, 10Gbps is fine and smooth. 

We have 800 employees using it. But for maintenance and monitoring, we only have one IT personnel. It is easy to maintain as long as you have the knowledge and capability.

After five years we will upgrade and I hope that there will be a higher model for WatchGuard. If not we will be looking into other high-performance firewalls, like Stormshield, where you have 20Gbps throughput.

The technical support here in our country is different vendors or resellers of the firewall WatchGuard. So you just have to choose the most reliable vendor for technical support.

We are a group of companies. One company said that their support, their vendor, is good in technical support, but we also have another company saying that their vendor supporting WatchGuard is not that reliable. So it's a 50/50.

We have used the antivirus and also the Data Loss Prevention for USB. But I don't think the antivirus can manipulate your emails, so in terms of a DLP with regards to emails, we have firewalls.

We chose firewall brands based on a group of concepts and brand proposals. We analyzed the best functionalities, not only for Data Loss Prevention but also for the firewall functionalities. I got WatchGuard because of its cost and functionality.

Initial setup is straightforward. They make the integrations simple and easy to understand. 

It is fast, only a day or two.

My advice for anyone is to get adequate knowledge. Whatever firewall brand you are going to use, you have to train one IT person for maintenance and support. Sometimes, or oftentimes, you don't want to have to rely on the vendor or the technical support, but to rely on your own IT by making them knowledgeable and capable of maintaining and monitoring the firewalls. Then you're good to go!

On a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is the worst and 10 is the best, I would rate WatchGuard Data Loss Prevention an eight.

We primarily use the solution for our protection. We're currently concerned about our security and phishing scams, and we've employed this solution to help protect us.

The solution is very easy to use. 

It's very simple to find the information we need.

WatchGuard offers something called DNSWatchGo. It also is a cybersecurity offering. It can be added to Threat Detection and Response to make both stronger.

The solution isn't as efficient as a product like Palo Alto.

The pricing is expensive. Even compared to Palo Alto, it's quite costly.

Palo Alto provides more signature detections than this solution. WatchGuard TDR needs to be able to detect threats a bit better.

The reporting isn't so good. If they worked to improve this aspect of the solution, it would be much stronger.

I've been using the solution for about one year.

The solution is stable. We haven't experienced any bugs or glitches. There haven't been any crashes on it and our clients seem quite happy with it so far.

Technical support has been very good so far. We find them to be quite professional. We're satisfied with the level of service they provide to us and our clients.

The initial setup is easy. It's quite straightforward. There isn't any complexity involved. 

For one PC, deployment only takes about five minutes. It's very fast. However, we have to deploy it onto a few hundred PCs, so in that sense, it's a bit time consuming, simply because of the number of installs.

We used three technicians to handle the deployment of the solution.

We're an IT servicing company. We use our own teams for implementation and deployment of this solution.

We're a WatchGuard Silver Partner.

I'm not sure which version of the solution our organization is currently using.

Our company is quite small, but we service medium-sized organizations and have a large number of clients.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.