WatchGuard Firebox Reviews

Our primary use case is VPN connectivity between 50 locations and our headquarters.

It saves us a lot of money over MPLS connections, about $125,000 per year.

WatchGuard provides us with one of our layers of security. The HTTPS proxy is where a lot of things get trapped.

The most valuable are the VPN and proxy features. We have all the sites we have to connect and that's how we do it.

I've been using it for so long so I'm pretty used to it. But I think it's fairly simple to use and understand. It helps if you're an IT expert. There isn't much of a learning curve if someone has an understanding of connectivity and firewalling. If they don't, there is certainly a learning curve.

The throughput is excellent. It's only limited to our bandwidth. We haven't had any trouble with throughput. The throughput of the firewall, in all cases, seems to be better than the bandwidth available. It's not the bottleneck.

I don't use the reporting features a whole lot, but Dimension is pretty good.

It's very hard to get information from their website, for exactly what I need to do. Sometimes I end up having to open a lot of support tickets. It's either too detailed or not. I never have good luck with their online tools. It's a navigational issue which makes it hard to find what I'm looking for and it's just so broad.

In addition, I have had a ticket in for an awful long time regarding a bug that they should address. If you're using a firewall as a DHCP server, it doesn't keep a good record of the leases. I opened a ticket on this about two years ago, and every couple of months I get an email back that it's still under engineering review.

They're very stable. I've had one firewall fail at 50 locations in the last ten years.

Scalability for me would mean, as we add more branch locations, the firewall here can support all of those VPN connections, and I'm not even scratching the service of what it can hit. It's very scalable.

Tech support has been good. It's gotten a lot better the past few years; it's very much improved. Twelve years ago it was the worst. Now, it's very good. They get back to me in a day if it's nothing critical. And I don't ever really have to escalate. They're pretty resourceful and understand their product.

Previously, I built a Linux box.

The initial setup is very straightforward. I've done it so many times that I could do it in my sleep. It's pretty simple to run through the GUI and get a quick setup. It's like if you asked me, is it hard to drive a car? I've been driving a car so long I don't know any other options. It takes me maybe an hour to set one up and get it ready to send out. At that point, it's fully configured. It's just plug-and-play when it gets to the location.

I, or one of my IT guys, will often have to be onsite. We'll send one out to a branch, then we'll have to walk the warehouse manager through how to plug things in. Deploying it to distributed locations consists of plugging it into the modem and plugging it into the network, assuming I programmed it correctly.

Deploying it requires just one person. We have three people in the IT group maintaining the entire network, but it's mostly me. It takes me about five hours a week.

ROI is very abstract for a security tool. As far as being able to create VPN tunnels versus having it managed by another vendor, as I said, it saves us about $125,000 a year, maybe a little more. Even comparing it so an SDYN solution from an outside vendor, it's a lot less expensive.

We only license our corporate one and the one we have at our DR site, we don't worry about the branches. It doesn't pay for us to license the ones at the branches. What they charge for what they call basic maintenance is extremely high for those little fireboxes. So we don't bother with them.

They're good machines. They're fairly easy to configure and they're stable.

We mostly use the M400 at corporate and at our branch offices we use T35s, T30s, and XTM25s. In terms of additional usage, I'm looking at the management console and, possibly, the drag-and-drop VPNs.

I would rate it at nine out of ten. The documentation makes it a little hard to find what I need sometimes.

We use them as our firewall in every location. It's extensively used and our locations for it are ever-expanding. Right now, we have 14 locations with them. We have everything from the M300 to the T50-W to the T30-W.

Like any other firewall, if it goes down, it's going to cause problems but these don't go down.

If I had to spend half my day fighting the stuff that it's keeping out, in that sense, it's increasing productivity. But if I was having to do that, I would find something else.

There are a lot of features I really like.

One of them is that the interface is more intuitive for us. And the success rate has been very good for us. It's easier to use than a SonicWall. There's a learning curve with every firewall, but this one is a lot more intuitive than some of the other ones I've used.

We've been very happy with the throughput and the performance the solution provides.

The Dimension control, the one-spot reporting and control, has been nice. It's been easy to go in and make sure people are doing what they're supposed to be doing and that only the right stuff is getting in.

It provides us with layered security.

It's got a global map where you can block IP based on which country it's coming from. I haven't seen that on anything else.

They work. We don't have to boot them. 

The only time they get booted is if there is a major, extended loss of power. Otherwise, they just stay up and running. The location I'm at has been up for 90 days and the only reason it went down 90 days ago was that we had about a 12-hour power outage. It got our batteries. It got everything. But like I said, they're reliable.

There is scalability because they have different models to choose from, as long as you buy right.

We have 500 employees and about 150 users. I'm sure we have plans to increase usage. In terms of how extensively it is being used, it's filtering every piece of internet traffic we have.

I haven't had to use their technical support in about seven years.

When it comes to installing a new box, it's pretty simple. We have a config we copy over to it and then we just customize that config with the IP addressing that we need at that location. It doesn't get much easier than that. It takes less than an hour and takes one person to deploy it.

We used a third-party integrator when we did our mass upgrade in 2017. At that time, all of our other ones had become end-of-life. They were Firebox Edges. We bought the boxes, dumped the configs on them, between us and the third-party, and either I or the third-party would deliver and install. Onsite downtime was as little as ten minutes.

Deploying it to distributed locations was super-simple.

We haven't had anything get through it. It's hard to say what your return on investment is when you're saving problems. You can't quantify how many possible threats you're saving in a day.

We bought ours bundled with two or three years at the time we bought them. I haven't seen the pricing since 2017, but it was competitive. SonicWall, Barracuda, and WatchGuard were all about the same price when we did our last pricing.

We investigated SonicWall back in about 2016 and decided to stay with WatchGuard because we felt the interface was a lot better. It's also easier to manage, easier to keep an eye on. We really despised the SonicWall. The support for it was awful. Dell already had it and it was bad. I had experience with SonicWall in the past, before it was a Dell company. The SonicWalls were pretty good then.

We looked into Barracuda. We didn't actually test it. We used some other Barracuda stuff, but we didn't actually even test their firewall. I don't remember why we didn't go with them. That was a decision made three years ago. We use their backup appliance and couldn't be happier with it, so it wasn't a support issue or a reputation issue. I don't know if there was a little difference in pricing which was the reason that we didn't try it.

We investigated the other one, we actually put the test box in, and Firebox was far superior to what we tested.

Give Firebox a good, strong look. Give it a test run and I'm sure you'll be happy with it. We've always had it. Our opinion of it is that it flat-out works and we're very satisfied with it.

I'm sure there are better ones out there for somebody who has more time to manage it. But if you're looking for something so that you don't need a dedicated staff to manage it, I'd say this is a pretty good one. I give it a nine out of ten.

Production business use at multiple interconnected locations.

It is one of the layers of our security and it definitely does protect us from many attack vectors. Between the antivirus scanning, the blocking, and DNSWatch, it is protecting us from a number of attack vectors. It is also provides useful diagnostic tools for identifying and troubleshooting issues. A recent example was when a few LOB network devices were having issues which was affecting operations. ZazaThe ability to search the realtime and historical logs helped me to navigate, zone in, and identify the ultimate issue. It ended up not being the firewall, but fast access to the logs helped me determine and prove that to be the case.

Because of the way it's organized and the user-friendliness of the device, it does make my job managing the firewall profiles and security a lot easier. There's nothing you have to do through the command line. Being able to definitively know what the configuration is, visually, being able to edit it offline without affecting production have all been big time-savers for me. When I had to do two firewalls which had similar configurations it saved me at least 20 hours of setup work. Templates allowed me to create and define a bunch of objects once and use them in both places.

Overall, per month, Firebox will save me four to five hours, depending on if there's something I have to investigate.

The Application Control and web blocker have been very valuable because they let me control the outgoing traffic of my users and keep them off of both productivity wasters and sources of vulnerabilities in my environment. 

I like the High Availability feature because it allows a firewall to fail while keeping the environment up and running.

In terms of its usability, it's very straightforward to use, once you understand the way they look at a firewall and the design choices they made.

The throughput the solution provides is excellent. I have not had any performance-related issues with any of the fireboxes I've used.

I like their management features a lot. Their System Manager server as well the System Manager software make managing them, and tracking changes, very easy and complete. In terms of the reporting, I am just starting to look at the reports in Dimension and they look pretty well-organized and useful.

The product could have some more predefined service protocols in the list, which don't have to manually be defined. But that's very low hanging fruit.

The documentation for the System Manager/Dimension configuration, could be a little bit clearer. The use case where you have multiple sites with multiple firewalls, and one site that has the System Manager server and the Dimension server, wasn't really well defined. It took me a little bit of digging to get that to actually work.

It's pretty rock-solid. I've never had to reboot one because it was acting in an unstable manner and have some that I ran through their entire usable lives without issue.

The scalability is good, assuming you buy the right model. They make it easy to trade up to a bigger model without having a big, financial impact, giving you a discount to trade up. 

The times I've used technical support it was excellent.

I moved from FortiGate. The reasons i switched include price - WatchGuard is a lot more cost-effective than FortiGate - and complexity. FortiGate is very complicated, had little documentation which relied heavily on cookbooks, and a lot of command-line required to get some common things to work. WatchGuard is very well-documented and everything fits within their configuration. Nothing that I've encountered has to be done through the command line. And when your subscription expires on the WatchGuard, it will still pass traffic, if you configure it to. FortiGate will only allow one connection out. 

The initial set up was very straightforward. You take it out of the box, you plug it in, you download the software, and it starts working. That's what I consider to be the initial set up, and that was very easy and very fast.

The deployment took me a total of about 40 hours for two sites, two firewalls, and with an incredibly complicated configuration. The complexity was a product of the environment, not the firewall.

I utilized the template feature to make everything that could be the same, the same across both sites, which are connected locations.

In-house.

They are well priced for the market and offer discounts for competitor trades and model upgrades which are definitely worth taking advantage of.

FortiGate and WatchGuard were the only two I've evaluated recently.

I would definitely recommend using WatchGuard.

I would also recommend taking one of the courses that goes through all the features of the device and the way it is organized. Every firewall vendor looks at things differently. If you don't understand the way WatchGuard is structured, you may make a strategic mistake in setting it up and you'll have to tear some of it down and redo which is true of any firewall. Leanr and use the tools Watchguard  provides.

I used to do everything in WatchGuard through their Web UI but I now use the System Manager software because it is very valuable. It provides a lot of features that I had not realized I was missing. The System Manager Server is able to store previous versions of the configuration, and to force people to enter comments regarding what they changed when they save one. Being able to compare the configurations side-by-side, and have it tell you the differences are great tools that you should know about if you're going to start implementing a WatchGuard.

We are not currently using this solution. Rather, we are reselling, and I have implemented these systems.

The most recent one I implemented was an M200 model that was being used as a gateway firewall to control their internet usage, primarily for URL filtering.

The reports are detailed. Rather than showing the IP address for a query, such as "who is the most active internet user", it will show their name and the specific activities that he or she is browsing on the internet.

The most valuable feature is the Active Directory integration. WatchGuard is very easy to integrate with. The URL filtering is ok, but instead of filtering by IP addresses I usually set up filtering through Active Directory user profiles.

I can import the users directly from Active Directory and create a space for a certain user or a certain group. This is something that is great because I have a lot of trouble setting this up with other products.

I also liked a new feature, the WatchGuard TDR (Threat Detection and Response). This reports malware activity to the cloud.

This solution needs the option to add an external hard drive. The competitors have this. With WatchGuard, you have to get another server, set it up, and then point it to WatchGuard. That is where the logs will be stored.

Some find this tedious because they have to get another server, although I find it advantageous because there is no hard drive needed. It removes another point of failure. In any case, if the customer wants an external hard drive then it would give them the option.

I saw a feature in Cisco that was a historical trajectory of the files, or sets, moving in the network. I would like to see them include this feature in the next release of the TDR.

So far, the solution is stable.

I have two customers who have experienced problems due to a storm. An electrical surge came through the internet line and caused damage to the port. This had nothing to do with the stability of the product itself.

In terms of updates, it is one of the easiest firewalls to update. I just download the latest one and let it work until it reboots.

In the company where the M200 was implemented, they have fifty users.  

Whenever I have a problem I contact the technical support and I normally have to wait at least a day for them to respond. I have opened approximately twenty tickets, and so far, all of them have been resolved.

We used an older model of the WatchGuard solution, the T50 e-series, but we have replaced it. We received a discount on a bigger unit from Fortinet. However, we recently sold a WatchGuard M200 and I had the opportunity to use the product. Comparing what I see now to what it was before, there are a lot of good changes. Not so many in the GUI, so there is familiarity there, but I think that it is faster now.

My customer for this solution did not previously have a firewall. It was just an open internet router.

The initial setup is very easy for somebody who knows the product, so I can't say that it is complex. For someone who is new to the product, of course, they would find it intimidating at first.

The deployment took three days, with the third day being the turnover. I had to train them on how to use it. The first two days were spent setting it up.

One IT person handles maintenance for the solution, just for secondary support.

I took care of the deployment for our customer.

The subscription that was purchased is for three years but it is usually for one year at a time. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

My customer was looking into Sohpos, but because the budget was drained they opted for WatchGuard. It was a cheaper solution.

Based on the reactions from people who I have implemented this solution for, some of them find it difficult to use before they get used to the interface. At the same time, if they later move to another product then they say that WatchGuard is simpler.

I keep hearing that WatchGuard is quite marginal because it is not listed as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. It is listed under Visionary. For a firewall product, I do think that it's a leader. It doesn't cost a lot compared to Cisco, Palo Alto, or others. I think that WatchGuard is good enough.

I would rate this product eight and a half out of ten.

This device is for Unified Threat Management (UTM). Our primary uses for this solution are as a firewall, antivirus, anti-spyware, web-blocker, and APT blocker.

I can say that it has been defending our organization. There are from ten to one hundred attacks per day to our IT forum and our email server.

The most valuable feature for small and medium businesses is the support for various protocol proxies. Without any subscription, they can realize an IDS/IPS solution.

It would be wonderful if the WatchGuard team develops nice products for threat intelligence. They have a subscription service called DNSWatch, but this needs to be improved.

This product is very stable.

There is no problem with the scalability. If I need a more powerful appliance then I can buy it, but I can also use less powerful devices. Overall, scalability is ok with this solution.

We have about fifty people using this solution. There are two IT specialists, and all of the rest are salespeople, office support, etc.

The technical support is very good. I know only of one company whose tech support is better than WatchGuard's.

I have experience with Check Point UTM, and I find that this application has approximately the same functionality, but it is cheaper.

The initial setup is very easy. It is not complex.

For a small organization that has between fifty and one hundred users, the deployment can be done in perhaps fifteen minutes to three hours. Our deployment took approximately one hour.

Only one person is required for maintenance.

We handled the deployment ourselves.

I can see ROI within several months.

The cheapest configuration, for maybe five people, is approximately $500.

There are several other license steps that vary based on the number of security services that are included in the subscription.

We had considered several other solutions such as pfSense, MikroTik, and Fortinet. However, we became a WatchGuard distributor for the territory of the Russian Federation, so we are using only WatchGuard solutions.

It is a very reliable and very easy solution. I think it is the best solution in the world, judging by its price and quality.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

At a specific client location, we are using the WatchGuard Firebox M470 to control all of the security protocols, routing, VLANs, and traffic. We have a 1GB internet circuit coming into the M470 firewall, and SFPs going out to the Netgear M4300-96X modular switch. From this switch, it goes out to the Netgear GS110 devices through SFPs.

WatchGuard Web GUI is one of the best consoles I have worked with. It makes each step very simple, while you can get granular too. It made the installation process extremely easy and simple for each step to program into the Firebox. The Firebox works well with other brands and also has the capabilities to use an SFP module to use fiber connections instead of Ethernet. We were able to remove over seven devices and replace them with two devices: Firebox M470 and Netgear M4300-96X. What a cost saving and less equipment to troubleshoot. 

Here are just some of the valuable features: 

• WebGUI
• Spam blocker
• Website filtering
• Internet security
• Tech support is amazing.
• Routing and setting up VLANs. 

These are just some; there are so many more to go over. Depending on the customer's budget, I would always recommend WatchGuard Firebox and their other security products. They have some of the best customer service in the industry.

I don't think that WatchGuard would need to improve on their product. They have some of the least expensive appliances and software out there. They are extremely easy to use, the GUI is great through the web and on the desktop. That's why I feel WatchGuard has outdone themselves on their security products. Hands down, it's one of the best firewalls I have ever worked with.

This Firebox M470 is a true workhorse and has been flawless. It has not crashed yet and has been on for over a year now.

This product is very scalable: from the Total Security Suite to adding an extra module, to getting an extended tech support contract.

Their customer service is one of the best and is extremely knowledgeable about their products. They are very responsive when calling and or if they need to call you back. They have been a key part of this major installation.

I used a Sophos firewall that was already installed when we took over the account. The Sophos Web GUI is not that easy to navigate and completely different from most of the other firewalls out there. We switched because I professionally feel that the WatchGuard security products are superior over most of the other brands out there and their Web GUI is extremely easy to navigate and use. 

The initial setup was straightforward, but there is always a learning curve on all devices.

We used WatchGuard's team to help implement our programming into the firewall as our implementation was a one-off. 

Our ROI has been over 35% just on the equipment and the job.

The setup cost is extremely low for what you get with the Firebox M470. The cost of the Firebox M470 was a third of the cost of a Barracuda and a high-end SonicWall.

I loved that I could add an SFP module to the firewall and use both Ethernet and fiber connections. 

You will need licensing for the security features like Total Security Suite, etc.

We evaluated SonicWall, Sophos, Barracuda, and Fortinet for our firewall needs. WatchGuard not only was a great price point but also comes with so many great features without having to pay too much.

If you want a robust firewall that has a great price point, this is the best way to go.

Intellectual Property protection for our and our clients' data.  We strategize for deployments of new products into Federal and State healthcare formularies.

I discovered the WatchGuard T-70 could still keep the data near the 1 gigahertz data speed, without compromise on the security perimeters being active simultaneously.  I got that information through my subscription with IT Central Station.  The WatchGuard T70 does not come with WiFi capabilities, offering flexibility for what WiFi devices you prefer.

Default set-ups found on the WatchGuard site and via YouTube are very helpful - the screen for set-up and adding additional features are lists with checkboxes.  Understand what you click before you do so.

The set-up and additional feature screens are old in design and very granular.  You have to know what you are doing.

Stable - However, you need to add APC/UPC battery back-ups to avoid power outages/surges that will mitigate your time for trouble-shooting post-power outage.

Yes, I had a positive experience with tech support.

I previously used FortiGate. I moved from the FortiGate brand on account of when you turn on all of the FortiGate capabilities (80-C & 90-D), the protection is active but your data speeds drop significantly.  We had a Verizon FiOS fiber optic true gigabit subscription.  I noticed data rate drops as our 3rd party support team also noticed.  Upon system review, the function of the reduced data speeds was the Fortigate capacity.  We were literally locking up where we couldn't communicate. So, I went with the WatchGuard XTM T-70.

Go to the WatchGuard site:

>enter the model and serial number of your device

>That loads the site automatically with the provisioning apps, firmware updates and other system checks relevant for that device

> The set-up is nearly automatic

> Once the firmware is updated, the device reboots

> Drill into the site for additional steps and additional software you can activate - you have to know what they are talking about to understand which checkboxes to click and why.

> You can reference the YouTube "JSCM" for extra support and background helps that go beyond the WatchGuard site. 

No vendor team and no "in-house" beside myself.  We are a company of under 30 people, I am an IT dept/System Engineering staff of 1.

I have far less ( 50-75%) less admin time trying to figure out why our system is so slow.  That's gone.  The admin screens are informative, especially the Dimension application, reducing your search time for the information you need to assess what your users and network are doing.

If you are experienced, I can recommend the T70 set-up with minimal support and reference.  Since I am relatively new as a systems engineer/IT design, I have had to reference a lot of online sources and hire an expert familiar with the WatchGuard line of products to help shorten my learning curve and get the system up and running quickly.

Yes - SonicWall, Baracuda and Dell.

When considering a solution like this:

> not only putting data security at the top of my list

> user convenience as the second consideration.

If there's anything extra that I have my users do, I have to really look seriously at those trade-offs.

I’m a reseller. The solution is among the top-three solutions in our portfolio.

WebBlocker, because it has the best URL category database ever.

Make WatchGuard Firebox capable of integrating with third-party vendors like FireMon, Splunk, Tenable, etc.

No issues with stability.

Excellent.

Easy.

Cheap.

I rate it 10 out of 10 because it is easy to deploy and use, the best of breed in the UTM firewall concept, creating the best UTM secure platform ever.

It's easy to use.