SmoothWall Alternatives? - Been asked to do an "Procurement Exercise"

[DGardiner]

Our Smoothwall is up for renewal this year and the licence changes from Device to User have left a bad taste with the management in that we were been strong armed into early signup to keep our licensing as device based for the next 3 years if we sign up 4 months earlier than needed to "lock in" this pricing - without any figures to show the new pricing will be good or bad for us - the Principal Finance Officer will not take a gamble on this and wants figures that they don't have?

 

Now i have no real wish to switch away from smooth wall as it accommodated our needs and the support when it mattered was amazing, but i am now in the position of finding alternatives to present to the finance committee along side the smooth wall proposal and would like some recommendations on suitable competitors.

 

Barracuda Networks have been on the phone and i have scheduled a demo but if anyone has any others to throw in the mix i would appreciate it a lot.

[Snuffkins]

Are you just using it as a filter? Or do you use it to publish services and as a firewall as well?

 

We did this before the summer. We ended up going with a couple of Cyberoam appliances. They've done everything we've needed so far and we haven't had any issues with them. Certainly worth looking at as an alternative. We looked at Palo Alto and a few others as well.

[Steve21]

Out of curiosity who did your Barracuda pricing?

 

Thanks,

Steve

[DGardiner]

Are you just using it as a filter? Or do you use it to publish services and as a firewall as well?

 

We did this before the summer. We ended up going with a couple of Cyberoam appliances. They've done everything we've needed so far and we haven't had any issues with them. Certainly worth looking at as an alternative. We looked at Palo Alto and a few others as well.

 

 

we don't publish services currently, but yeah filtering/firewall and a decent bandwidth management - the new smooth wall module was something i was really looking forward to

 

Out of curiosity who did your Barracuda pricing?

 

Thanks,

Steve

 

no idea, i got a call out of the blue yesterday and booked in some demo? i can't recall the company but i was told i would receive details in a few days - she just said she was from barracuda networks so i assume the company itself. no pricing yet though.

Edited March 18, 2015 by DGardiner

[Steve21]

Ah ok ty

[Sagima]

we don't publish services currently, but yeah filtering/firewall and a decent bandwidth management - the new smooth wall module was something i was really looking forward to

 

 

 

no idea, i got a call out of the blue yesterday and booked in some demo? i can't recall the company but i was told i would receive details in a few days - she just said she was from barracuda networks so i assume the company itself. no pricing yet though.

 

I do seem to get a fair number of people calling me claiming to be from Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, Smart etc and on talking to them I discover they are actually just a reseller

We nee to look at replacing our Smoothwall next year. We've not really gelled in the same way we did with ISA/TMG. There won't be any tears shed when it goes but it has done it's job over the last few years even though noone really likes using it I can't fault its function.

[TechieWils]

Skip Palo Alto, especially if your Co-managed. Going from Smoothwall at my old place to Palo Alto I just dislike it and how so and fussy the system is as a whole. Plus like I said Co-managed is awful I'd rather have it all under my grubby mitts.

[Oaktech]

Where shall we start...

 

Lightspeed,

Sophos UTM,

Palo Alto

iBoss,

Fortigate,

TMG (although I wouldn't recommend it)

Watchguard

Sonicwall

Juniper

Cisco

Checkpoint...

 

My preference is for Palo Alto, but its overkill for most situations. For a smaller deployment the Sophos solution is often competitive as is the iBoss.

[DGardiner]

I do seem to get a fair number of people calling me claiming to be from Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, Smart etc and on talking to them I discover they are actually just a reseller

We nee to look at replacing our Smoothwall next year. We've not really gelled in the same way we did with ISA/TMG. There won't be any tears shed when it goes but it has done it's job over the last few years even though noone really likes using it I can't fault its function.

 

i had a TMG for a year before smooth wall and i hated it, everything was so much effort. though we got by i just found the filter to be lacking a lot

 

 

Where shall we start...

 

Lightspeed,

Sophos UTM,

Palo Alto

iBoss,

Fortigate,

TMG (although I wouldn't recommend it)

Watchguard

Sonicwall

Juniper

Cisco

Checkpoint...

 

My preference is for Palo Alto, but its overkill for most situations. For a smaller deployment the Sophos solution is often competitive as is the iBoss.

 

 

Thanks for that, got some work to do now:P!

 

We do run 3 schools and and office block through it which will be 4 schools and an office block by september!

[Oaktech]

i had a TMG for a year before smooth wall and i hated it, everything was so much effort. though we got by i just found the filter to be lacking a lot

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for that, got some work to do now:P!

 

We do run 3 schools and and office block through it which will be 4 schools and an office block by september!

 

You're welcome!

 

For a big site and possibly multiple domains I would certainly be looking at the Palo Alto, the Fortigate or the Lightspeed - It's worth noting what a lot of the managed service providers are using, as they tend to use efficient scalable solutions, and are not known for choosing products that make their life difficult!

[dhicks]

Our Smoothwall is up for renewal this year

 

We have a Lightspeed filtering solution that's up for renewal, too - we might keep it, or we might go with something else if the price is better. I had a look at Bloxx the other day - similar product, maybe a bit cheaper. As pointed out above, a solution provided by your ISP might be the way to go - I would like to have our filtering hardware taken care of by our ISP, no local device to worry about, but of course we would want to retain full control over settings and filtering options. SchoolsBroadband offer Lightspeed as part of an all-in-one connection-with-filtering option, if that's any help.

[Sagima]

We have a Lightspeed filtering solution that's up for renewal, too - we might keep it, or we might go with something else if the price is better. I had a look at Bloxx the other day - similar product, maybe a bit cheaper. As pointed out above, a solution provided by your ISP might be the way to go - I would like to have our filtering hardware taken care of by our ISP, no local device to worry about, but of course we would want to retain full control over settings and filtering options. SchoolsBroadband offer Lightspeed as part of an all-in-one connection-with-filtering option, if that's any help.

 

We looked a bloxx a couple of years ago and decided that mainly they were too expensive for what they were offeringbut we really wanted an all in one. They then called me almost every week with a new offer for months - eventually getting down to half the original quote. Despite me telling them everytime I wasn't interested it took me shouting down the phone at them "Stop calling me! Stop calling me!" until they stopped. Half-price should have made me more willing to speak with them but it just annoyed me that they were trying to overcharge me in the first place.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Sagima

[DGardiner]

Is the new licensing for smoothwall Per Concurrent user or possible users all together?

 

I'm looking at needing like 1500 if the later :/ probably not even half that if the former... got quite a few calls made today so hopefully some quotes follow

[DGardiner]

Altinet seem to be the people who contacted me... site had malware... nice first impressions!

[Asgard]

We ran a PoC to replace our Microsoft TMG boxes ( we do web publishing as well)

 

Smoothwall

Palo Alto

Fortinet

Sophos UTM

 

Sophos UTM won hands down... They also now own Cyberoam and will be integrating the tech into the UTMs

 

We have 1300ish students and 260ish staff - 1400 college devices and about 400 concurrent BYOD sessions and it handles it with ease.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Asgard

[DGardiner]

We ran a PoC to replace our Microsoft TMG boxes ( we do web publishing as well)

 

Smoothwall

Palo Alto

Fortinet

Sophos UTM

 

Sophos UTM won hands down... They also now own Cyberoam and will be integrating the tech into the UTMs

 

We have 1300ish students and 260ish staff - 1400 college devices and about 400 concurrent BYOD sessions and it handles it with ease.

 

 

I've filled out every company contact/quote request this afternoon in this thread - only one to hit me up so far is palo alto. anything the sophos offering had that made it hands down better?

[Asgard]

It's a lot easier to navigate than the Palo Alto and it seemed to handle load a lot better.

 

It didn't even blink when we turned full email scanning on.

[spc-rocket]

Hi,

 

I've heard good things about the sophos UTM as well. May be worth calling them to find out, from what i recall about the concurrent connections (yes this is what i asked them as well) is that it uses the 7 days i.e. how may unique users had browsed through the UTM device in a 7 day period. This is how they explained it to me. They do have the threshold where prices start to be discounted i.e. 1000 users, 1500 users, 2500 users etc. It may be worth talking to a reseller like foursys - they are really good and will provide you with all the info on the sophos UTM etc.

 

Ash.

[MrKJLS]

I've heard good things about Kerio Control

[Oaktech]

Having thought about it for some time, I should add a caveat to my support for the Palo Alto:

 

Whichever one you look at and decide the spec of fits your needs. Get the next one up.

 

We were going to get the 2020, until we played with one and realised that it was going to take full minutes to apply changes - we went with the 3020 in the end and it was brilliant.

[caffrey]

Had an email from Lightspeed the other day and they are integrating a Firewall soon which was a deal breaker at the time plus the fact the schools network infrastructure needed a overhaul to install it

[Jose]

Untangle is a great product,

 

does everything Smoothwall can do,

 

https://www.untangle.com/shop/nonprofit-complete

[RabbieBurns]

We recently went through a review process for replacing our 4 year old Fortinet UTM.

 

We PoC a fair few of the big vendors mentioned in this thread, as well as a small local player, and we ended up refreshing the Fortinet hardware.

 

We have been BYO multi device multi OS (2000+ users, 2000+ devcies, 1GB Internet) for a while now and Radius SSO was a key component that not all of them did.

[NeustroEduIT_Christine]

Hello,

If you're still looking into alternative's we can arrange an iboss webex and then potentially a free POC trial with no commitments required from the School? Please don't hesitate to PM me if you would like more information.

Many Thanks,

Christine

[cpjitservices]

PfSense a good alternative