Smoothwall alternatives

[ITGURU]

Switched to censornet several years ago and been 100% reliable. cloud based web filtering with 2 x VM's on site for authentication load balanced/redundancy. No need for an appliance between LAN and WAN so direct connection if all else fails.

[Opendium_Steve]

Took a quick look at the website, but couldnt see any screenshots or pictures of the apliances. It would be good to have some more info as I guess there are a few of us looking for reasonably costed Smoothwall alternatives.

 

 

There are a few screen-shots and videos in the documentation, but you're right that we don't have much of that on the sales side - I'll feed that comment back. I will say that screen shots don't really do the products justice because we're more focussed on getting things working well than flashy graphs and dials. Here are a few links that you might want to have a quick flick through though, and we're always very happy to give you a demo and/or chat through your requirements on the phone. We don't do hard sell - we'll be the first to tell you if you need something we can't do, but we do take note of feedback from both customers and non-customers alike and use it to drive the direction of our products.

 

https://www.opendium.com/howtos/audit-what-images-your-users-are-viewing

https://www.opendium.com/howtos/using-policy-modelling-reports

[Primus]

There are a few screen-shots and videos in the documentation, but you're right that we don't have much of that on the sales side - I'll feed that comment back. I will say that screen shots don't really do the products justice because we're more focussed on getting things working well than flashy graphs and dials. Here are a few links that you might want to have a quick flick through though, and we're always very happy to give you a demo and/or chat through your requirements on the phone. We don't do hard sell - we'll be the first to tell you if you need something we can't do, but we do take note of feedback from both customers and non-customers alike and use it to drive the direction of our products.

 

https://www.opendium.com/howtos/audit-what-images-your-users-are-viewing

https://www.opendium.com/howtos/using-policy-modelling-reports

 

I'm sure the product is really good but the interface looks very very dated.

[supportman]

I'm sure the product is really good but the interface looks very very dated.

I was going to say exactly the same thing! Looks like it uses standard form input fields without any css. Rather web 1.0....

 

I'd love to see new entrants and alternatives in the school filter field but a nice clean modern interface is a must really. Especially for a product we would sign up for 3 or 5 years.

[neonetman]

Hi @neonetman

 

we are exclusively a Sophos XG house in terms of our schools internet and filtering offer. If you'd like any detailed product info, webex etc, then I'd be happy to arrange this.

 

Ref Computer experts comments, we have many happy customer who made the change from SG To XG. There is a change in approach, and if you're used to something, change is often bumpy. I think because we mainly offer a managed service, where we manage and make changes on the customers behalf (but also provide training and enable customers to make their own changes where comfortable) transition is usually pretty painless (whether this is from SG to XG or from another vendor to Sophos)

 

cheers

 

Lee

 

Thanks Lee,

 

I'm very familiar with both Sophos UTM and SG (having used both in previous roles, and at home) so I envisage the changeover on a technical level will be reasonably smooth. I plan to sell it to SLT based on not just having ther same features, but also the client VPN, mail spoam filtering and encrypted emails as a massive plus - plus the ability to manage their own quarantine. I would also aim to put an iView installation in for the better reporting

[supportman]

I just had a seminar on fortigate, looks like stateful inspection is the way to go in the future. Not having a proxy server and doing authentication with a client on the DC seems a great idea.

 

I was quite impressed, although their interface was also quite dated!

[Opendium_Steve]

I'm sure the product is really good but the interface looks very very dated.

 

We're in the process of doing a redesign from the ground up at the moment to address this. But how important this is to you depends on whether you prioritise things working well or whizzy dials and graphs

[Primus]

We're in the process of doing a redesign from the ground up at the moment to address this. But how important this is to you depends on whether you prioritise things working well or whizzy dials and graphs

 

A modern UI shows the product is cared for and actively developed over time - it might seem superficial but if you've let your UI languish then I'd be wondering what else you'd let languish.

 

A modern UI also follows how other products work, the more consistency in look and feel the easier it is to learn a new product - it lowers the barrier to changing product.

[Opendium_Steve]

A modern UI shows the product is cared for and actively developed over time - it might seem superficial but if you've let your UI languish then I'd be wondering what else you'd let languish.

 

A modern UI also follows how other products work, the more consistency in look and feel the easier it is to learn a new product - it lowers the barrier to changing product.

 

 

I don't disagree that it lowers the barrier to changing product, and I'm not really wanting to get into an argument about what is worth investing resources into, but: There are a number of things that are important about a UTM appliance, things that come to mind are:

• General feature set (does it do what you fundamentally need it to do?)
  
• Ease of use (which is, in part, an aspect of the UI)
  
• Attractiveness of the UI
  
• Performance
  
• Compatibility
  
• Reliability
  
• Technical support
  
• Openness and honesty
  

 

All of these are important, but there are only so many hours in the day. It's true that we've allowed the UI to slip a bit, which is one of the reasons we're in the middle of a big redesign at the moment for our next generation release. The reasons for letting the UI slip a little are largely because we've spent a lot of resources on the other points, especially the technical support (you will *always* get to talk to someone technical when you call for support, as a relatively small company we make sure you can talk directly to the developers if you need to, and the vast majority of issues are resolved on the spot while you're on the phone).

 

There are frequent complaints on these forums about the quality of support, reliability, etc for many other vendors, so whilst I can't claim that we've got the balance perfect, I come back to: there are only so many hours in the day, which things are the most important to you? - none of the vendors have a perfect score. We very much feel that whilst the UI is often instrumental in making a sale, it is by no means the most important part of the package you are buying. We have a very high customer retention rate, and we strongly believe that this is largely because the things we concentrate on are the things that are important to a school in the long term.

 

Fundamentally, the UI design is only the most important aspect of a product when making a sale and for the first couple of months. But to reiterate: we are actively addressing this at the moment.

[Primus]

I don't disagree that it lowers the barrier to changing product, and I'm not really wanting to get into an argument about what is worth investing resources into, but: There are a number of things that are important about a UTM appliance, things that come to mind are:

• General feature set (does it do what you fundamentally need it to do?)
  
• Ease of use (which is, in part, an aspect of the UI)
  
• Attractiveness of the UI
  
• Performance
  
• Compatibility
  
• Reliability
  
• Technical support
  
• Openness and honesty
  

 

All of these are important, but there are only so many hours in the day. It's true that we've allowed the UI to slip a bit, which is one of the reasons we're in the middle of a big redesign at the moment for our next generation release. The reasons for letting the UI slip a little are largely because we've spent a lot of resources on the other points, especially the technical support (you will *always* get to talk to someone technical when you call for support, as a relatively small company we make sure you can talk directly to the developers if you need to, and the vast majority of issues are resolved on the spot while you're on the phone).

 

There are frequent complaints on these forums about the quality of support, reliability, etc for many other vendors, so whilst I can't claim that we've got the balance perfect, I come back to: there are only so many hours in the day, which things are the most important to you? - none of the vendors have a perfect score. We very much feel that whilst the UI is often instrumental in making a sale, it is by no means the most important part of the package you are buying. We have a very high customer retention rate, and we strongly believe that this is largely because the things we concentrate on are the things that are important to a school in the long term.

 

Fundamentally, the UI design is only the most important aspect of a product when making a sale and for the first couple of months. But to reiterate: we are actively addressing this at the moment.

 

None of that matters if your target market discount your product because it looks ancient and uncared for - I'm very much in your target market and I looked at the screenshots and went "Nope".

 

I'm looking for a fully featured and rounded product, I don't want any part of the product to be subpar.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Primus

[Opendium_Steve]

None of that matters if your target market discount your product because it looks ancient and uncared for

 

Agreed, which is why this is being addressed. This is a thing that is very important for marketing, and not terribly important for long term customers.

 

I'm looking for a fully featured and rounded product, I don't want any part of the product to be subpar.

 

Then I think you are out of luck. Absolutely none of the vendors have a perfect score on all of the points in my list, if you judge a book by its cover you are basically guaranteed that it will be subpar on other aspects instead.

 

That's definitely not to say that a product with a crappy UI is guaranteed to win on every other point, I'm simply stating our position on this: we live in a world of finite resources, some vendors have chosen to expend their resources on the things that will close a sale and let the things that are important to long term costumers slip. We have chosen to do the opposite - yes there are consequences in that this makes it harder to make a sale, but on the other hand our long term customers are very very happy and we make the majority of our sales on recommendation.

 

In any case, you are certainly welcome to say "nope", I'm merely putting this out there for those who aren't happy with the level of support they are currently getting and want to switch to a vendor who has made that their speciality.

[paulkerton]

Fundamentally, the UI design is only the most important aspect of a product when making a sale and for the first couple of months. But to reiterate: we are actively addressing this at the moment.

 

Regardless of your product and your redesign. UI is about usability, so I fundamentally disagree with that thought. The UI is one key part of a whole user experience (UX).

 

If you don't have an enjoyable experience using a product because of a bad user experience, it will damage a product in the long run. Sure, I can do a certain function in a certain product, but if I can't get to that function without it being a horrible process, then that hurts the product in the end. That's the experience.

 

This is why the iPod sold so well. The entire experience was superior to everything out there. It wasn't just the UI which was easy to navigate, but because it was easy to buy music and sync it. It was easy to understand and use once synced. It was easy to interact with through the scroll wheel. It felt good in the hand. It looked good as a piece of hardware. Ironically, its functions were a small part of the product appeal of iPod. Most other competitiors had them absolutely beat on functions that the device was capable of. Do you know what was a better device than the iPod? The Zune HD. But it had a worse experience overall, and now the iPod is the father of the smartphone revolution, and the Zune HD is a punchline in a Marvel movie.

 

UX is imporant, and if it wasn't, all movie websites would still look like this. It functions, after all.

[supportman]

UX is imporant, and if it wasn't, all movie websites would still look like this. It functions, after all.

 

Actually quite a fast and usable site

[paulkerton]

Actually quite a fast and usable site

 

Yes, that's one part of the experience too

If you get to 3 seconds after a click, the vast majority of people are screaming "OH COME ON, LOAD!!"

[Primus]

Agreed, which is why this is being addressed. This is a thing that is very important for marketing, and not terribly important for long term customers.

 

 

 

Then I think you are out of luck. Absolutely none of the vendors have a perfect score on all of the points in my list, if you judge a book by its cover you are basically guaranteed that it will be subpar on other aspects instead.

 

That's definitely not to say that a product with a crappy UI is guaranteed to win on every other point, I'm simply stating our position on this: we live in a world of finite resources, some vendors have chosen to expend their resources on the things that will close a sale and let the things that are important to long term costumers slip. We have chosen to do the opposite - yes there are consequences in that this makes it harder to make a sale, but on the other hand our long term customers are very very happy and we make the majority of our sales on recommendation.

 

In any case, you are certainly welcome to say "nope", I'm merely putting this out there for those who aren't happy with the level of support they are currently getting and want to switch to a vendor who has made that their speciality.

 

Look it's clearly a balance but your UI looks awful. Clearly no product is perfect - I didn't ask for perfect did I? I said I don't want any part to be subpar.

 

You're doing your case no favours by arguing with prospective customers publicly.

[titch]

Can I ask (without derailing the thread) do people that have a "cloud" firewall get it through there ISP or separately?

 

Also are there any technical drawbacks from having a cloud firewall?

[Steve21]

Can I ask (without derailing the thread) do people that have a "cloud" firewall get it through there ISP or separately?

 

Also are there any technical drawbacks from having a cloud firewall?

 

If you mean firewall (rather than filtering), we still have on one site our Grid firewall on-top of our internal firewall/filtering (Same ISP etc). The normal downsides apply to slower fixes/ports opening etc if it's out of your hands. In reality though, how often do you need to change your firewall/ports and does a day or so make a difference?

 

If you're talking filtering, then wouldn't go down that route (especially if another company is managing it), way too many issues with bounce-betweens of who's at fault, when it's fixed etc etc, promises to fix the world, and yet yeah often a terrible output (You can find those stories on edugeek very easily if you know what I mean). Not least that you often want quick fixes, and more options in terms of being able to bypass the filters etc for certain servers/services etc.

 

But obviously this depends heavily on the type of network/usage you're expecting, not used securly, but it definitely seems like a good route for those with Chromebooks etc, but less so for a pc/desktop estate. So again, dependant on situation

 

Steve

[Securly_Chris]

But obviously this depends heavily on the type of network/usage you're expecting, not used securly, but it definitely seems like a good route for those with Chromebooks etc, but less so for a pc/desktop estate. So again, dependant on situation

 

Steve

 

We started out with Chromebooks way back in 2012 but we can now filtered pretty much everything (not sure about smart fridges, but we'll give it a go!). We can filter Windows/Mac workstations in-school or at home same as Chromebooks. We even support Active Directory SSO for Windows domains so you don't need to sign-on to your cloud provider first!

 

Plus you get all the usual benefits of moving from on-prem to cloud, automatic scaling to your bandwidth, no more worrying about running out of disk space for logs or what that blinking red failure light on the front of the box means. We know our customers put a lot of trust in us to provide filtering as a service, so we invest heavily in highly resilient infrastructure, auto-scaling and failover that would be extremely expensive to achieve on premise (think multiple networks, load-balancers, server clusters).

 

Also pleased to say Securly invest heavily in people too, so I work with a great tech team! We'll never pass the buck, even if the fault lies elsewhere we'll always investigate and try to at least give some pointers where to check, as such our support feedback is consistently amongst the highest in the industry!

 

If you ever want to give it a test drive drop me a message and I'll get you setup with a full Securly account free for 30 days.

[Jimmymeer79]

we use McAfee Cloud and an on site Draytek - works really well for us

[Securly_Chris]

we use McAfee Cloud and an on site Draytek - works really well for us

 

+1 Draytek, haven't used them recently but they used to be great value firewall/routers. Used to give these out to home working staff with pre-configured VPN on them. Much easier than messing about with client based VPN back then.