TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs. Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

    Score9.6 out of 10
    N/ABarracuda CloudGen Firewalls provides a wide range of security and connectivity features, including web filtering, NAC and SSL VPN and other features for remote access, as well as protection as edge devices and IoT security.N/A

    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ACisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the core OS for the ASA suite. It provides firewall functionality, as well as integration with context-specific Cisco security modules. It is scaled for enterprise-level traffic and connections.N/A
    Pricing
    Barracuda CloudGen FirewallCisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Barracuda CloudGen FirewallCisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsBarracuda offers prospective buyers a build and quote tool on their website.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Barracuda CloudGen FirewallCisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Considered Both Products
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    Chose Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Our Cisco firewall was always difficult to make any changes against. It had no user-friendly GUI interface. We were calling technical support most of the time whenever we needed to make any changes. The Barracuda CloudGen Firewall has a GUI interface which we are looking …
    Incentivized
    Chose Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    There really is no comparison. Juniper and Sonicwall are the closest competitors, however, in terms of features versus price Barracuda wins every time. Cisco does not allow the ASA to do certain things it should be allowed to do, it is design flaws but they have no intention of …
    Incentivized
    Chose Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    We used a much alder Cisco ASA router that was chocking our bandwidth and it couldn’t really be compared. It was clunky and horrible at best. Our WatchGuard was overly complicated and difficult to manage and required a version matching thick client installed locally to manage …
    Incentivized
    Chose Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    What sold us on Barracuda was the ease of use, the price based on number of features, and their excellent support. We cannot say enough good about the support Barracuda provides.
    Incentivized
    Chose Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Barracuda, much like the others, has a lot to learn in order to master for quick deployment and management. The biggest separation is the level of customization that is possible. Barracuda support definitely goes above and beyond over the competitors.
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Cisco has made it easy to buy, set up, and manage all of our firewalls with the central FirePower Management Center. All licensing is done via one license portal too. Tech support is standardized for all ASA devices and like support engineers who know the different models to …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    87%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    42 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    42 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    9 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    41 Answers
    Features
    Barracuda CloudGen FirewallCisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Barracuda CloudGen Firewall and Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Feature
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    9.5
    11 Ratings
    10% above category average
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    8.9
    50 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Identification Technologies9.710 Ratings7.932 Ratings
    Visualization Tools8.510 Ratings7.931 Ratings
    Content Inspection9.49 Ratings8.433 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls9.810 Ratings8.446 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP9.611 Ratings8.448 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console9.611 Ratings9.049 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging9.411 Ratings8.949 Ratings
    VPN9.710 Ratings10.049 Ratings
    High Availability9.99 Ratings9.649 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection9.88 Ratings10.046 Ratings
    Proxy Server9.04 Ratings9.032 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Barracuda CloudGen FirewallCisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Small Businesses
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.4 out of 10
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Barracuda CloudGen FirewallCisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.9
    (15 ratings)
    9.0
    (88 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.1
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    5.5
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.0
    (4 ratings)
    8.7
    (8 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Barracuda CloudGen FirewallCisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    I would say a small business with a basic firewall and security needs would be a perfect fit for the Barracuda CloudGen firewall. I know that they soon end up leaving the NG models and are moving forward with the F series firewall. I think the F series is a much more difficult to manage device and doesn’t offer simplistic configuration or use and lacks cloud control so I don’t understand the move on Barracuda’s part to nix a great easy to manage the firewall. I do think that the NG line is maybe too simple for bigger businesses and would lack some main features that they would require.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Cisco ASA's are great for internal network connected access between a firewall and the central management server. And, for complex networks where high security requirements with overly strict compliance are necessary. For networks with limited connectivity to the core or for poor network connectivity these are not the best solution. There are other more stand-alone firewall's that do this better. These firewall's are a little more complex to set up to start with so significant knowledge of these devices is required to set them up and ensure they are best practice installed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    • The management software is excellent. It make it much easier to manage the firewalls than some of the other vendors.
    • Watching real-time traffic is easy to do when trying to troubleshoot a users issues getting to a particular service.
    • Support from Barracuda has been excellent. We rate their phone and online remote support as being the best in the business.
    • We like the QoS and Traffic shaping of the NG Firewalls. They help is manage our limited bandwidth, so that business critical resources are available over lesser critical resources.
    • Integration with Active Directory makes it easy to identify users activities in logs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • ASA is our VPN concentrator. The client and server are very stable and very easy to use
    • ASA also offers Intrusion Prevention, to an extent. This is also very useful for an improved security posture for a small company
    • ASA allowed us to scale very quickly. We could onboard clients, partners, and consultants and give them a great onboarding experience as well
    • Administrative costs with ASA are low. It's very easy to administer.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    • Very complex and steep learning curve to get up to speed.
    • Multiple ways to configure for the same service or feature. Takes time to determine "your" customized build.
    • Interface can sometimes be clunky when trying to determine how it's organized or arranged. Again, steep learning curve.
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • The ASDM software is at times a nightmare to install because of different java versions[.]
    • [The firewall] could do with a power button, just to be able to do a hard reboot when needed[.]
    • It would be nice to manage the firewall via the web on port 443[.]
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    To be honest there has been now great products out in the market compared to Cisco ASA. I beleieve Cisco has to do a lot of improvement in this area. The other defeiniete factors is the cost when it comes to renewals which is always a premium on Cisco products
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    Easy enough to use and configure using the management UI. Reporting from the web filter is a little clunky, and not very user friendly. To be perfectly honest, once it's set up and running, there isn't a lot to do from the day-to-day side of things, which is not a bad thing.
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    I generally have not noticed the outages, however since it's a machine it can malfunction, we need to implement the firewall infrastructure in such a way that it is highly available with device failure, region failure etc. Else any solution will be having the issues if they are not build with resiliency.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    I could go on and on about how good Barracuda's support really is. I have yet to have a problem they didn't help me fix and I always learn something when talking with them. The story that best describes my overall experience with Barracuda's support is this: When I first put in the xSeries they had a problem with a policy route. There was a bug in the code and in the one situation I was it, it just would not work. I went up the levels of support and they couldn't fix it. Well, next thing I know I am on the phone with 2 of the guys that programmed the thing and they work out the solution in no time and get me going. That is support. That is what I have come to expect from Barracuda. If the tech on the phone doesn't know the answer, they do not stop until they find it. Grant it, I also have to admit I do not call support with every problem, I try to work it out on my own first as that is how I learn best, so when I do call support it is going to be complicated.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    The support is usually very good and gets back to you very quickly. However I had some instances of when two engineers will give me wildly different answers to what I thought was a simple question. Overall however I do rate the support highly and they are generally always very good.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    It was quite a good one, how ever requires an expertise to deploy hence the SMB segment would be finding it difficult to implement this product. The one good reason is that there are lot of ASA certified engineers in compared to the other certified engineers. Hence this resembles positively on the deployment as you have quite a lot of experienced engineer on your deployment
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    Our Cisco firewall was always difficult to make any changes against. It had no user-friendly GUI interface. We were calling technical support most of the time whenever we needed to make any changes. The Barracuda CloudGen Firewall has a GUI interface which we are looking forward to getting better acquainted with as we move off of our old Cisco. Of course, Barracuda's technical support is always there and is top notch!
    Read full review
    Cisco
    We were using [pfSense] before in our environment but we regularly facing difficulties over it due to software bugs & downtime. After implementing Cisco ASA, it resolved our availability issue & provides us a reliable solution with the best security features & easy to understand GUI.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Barracuda Networks Inc.
    • We saved multiple thousands of dollars the first year out with the firewall in maintenance fees. We paid for the firewall and 3 years of service and still saved money.
    • The ease of management allows me to do my job more efficiently. I save a lot of time when doing my day to day job because I can get to my firewall virtually anywhere.
    • I feel a lot safer and my business more secure knowing that I have configured things the way they need to be and it was simple and not overly complicated.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • Most network engineers have worked with ASA, so there is no need for re-training when adding or turning over staff
    • Current configs from older devices plug in easily, and are operational on larger devices if an upgrade is required
    • Many support options available
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshot