Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs Smoothwall SWG

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Defense & Space Company, 201-500 employees

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Smoothwall SWG is very suitable in companies where there is a lot of staff and power to distribute the bandwidth by areas and give priority to the staff that requires better service. It's also well suited for business that require protection of their data and services as it is constantly monitoring the network and does not let them enter dangerous sites.

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germary zambrano

jefe del departamento de informatica

ministerio de educacionComputer & Network Security, 1-10 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Smoothwall SWG

Identification Technologies

Visualization Tools

Content Inspection

Policy-based Controls

Active Directory and LDAP

Firewall Management Console

Reporting and Logging

VPN

High Availability

Stateful Inspection

Proxy Server

Pros

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.

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Verified User

Project Manager in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 201-500 employees

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Real-time IP filtering is very favorable. That helps limit and restrict prohibited content.
Elaboration of personalized reports of the activities or pages that users visit to make new blocking rules to the pages most visited by users that may damage the functioning of the servers.

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germary zambrano

jefe del departamento de informatica

ministerio de educacionComputer & Network Security, 1-10 employees

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Cons

Not come across any yet! A nice-to-have could be a mobile app which allows you to monitor it on your phone or mobile device.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Education Management Company, 1001-5000 employees

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It is necessary for them to have more material or a community that can help expand knowledge about this software so users can use 100% of their tools.

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germary zambrano

jefe del departamento de informatica

ministerio de educacionComputer & Network Security, 1-10 employees

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Usability

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall 5.5

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Education Management Company, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall 8.4

Based on 6 answers

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.

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Paul Metzger

Senior Network Engineer

Pine Belt Mental HealthHospital & Health Care, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

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!

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Jay Glatt

Vice President of IT

GiumarraFood & Beverages, 201-500 employees

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Smoothwall SWG has many tools similar to pfSense but in my opinion I like the graphical environment of smoothwall swg more. It is more didactic and simple to use for new users. Also pfSense lacks the tools for monitoring in real time and the elaboration of reports that helps to perform statistics on sites visited.

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germary zambrano

jefe del departamento de informatica

ministerio de educacionComputer & Network Security, 1-10 employees

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Return on Investment

Positive: highly customizable and can control the entire network from one location.
Positive: all services and processes work very well and are reliable.
Positive: MSPs looking to deploy and control numerous firewalls with ease, this is hands down the best product.
Negative: very high learning curve, definitely not a one-and-done firewall. Requires a lot of dedicated time to get the machine running the way you want.

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Derek Schroeder

Service Manager

Accellis Technology GroupInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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This software helps a lot and is very economical, since it is free and it can be installed in equipment with low performance. That is of importance to companies with little budget or who are just starting out in the market.

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germary zambrano

jefe del departamento de informatica

ministerio de educacionComputer & Network Security, 1-10 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Rating Summary

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Smoothwall SWG

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Smoothwall SWG

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall

Smoothwall SWG

Barracuda CloudGen Firewall vs Smoothwall SWG