TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers vs. Sophos UTM

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AThe Cisco Catalyst 9800-80 is a modular wireless controller with optional 100 Gigabit Ethernet (G) modular uplinks boasting seamless software updates for large enterprises and campuses, and security with ETA and SD-Access.N/A

    Sophos UTM

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ASophos UTM provides core firewall features, plus sandboxing and AI threat detection for advanced network security. It has customizable deployment options.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSophos UTM
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSophos UTM
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—t2.small - $0.123 - Total / hr m3.medium - $0.417 - Total / hr m3.large - $0.883 - Total / hr m3.xlarge - $1.366 - Total / hr m3.2xlarge- $1.982 - Total / hr c3.large - $0.555 - Total / hr c3.xlarge - $1.11 - Total / hr c3.2xlarge - $1.72 - Total / hr c3.4xlarge - $2.59 - Total / hr c3.8xlarge - $3.68 - Total / hr c4.large - $0.55 - Total / hr c4.xlarge - $1.099 - Total / hr c4.2xlarge - $1.698 - Total / hr c4.4xlarge - $2.546 - Total / hr c4.8xlarge - $3.841 - Total / hr m4.large - $0.868 - Total / hr m4.xlarge - $1.365 - Total / hr m4.2xlarge- $1.931 - Total / hr
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSophos UTM
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Sophos
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    103 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    92 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    101 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    76 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    83 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSophos UTM
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers and Sophos UTM
    Feature
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers
    -
    Ratings
    Sophos UTM
    9.3
    1 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSophos UTM
    Small Businesses
    WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
    Score9.1 out of 10
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSophos UTM
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (109 ratings)
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    8.9
    (107 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.7
    (108 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.5
    (3 ratings)
    7.9
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless ControllersSophos UTM
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Well suited for most of our customer base because it is a versatile, scalable, large multi-campus organizations. Not so: Brandish deployments where there's a much more simplified feature set needed. So where we can basically rely on Meraki as a cloud base with easier to deploy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    UTM works great if you want a solid, obvious firewall. There's not a lot of second-guessing as to what you are about to do with every change you make. If you incorporate their wireless access points and RED (remote ethernet device) for remote users or small offices, it's considerably much easier to set up than other comparable solutions. If you are looking to manage your firewalls via the cloud, you are out of luck.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • I think the updates are great. ISSU upgrading code is fantastic. I think the speed with which CAPWAP converges or reconverges, I think the redundancy mechanisms for roaming APs to other controllers is very good. I think overall, getting away from more of a monolithic processor where subprocesses handle what they call the WNCD tasks, I think fundamentally is an improvement in performance.
    • The radioactive tracing, all of the troubleshooting and all of the logging and all of the importing and exporting features for logging and analytics within the controller itself is really, really good compared to the predecessor AireOS.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    • Firewall Protection. The protection is unmatched, setup it a little daunting, but once set up it pretty much runs itself.
    • Site-to-site VPN. Super easy to deploy so we are able to network all our sites together.
    • The DHCP server function is actually really nice, I prefer using it over the traditional way of using a DC for DHCP.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • The biggest issues we have had have been software related. Requiring code upgrades or reloads to fix an unfixable problem.
    • Some of the troubleshooting utilities aren't perfectly clear as to what theyre doing or how to set them up or what to expect results wise or resource wise.
    • I think there is a lack of filtering in certain displays where you cannot use the "contains" option for certain device type filtering. But those options should be universal in all views.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    • Better standard support, it used to be great, now, not so much (for paying customers, that only aquired the Hardware)
    • Better wireless solution, there is always room for that, now that everybody needs robust wifi, even at home!
    • Faster and more robust wireless Access Points, or different vendor-like compatibility.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    Despite common software and hardware issues this is still the best product on the market for large scale enterprise deployments. Cisco has worked with us extensively to reduce the amount of bugs in every iteration however new bugs are introduced or new incompatibilities always arise with major releases. Thus, while I'm hesitant to recommend the product it's still much better than all the other competitors such as Aruba and Juniper in the WIFi space. There is also extensive integration with DNAC/Catalyst Center and ISE in an SDA deployment. Recently there has been a number of critical issues with the controller software and Cisco has proved themselves to be incapable of timely troubleshooting and diagnosis. This has reduced our confidence in the product and it's current and future stability and maintainability. At it's current state the product is taking up too much of our engineering resources to maintain despite also paying for premium support from Cisco. As such I have reduced by rating as we are likely to look at alternative vendors for our long-term wireless management solution
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    It's not simple, but this is the result of being very deeply configurable
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    The interface is no non-sense and easy to understand. No need for any consultants to help implement this solution. The performance is consistent and solid. Paired with a good amount of firmware and definitions, it's hard to find any fault in this product. It's interoperability with other Sophos products make a compelling argument to invest in more Sophos products.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    Honestly, in the six years that we've been using it, we've had one, I would say show stopping event. There was an issue with in an HA setup they would every so often when rebooted lose all configuration. So that was a bit disappointing, required quite a few hours to resolve, but Cisco had to fix very quickly and once we implemented that, we've not had any further additional issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cisco
    We have been using the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers for over 2 years and the whole system has been very stable. We currently run them in HA and have found when this has been activated (due to power issues etc.) the units change roles seamlessly, minimising the downtime to almost nothing. Except when we have had major issues, our wireless networks have a solid uptime and keeps our whole borough up 24/7 without problems.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    the overall support on the 9800 Wireless lan controller is good. Wireless issues are sometimes hard to troubleshoot since it's the RF that make it complex and the diversity in clients and requirements. The engineers do a good job in understanding the scope and issue, altough not all issues can be solved
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    I find the support fair. The wait can be frustrating when dealing with fire. The pandemic has not helped with this. Although the wait can be long, the support reps are knowledgeable and was able to resolve the issues I was facing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    You need to understand wifi basics
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    Ubiquiti WLAN is very much a consumer platform. It is not production ready, it is buggy, it has issues. It is cheaper than Cisco, but you get what you pay for. Aruba doesn't integrate nicely with our existing largely Cisco based networks, so when time came to replace AireOS, the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers came out on top.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    I would rate Sophos second on this list right below Webroot. Webroot has an easier user interface and policy builder. However, Sophos would be on top of its UI would be improved. I would rank CrowStrike third and McAfee last. Sophos is great for complex environments that have multiple needs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    There are different vesrions for different requirements, there's HA as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • Positive impacts, yeah, is good to have a central location to control all these profiles for different countries and locations. And the drawback, like I said to you really because of the too many integrations that have a dependency on the software version. For example, Cisco ONE for Access have certain software that can run through and then this scatter center need to make sure it's working with the others APS version that is currently working. And we also, the Cisco Catalyst Center also have some kind another version of software that you need to support this controller. So it's like two tier three tiers of the software version that we need to match. Then only it can work.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sophos
    • Sophos has provided a secure Firewall for us.
    • Integration with Sophos Central makes it easier to manage both.
    • Site to site VPN Failover groups has caused more trouble than it's worth.
    • High availability doesn't recognize when you are restarting for an update.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots