F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs. SonicWall VPN Clients

I think that the platform is well suited to many Remote Access VPN solutions, but I also think there is a lot of room for improvement on the backend. If you are hoping to deploy your APM solution across many different datacenters or colos, it may not be the best choice for the final solution.

Incentivized

If your organization has a full-time IT department or support staff, SonicWall VPN Clients might be a good fit. Configuration can be challenging if you're a small business office manager who HAPPENS to take care of IT (as in my case). Still, once the SonicWall VPN Clients is configured, it works pretty well and at minimal ongoing cost. We opted for extended support from the manufacturer just in case we run into issues that we can't address internally.

Incentivized

• SAML 2.0 identity federation support.
• Integrates with third-party SSO solutions.
• Bridging modern authentication and authorization (SAML, OAuth/OIDC) and classic authentication and authorization methods.
• Policy routing

Incentivized

• Exceptional security
• Relatively easy configuration

Incentivized

• UI/UX can be quick and modern.
• The application hosting is not one-click.
• You cannot observer the changes done for external users internally.

Incentivized

• Connections could be more stable
• Difficult to use for tech-challenged end-users

Incentivized

Phone support has been very reliable and useful, but there have been times when better support documentation would have made that call unnecessary. I like to tackle problems internally if I can, as it tends to save time and usually money. The SonicWall VPN Clients system seems to be pretty locked down as far as being accessible to self-manage.

Incentivized

It is open platform so support is not good and than F5 and features visibility as not good as F5. F5 Set up and easy to use to admin console. Also have more feature visibility for load balancing, web server accelerator, application server ddos protection and WAF. F5 more efficient to handle concurrent request.

Incentivized

We started the process of vetting Norton VPN, but since it wasn't available from our preferred vendor, we ended up going with SonicWall VPN Clients by default.

Incentivized

• Great VPN Solution during Covid
• Excellent for remote access related service control and management
• Reasonable ROI, since it is slightly expensive

Incentivized

• ROI is difficult to determine because of the minimal initial cost; that said, now that we've experienced the benefits of having secure VPN access, we couldn't imagine not having it.
• Users have much greater flexibility now that specific legacy systems are accessible from places other than the office.

Incentivized