Smoothwall SWG vs. Zscaler Internet Access

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.

Incentivized

Zscaler Internet Access is an internet tunnel that pairs with the network adapter to secure traffic between servers and workstations. It can refresh policies automatically and log intrusions but does not broadcast intrusions. Cloud-based Zscaler Internet Access is easy to deploy and scale, with no hardware or software needed. In a hybrid model, Zscaler Internet Access performs some security functions on-premises and others in the cloud, allowing organizations to keep infrastructure. There is a slight learning curve from VPN and appliance architecture to this paradigm.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Zscaler completely moved away from the traditional firewall setup to a hosted firewall solution. We don't have to worry about the hardware failing or maintaining it as part of our service plan compared to our on-premise firewall. Zscaler has a lot of data centres across the world where they are maintaining their solutions so mobile consultants will always be close to one of their data centres.
• Rolling out Zscaler solutions to our end customers' computers is actually pretty easy and hassle-free. As part of onboarding of new employees we can set up the Zscaler solution and push it to our end users' machines and get them connected to the cloud solutions.
• Zscaler does proper market research on the latest emerging threats and they keep their firewall patched and updated to the latest versions so the security team does not have to worry about keeping the firewall updated.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Chat or email support is not available. Only option is to either call them or raise a ticket by logging into their website.
• Pricing is not transparent and quote based.
• Access to websites is a little too slow with Zscaler monitoring on.

Incentivized

The overall conclusion of the review is good. Zscalar have some limitations which will surely resolved in the updates provided by company from time to time. The best part is that it doesnt reduce the speed of internet.

Incentivized

Zscaler is a mandatory solution required by almost every large organization with a workforce working remotely or using cloud-based apps. Its deployment is relatively easy and it keeps on working in the background without actively bothering the user. Apart from a few weird messages which a user is unable to comprehend, Zscaler is able to provide fast and safe access to the internet and other external applications.

Incentivized

I cannot give a fair rating for this as I have not had to contact Zscaler support. There was one time we had to contact them because we needed to check if they were having issues on their end. Our ISP was actually the problem but support seemed very friendly.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Zscaler Intenet Access proved to be superior and the difference for us was the speed of policy delivery since your policy is applied in a web console and is effective in a matter of seconds. Another point to congratulate the solution is its compatibility with different platforms (macOS, Linux, Windows, Android, and iOS).

• 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.

Incentivized

• ROI is there and it is safeguarding the data and user access to net.
• Being a cloud based can be scaled up when required.
• Third parties can be allowed based on the company IT policies (Clients or Vendors etc.) for business perspective.

Incentivized