WatchGuard Network Security Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 8.8 out of 10

Score

8.8 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for WatchGuard Network Security are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Quick Escalation Process: Reviewers have appreciated the quick escalation process provided by the product, which has enabled timely resolution of issues and efficient problem-solving. The streamlined escalation procedure has been particularly beneficial during critical situations, ensuring that users receive prompt assistance and support when needed.

Valuable Security Features: Users have found the URL filtering, intrusion prevention, and DOS monitoring features to be valuable in maintaining security and effectively safeguarding their networks from potential threats. These robust security measures have played a crucial role in preventing cyber attacks and ensuring data protection for businesses utilizing the product.

Excellent Customer Support: The excellent support offered by the customer service team has been praised for being helpful, responsive, and consistently providing valuable assistance when needed. Reviewers have highlighted instances where the support team went above and beyond to address queries promptly and offer expert guidance on optimizing the product's performance for specific use cases.

Reviews

528 Reviews

WatchGuard Network Security Good Products Needs Better Pricing

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

October 31, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use WatchGuard Network Security Firewalls and Access Points. It is our first line of defense against malware an network intruders. The firewall also acts as our router and provides DHCP addresses for all end points. All access points are connected to the firewall which acts as the gateway. All access points, and vlans are managed directly from the firewall.

Pros

Access Point Management
DHCP Configuration
VPN Configuration and Management
VLAN Management

Cons

Pricing
Bandwith Reporting
Too many licenses
Complicated Firewall rules

Likelihood to Recommend

Overall WatchGuard Network Security is fairly good. Their hardware is good and works fine. Their software will get the job done, but can be confusing at times. The biggest thing going against them is their price and need for licenses. You are required to have a license for the firewall to work at all and many features you would want to use for the firewall and access points require additional licenses. Additionally for about the same price you can get Fortinet firewalls and access points. Overall I do like WatchGuard Network Security an think they make good products, but for the price I don't think it is worth it. If they were to lower their prices I think they would have a big edge over their competitors.

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

WatchGuard Security Appliances and Ease of Use.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 31, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it for VPN access to the network, and we also use AuthPoint from WatchGuard as 2 Step Authentication for the VPN access. I have multiple WatchGuard Firewalls at many clients. The above is at 1 of my law firms, but most, if not all, clients use VPN to access their network remotely.

Pros

VPN
Blocking unwanted and malicious attacks.
Keeping network segments (VLANs) separate but allowing traffic between them if needed.

Cons

An easier way to view network traffic and being able to search for specific IP addresses.

Likelihood to Recommend

VPN access with two-factor authentication support. Being able to have multiple WAN connections for failover over Easy to setup and troubleshoot issues. Easy to update to the latest firmware.

Jim Brown

CEO in Information Technology at Turner Medical (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

View profile

WatchGuard Network Security - Great overall value excellent support.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 27, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a small non-profit hospital with a main campus and 8 remote group homes. We need to have all group homes have 100% access to resources at our main campus. The group homes have small offices with approximately 10 endpoints. Since the group homes are typical single family residences in suburban neighborhoods, we need a secured WIFI connection. We replaced small consumer based routers with T20-W wireless firewalls. With the secured WIFI coupled with out of the box BOVPN, it is the perfect appliance for the small offices.

Pros

Customer Support
Multiple configuration choices
Consistent updates

Cons

Somewhat confusing UI initially
Some configuration requires WatchGuard Dimension

Likelihood to Recommend

We recently had an issue with our Microsoft patch management that resulted in severely high bandwidth usage. We reached out to Microsoft, for support, which was useless. WatchGuard Network Security helped us create a firewall rule to fix the image the same day. Customer support is US centric and quick to respond. Support team is very friendly and knowledgeable.

Matt Torres

Network Manager in Information Technology at Hacienda Healthcare (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

WatchGuard Network Security Review From a IT Perspective

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 27, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use WatchGuard Network Security to secure our business from outside threats and potential malware or unwanted files. We also recommend WatchGuard Network Security to ALL of our clients. We install and configure a lot of WatchGuard and we never have any issues. This is the baseline for our network security. One feature we really like is disabling websites based on region.

Pros

Block websites from certain regions.
Protect us from unwanted or malicious files.
Blocking spam emails or notifications.

Cons

The configurations of watchguard was a little hard to learn.
Setting up a whitelist for websites from certain regions we have blocked.
DNS filtering software.

Likelihood to Recommend

We are an IT company, and we recommend WatchGuard Network Security to all of our clients who run businesses. Without WatchGuard Network Security, the business is at a major risk of malicious files or even compromise. This is a baseline for security, web blockage, and even spam blockage for all of our businesses. We believe that WatchGuard Network Security is straightforward to get our clients on board.

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Watchguard Rules

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 24, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use WatchGuard Firebox for all our branch offices and head offices to Threat detection along with User Bases Content Filtering to ensure a safe and secure environment. We also like because of the Zero Secure trust policy that Watchguard offers us. The Ease of deployment and management is also a great was for us to environment on a Month to month basis.

Pros

Deployment
Troubleshoot
Comprehensive security services
threat Detection

Cons

Customer support
Ease of troubleshooting traffic log items
Easier disaster recovery of a HW unit

Likelihood to Recommend

SMB space is perfect for the WatchGuard Network Security to ensure price point for functionality. It is able to check a lot of boxes when it comes to the SMB space and ensure that risks are minimized for the operations at hand.

It does have some room to grow when it comes to Larger corporations due to some limitations in functionality, robustness and overall market space when it comes to reputation to the customer.

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

15 years of experience

WatchGuard Network Security

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 24, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use WatchGuard Network Security systems for managing our multiple firewalled networks. The granular security controls and straightforward UI make it easy to configure things as we need them. The site-site VPN functionality and point-site VPN clients enable our offices to collaborate effortlessly and enables WFH to be a nondisruptive option. A small team can manage everything due to its accessible UI options.

Pros

Site to Site VPN
Customer Support
WebUI management interface

Cons

Local >> Cloud firewall management migration
OAth integration
Consistent interface among multiple management methods

Likelihood to Recommend

As we're not a massive organization with a limitless IT budget, WatchGuard's solutions have made network security and management feasible for our small team. I could imagine at larger orgs it may be too simple for complex use cases, at least among the SKUs we utilize. It's a good balance of complexity for us, though.

The licensing is a maze to navigate, but that's industry standard at this point unfortunately.

Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

A trust-worthy backup

Rating: 3 out of 10

Incentivized

October 7, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WatchGuard firewall appliance

mostly using it as a backup network security device because we have other brand appliances which have centrailized portal to manage devices and faster response UI

Pros

Work as it intended
fail safe
simple setup

Cons

Faster UI
Centrailized manage with older devices
automate task support

Likelihood to Recommend

when you have the primary fire wall installed and you need one as a failover firewall in each locations you work on

Leo Chen

IT support in Information Technology at Forbes IT (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

budget firewall

Rating: 2 out of 10

Incentivized

September 19, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

just a backup firewall, the stuff is cheap but just not as good as fortinet and sophos which have ai detection and other features that are so much better (NDR) watchguard is hard to implement for most of our cleints, the web portal is hard to access, mainly used for backup firewall, has all the basic features after all!

Pros

IDS/IPS
Port Forwarding
Backup Firewall

Cons

UI
AI detection
web portal to manage

Likelihood to Recommend

its good as backup firewall, just set it up and then put it in place but lack features of enterprise firewalls like sophos and fortinet

phil ngo

it support in Information Technology at forbes (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

WatchGuard Network Security at a Small Business

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 17, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use this as our onsite firewall and for local network management as well as VPN for offsite employees.

Pros

Network setup and VLAN management.
Easy integration with other network equipment.
All the security features we need for access control and defense.

Cons

Better integration with VoIP services, such as templates for policies handling traffic for Bria or Asterisk endponts and servers.
Get webblocker to work without breaking secure websites.
Lower cost on endpoint agents for antivirus and include application control and webblocker with the agents.
Make the cost per endpoint with TDR and Netowrk access control lower than the cost of Antivirus licensing that is not integrated.
Make it easier to set up network access control and VLAN assignment by device, perhaps with templates.
Get webblocker and application control working with QUIC.

Likelihood to Recommend

Networks under 250 devices where there are not a lot of IT staff or a dedicated network admin.

Michael Wilson

Systems Administrator in Information Technology at Sigma Relocation Group, LLC (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

13 years of experience

View profile

Comprehensive Perimeter Security for Small Businesses.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 17, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use WatchGuard to provide perimeter security for our office network. Having a comprehensive advanced security solution in place allows us to have one place to manage our security and assist us in preventing/reducing spam, phishing, and Ransomware from entering our network. Our firewall is one of multiple layers that we trust to protect our organization and our data.

Pros

Intrusion Protection.
Monitoring of the traffic that is experienced on the specific interfaces (especially the WAN).
Scheduling of upgrades of the firmware.
Cloud Management of the Firewall.

Cons

Integration with MSP Tools (HaloPESA).
Integration into existing SIEM tools.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well-suited for office networks. It may not be suited for smaller networks due to cost.

Todd Reibling

CEO in Information Technology at TR Network Consulting, LLC (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

20 years of experience

Verified on LinkedIn

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