WatchGuard XTM - Discontinued Product

The XTMs I've had experience working with have been amazing, they are by far the easiest firewalls to set up/configure and are so much nicer to navigate than their competition. The new FireBox models are even better with more features and configurations. This makes it an easy recommendation over other companies.

[WatchGuard XTM] had an easy setup for the interface and great support.

We use WatchGuard XTM across the whole organization and in our branches, the WatchGuard firewall helped us improve administration, branch office VPN, security, link redundancy, browsing filters, user browsing profiles. The administration and configuration is very simple, the online material is extensive, the forums are very helpful and the direct support from WatchGuard is very efficient. The reports and live monitoring works very well and in a detailed way. We have had many security audits and we always get a good rating due to the firewall. As a result of the pandemic, we had to implement teleworking and the mobile VPN helped us to do it without problems, the cloud console for remote configuration is very simple and dynamic. Additionally, applications such as DNSWatch GO and the TDR client give us more security to the computers that are outside the network or the protection of the Firewall.

The web filter is complicated when you don't have a server to log in users. Companies using static IPs. They have to be clear about the number of users that the company has in order to obtain the correct model since each one has its resources according to the number of users.

WatchGuard XTM is the main firewall and web filter at my company. It is used for the entire site and was highly recommended by our sister company in another location. It provides everything a firewall provides, plus intrusion prevention, web content filtering, web monitoring, application control, and even antivirus protection from Internet traffic.

WatchGuard XTM comes in different models, so you can choose the model best suited for your company size. I think it works well in small as well as very large networks. I have not used this feature, but you can create a "FireCluster" to connect member devices of the same model if you need to put multiple WatchGuard XTMs in your environment. Coming from command line, it took a little adjusting to learn which screen to use to set up the different rules. Once you understand how to set up policies, it is simple to create more. New firewall administrators would appreciate the ease of creating policies, and expert administrators should find everything they need plus extra features.

We exclusively use WatchGuard firewalls for all companies that we support. They are our standard hardware and are deployed when any new customer is taken on. This manages all incoming and outgoing traffic for all sites and also manages all of the site to site VPN tunnels. This addresses the need for a cost effective but secure gateway from the internet to the LAN.

I believe that this is a great option for smaller businesses or businesses on a limited budget for IT hardware. I have not seen another firewall appliance that is as user friendly nor as secure at this price point. These would be less appropriate for extremely high bandwidth customers, for example a business on Google Fiber may only get 700mbps depending on the packet inspection and types of rules setup in the firewall.

We are using it as the core HA active/passive firewalls for all network traffic on our corporate network. Each zone is set up and divided into its own zone with policies allowing or denying access between each zone.

Small to mid-sized organizations is the target market for WatchGuard and it's where they fit in best.