Every category where a model named SonicWall for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Next-generation firewalls	Network and edge	2%	14 of 100	50%	16	criticized challenger
Email security	Security operations	0%	59 of 71	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Office 365 at 31%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for SonicWall yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated SonicWall across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	1	0	1	2
GPT-5.4 mini	0	1	0	0	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	1	1
Perplexity Sonar	0	1	0	0	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	2	2
Mistral Small	0	0	1	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	1	1	2
Llama 4 Maverick	1	0	0	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	0	1	2
Kimi K2	0	0	1	1	2
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	1	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	1	1

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase2 labelsNone

Comparative2 labelsNone

Budget-constrained6 labels1

Scale-constrained5 labelsNone

Negative18 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative34 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 of the 1 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“The best next-generation firewall for a company with a limited budget is the SonicWall (Gen 7 / TZ & NSa) or the Untangle NG Firewall (Arista).” Llama 4 Maverick · Firewalls · budget prompt · first choice

“SonicWALL offers competitive pricing, making it a cost-effective solution for small to medium-sized businesses” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Firewalls · budget prompt · alternative

“with SonicWall as a strong alternative if you want simpler management and possibly a lower upfront spend” GPT-5.4 mini · Firewalls · budget prompt · alternative

“SonicWall if you want a mid-tier solution with solid features at a lower cost” Perplexity Sonar · Firewalls · paraphrase prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Critical SSL-VPN vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-40766, CVE-2024-53704) with CVSS scores up to 9.3 ... Consider disabling SSL-VPN if not essential” Kimi K2 · Firewalls · negative prompt · hard negative

“Verdict: Avoid (or patch immediately)” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Firewalls · negative prompt · hard negative

“Multiple critical vulnerabilities (CVE-2022-22274, CVE-2023-0656) ... over 178,000 SonicWall firewalls publicly exploitable” MiniMax M2.5 · Firewalls · negative prompt · soft negative

“some legacy firmware and VPN appliances (such as the SMA series) have suffered from highly publicized exploits” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Firewalls · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as SonicWall, over the 34 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and SonicWall was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Fortinet13 of 343Not in the top three

Check Point13 of 342Not in the top three

Palo Alto Networks13 of 341Not in the top three

Fortinet FortiGate11 of 348Not in the top three

Palo Alto8 of 340Not in the top three

WatchGuard7 of 341Not in the top three

Sophos7 of 340Not in the top three

WatchGuard Firebox5 of 342Not in the top three

Cisco5 of 340Not in the top three

Cisco Secure Firewall5 of 340Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named SonicWall. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 28 of the 34 answers that named SonicWall and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

fortinet.com11

reddit.com11

comparitech.com10

cyberpress.org9

cybersecuritynews.com8

g2.com8

checkpoint.com7

cisco.com6

gartner.com6

techtarget.com6

Eighty-two of the eighty-two domain citations in answers naming SonicWall came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cyberpress.org/best-next-generation-firewall-ngfw-solutions-for-every-business-size8

cybersecuritynews.com/best-next-generation-firewall7

comparitech.com/net-admin/next-gen-firewalls6

bishopfox.com/blog/its-2024-and-over-178-000-sonicwall-firewalls-are-publicly-exploitable5

datacipher.com/next-generation-firewall-challenges-how-to-fix5

gartner.com/reviews/market/network-firewalls/vendor/fortinet/product/fortigate-next-genera4

atera.com/blog/best-firewall-appliances3

checkpoint.com/comparison/top-4-ngfw-compared3

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as SonicWall

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as SonicWall; a claim can dispute any of them.

SonicWall (Gen 7 / TZ & NSa) 1SonicWall (Series 6 and 7) 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when SonicWall's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as SonicWall, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at sonicwall.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.