We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: pfSense comes out on top in this comparison. It is high performing and, according to reviews, it is a more comprehensive solution than Azure Firewall. pfSense also received higher marks in the support category.
"Offers good security and filtering."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"The most valuable features are the possibility of having one fabric for switching on security."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is the control over the network permissions and the network."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"I can easily configure it."
"Great security and connectivity."
"The Layer four features are okay and meet my business needs."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"One of the notable advantages of Azure Firewall is its user-friendly interface, which closely resembles or shares similarities with other Azure components."
"It's helped us improve our security posture."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"pfSense is a nice product, and I find that there's a lot of information out there. There are some good tutorials on YouTube and other websites with helpful information."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"For everyday tasks, we just get alerts. It's anything that's suspicious, including from our Netgate. So, it's part of how we maintain cybersecurity in our school. This is working alongside our endpoint security solution."
"I handle the scanning for the finance department. I recently encountered an issue with the PCL bills, our company bills. I resolved the matter, cleared the bill, and received calls regarding it using pfsense.The user interface is extremely user-friendly, which is why we use it across various plant sites. Our IT representatives at the plants find it easy to use and manage because of its straightforward interface."
"The documentation is very good."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"The solution is very expensive."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"It has fewer features than you can get from other firewalls, like anti-spam and anti-phishing. Those kinds of things are not included. It only includes IDS and IDB."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"Azure has new versions including a premium firewall. But I would like to see them not put the premium features on Azure Firewall Premium alone because it is quite expensive."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"Layer 7 advanced firewall features are not included in the solution."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
"There could be a way to remote to it through a mobile app. You can always browse through your browser on your mobile phone or tablet, but it would be good to have a dedicated app. I understand that iOS and Android developers are expensive, but there should be a mobile app."
"It needs to be more secure."
"As an open-source solution, there are so many loopholes happening within the product. By design, no one is taking ownership of it, and that is worrisome to me."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Azure Front Door, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Azure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
