We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiOS and Netgate pfSense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"The solution is scalable."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"Good load balancing feature."
"The web tutor and automatic rules by schedule are good features."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"Virtual Domains (VDOMs) are a feature that we found valuable."
"The most valuable features are the ease of use, and the overall simplicity, everyone can use it with a small introduction."
"The solution constantly adds features that are useful and user-friendly such as the ability to tweak firewalls through the CLI."
"FortiOS allows us to set up alarms for blocked websites and SSL verifications. When someone tries to access a blocked site, the solution sends a notification to the IT manager's mailbox."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiOS network segregation, UTM, and antivirus, freight management protection, such as DDoS. Additionally, the CLI and the GUI are easy to use. The architecture makes sense, and the command in the CLI are organized well. They have quite a lot of features are easy to use, and are user-friendly. Any novice can use Fortinet FortiOS without an issue."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiOS is great."
"I like its configuration and the various functions it offers."
"The product is scalable and easily expands."
"It efficiently manages large-scale firewall deployments."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"What I found most valuable is the cost of the platform, the flexibility of the platform, and the fact that the ongoing fees are not there as they are with the competitor. Some people may think you're taking a risk with using Opensource. I think it just provides the end user, specifically for us small, medium business providers of services, the flexibility we need at the right cost to provide them a higher end, almost enterprise type service."
"This solution has helped our organization by protecting our network from attacks."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"It's a good solution for end-users. It's pretty easy to work with."
"It is very easy to use. The interface is quite understandable. There is a good community, and I can take over at any time I want. If there is anything wrong with it, I could just reinstall the whole thing and start all over again, and I'll be up again in less than a few minutes"
"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."
"The VPN is my favorite feature."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"Scalability for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be improved. SD-WAN security for this solution also needs some improvement."
"The pricing of the product is too high."
"For me, it is important to be able to block VPN applications, like Facebook, so I would like to see that included in the next release. With this version, if you want to block or allow a site, you now have to drag all the domains related to this site."
"Right now, we have to contend with CLI. We'd like it to be easier. We need the features to be in a UI."
"I would like to see more statistics in the monitoring part."
"It should also manage the local DSCP network."
"In terms of what needs improvements, the troubleshooting could use improvement. When we work with other products like Cisco ASA, Palo Alto, and Check Point, we see a big difference in the troubleshooting. It's not easy to find a report."
"The report and policy optimization tools can be improved in the next release."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the pricing could be lower. The price is very steep."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
"The product must provide integration with other solutions."
"Web interface could be enhanced and more user friendly."
"pfSense could improve by having a sandboxing feature that I have seen in SonicWall. However, maybe it is available I am not aware of it."
"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."
"The security could be improved."
"It should integrate with LDAP, Active Directory, etc, to improve the way in which the traces and connections of each IP, or user connected through the firewall, are shown."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
Fortinet FortiOS is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 73 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Fortinet FortiOS is rated 8.4, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiOS writes "Provides effective filtering features, good stability but initial setup is moderately challenging". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Fortinet FortiOS is most compared with Fortinet FortiManager, Fortinet FortiWeb, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection and OPNsense, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Fortinet FortiOS vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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