We performed a comparison between Juniper SRX Series Firewall and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is appreciated for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and robust assistance. It provides functionalities like site-to-site VPN, firewall security, and routing capabilities. pfSense is highly regarded for its capacity to obstruct IP addresses, user-friendly dashboards, and open-source characteristics. It offers features such as secure VPN connections, scanning, filtering, and network security capabilities.
Juniper SRX Series Firewall could use enhancements in capacity limitations, reporting and alerts, user interface, device reliability, documentation, and feature enhancements. pfSense would benefit from improvements in instructional videos, web interface clarity, stability, mobile application, centralized management, GUI for SMBs, sandboxing, security, hardware support, user-friendliness, log analysis, VPN capacity, documentation, configuration processes, and SD-WAN integration.
Service and Support: Customers have generally praised Juniper SRX Series Firewall's customer service for being helpful and knowledgeable, despite occasional slower response times. pfSense's customer service varies among users, with some having positive experiences with technical support and others relying on clear documentation and community resources.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Juniper SRX Series Firewall can be done within a day for smaller branch offices, whereas pfSense be set up in just 15 minutes. Juniper may demand familiarity with CLI, while pfSense is commonly referred to as being easy to use.
Pricing: Juniper has extra charges for advanced security features and APS, whereas pfSense provides updates without any additional fees. The specific licensing costs for pfSense are not clearly stated.
ROI: Juniper SRX Series Firewall provides advanced security features and reliable performance, leading to a favorable return on investment. pfSense stands out for its affordability, minimal management expenses, and substantial hardware cost savings. Users also emphasize its superior ROI compared to pricier alternatives such as FortiGate.
Comparison Results: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is the preferred product over pfSense. Users appreciate its simplicity, intuitive interface, reliability, scalability, and exceptional customer support. It offers convenient configuration, site-to-site VPN capabilities, and effective firewall protection. Additionally, Juniper SRX Series Firewall is considered a more cost-effective and secure solution.
"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features are ease of use, flexibility, and most of the configuration we can be done using the GUI. When we compare Fortinet FortiGate with other solutions the firewall policy are very easy to understand."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"Good performance, stability, and virtual domain ability."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"The solution is stable."
"We're primarily using Juniper's EPA feature, but not the other things. We use it to manage different points of firewalling of routing."
"What I like the most about Juniper is that they have the same CLI on all routers, switches, and firewalls. If you have worked with any Juniper device, such as a Juniper router, you will be able to work with an SRX, which is really cool. It is a nice experience to work with every device of Juniper, not only firewalls."
"The most valuable features of the Juniper SRX Series Firewall are the user-friendly UI, and accessing the solution is simple."
"I have used technical support quite a bit, and they are really good."
"It'sa very secure device, it has good attack prevention capabilities using UTM."
"The solution has been good for fulfilling our basic needs."
"It is a complete security bundle. The cloud-based Sky Advanced Threat Prevention feature is very valuable. I am 100% satisfied with the performance of the Juniper firewall. It has a very good throughput. It works very fine. We use our firewall as a site-to-site VPN or Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN). In both cases, it has a very good and optimum performance. Their service support is very good in India. I get really good support from the Juniper team."
"The most valuable feature is the virtualization because it can be used for customers who are using the mobile data network to request a private connection to a remote site."
"Stability has been excellent. We have experienced no issues; it never fails."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"The performance and functionality are good."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"The solution is very easy to use and has a very nice GUI."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"NGN, reporting and controls."
"The pricing could always be better."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"We tried configuring the IDS for more than four months, but it did not work properly."
"It was very difficult to deal with and required a lot of support, and the UI is very poor."
"I would like to see endpoint control and endpoint testing security."
"In some cases, customers encounter issues related to network interfaces, while others prioritize security concerns."
"I've noticed that the management interface could use some updates and upgrades."
"The training videos that are available need to be improved, and made more educative."
"It could improve areas which need high performance."
"This solution needs to update for "Next Generation" needs."
"It requires more attention to provide a better alternative for open source to small government or educational institutions with reduced budgets in terms of technology."
"The VPN feature of the solution could improve by adding better functionality and providing easier configure ability."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"It would be great to add more to security."
"Web interface could be enhanced and more user friendly."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 86 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Juniper SRX Series Firewall is rated 7.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Juniper SRX Series Firewall writes "Highly scalable, user-friendly UI, and easy to maintain". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Check Point NGFW and Meraki MX, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl and Sophos UTM. See our Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors and 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.