We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and OPNsense 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 response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"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."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The simplicity of configuration is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"Since it has an integrated dashboard for all the products, customers can get complete network analytics regarding what the user is doing, monitoring, and observing."
"WAN optimization is the best feature of the solution."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"Easy to deploy with a simple configuration."
"Deployment takes no more than one working day."
"You can use your web browser to do the configuration which is easier than Cisco CLI transcripts."
"We've had no issues with the scalability or the stability of this solution"
"The solution has high availability."
"It has an open license. It works very well, and there is an update every month."
"OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
"What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"The feature I find most valuable, is that the program helped me to realize all the requested functionality that was needed."
"It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"In general, the SD-WAN feature needs to be improved. The load sharing and load balancing of the traffic should be improved. I have had some problems with these features in the past."
"Meraki MX can come across as an expensive solution."
"MX can only be managed via a web interface, but I'm accustomed to using a CLI or a graphical interface. I would also like to see more reporting features. It doesn't provide enough information for me to know precisely about some clients."
"It would be nice to get detailed logging information without third-party software."
"As far as what needs to be improved — nothing really comes to mind. It does what we need it to do."
"Meraki MX firewalls are great for small to medium-sized businesses, but other solutions are better for enterprise-sized companies."
"Right now, you can postpone the update but eventually, if you don't do the update, it will install the updates automatically for you and that's something that is not working for me."
"Load balancing options and ability to manage a couple of Internet connections."
"There are issues with stability and reliability."
"The interface needs to be simplified. It is not user-friendly."
"Given that OPNsense plays a pivotal role as a firewall, safeguarding against various threats, having a reliable backup ensures uninterrupted protection even if unforeseen events impact the primary virtual machine."
"While they do have paid options that actually gives better features, for most of the clients, if they tend to take a paid option will instead opt for Fortinet."
"The support for OPNsense is good because we have documents available on the internet. The support could improve a little."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"OPNsense showed me some problems when using it in different environments. The problem is integration with a virtual server."
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while OPNsense is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and Azure Firewall, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire. See our Meraki MX vs. OPNsense report.
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