We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Sophos UTM 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 interface is very good."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"The GUI is good."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is the simple configuration."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"Open source and support are valuable. I have community support."
"The built-in open VPN and the VPN Client Export are the solution's most valuable aspects."
"Its scalability is a strong point."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"The scalability is very good, where you can do an HA configuration and then bring in another box, if necessary."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"It meets our compliance needs in an elastic computer environment."
"The management suite is easy and the agent is easy to develop."
"It helps us with protection, with concurrent use of the VPN."
"They are all good, but most-used are Network Protection and Web Filtering."
"Efficient and effective - it's easy to separate rules."
"Advanced protection (Sophos Sandstorm) - Protects against crypto viruses in real-time."
"Installing Sophos UTM is straightforward. The deployment itself doesn't take long, but you have to spend some time planning and waiting for the hardware to be delivered."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the endpoint protection feature."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding FortiAnalyzer to its solution, we should not have to use another solution. FortiAnalyzer can provide more detailed information."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more storage in the hardware for log data."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"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 configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"Needs services on additional features, such as managing inventory and generating reports."
"This solution is good for small businesses but it is not as stable as other competitors such as Fortinet."
"I would like to see different graphs available in the reporting."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
"The solution could always work at being more secure. It's a good idea to continue to work on security features and capabilities in order to ensure they can keep clients safe."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"An area for improvement in Sophos UTM is load balancing because my company cannot use it currently. If Sophos could release a new configuration for the load balancing feature to work for my company, that would be great."
"Sophos should improve its ability to check something like bandwidth consumption for users or something more real-time."
"Sophos UTM could be simplified, and they can improve on the many other features, like SD-WAN and load balancing. Sophos UTM is missing a few features that their competitors have. For example, if you have multiple branches you would like to connect, the load balancing features aren't available on multilink. If we create a VPM for multiple LAN links, we cannot load balance the traffic."
"Anti-phishing functionality should be improved."
"The integration capabilities could be better."
"There can be a delay when it comes to reaching out to technical support."
"It is a little too CPU resource intensive, so we would like to see improvements there."
"Sophos should be more user-friendly, have more dashboards, and an easier implementation."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall and Untangle NG Firewall. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Sophos UTM report.
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pfSense is opensource and has been the last 10 years in the top 10 best
firewall solutions in the world, it is free, stable, scalable, and easy to
administer ... and above all very safe, since it is one of the few systems
that could have been violated. It's free.
In fact, Karl, the 50-IP free version is for home use only, and not even then if it also protects business assets. You did a great job of explaining the difference, so I won't comment further.
To the original poster, it's cheaper to hire a Sophos consultant to create your original configuration. It costs twice as much to get a configuration "repaired" that wasn't correctly designed. A Sophos Solution Partner that has a Sophos Certified Architect with plenty of experience and good referrals is probably your best bet.
With Sophos is easy to configure and you have the support from the frabicant, with pfSense you have to learn from the community and learning curve is a little hard, last occasion with pfSense it don't have support for vpn dynamic, with Sophos they have RED equipment that is an extension from the core, only you need the serial number from the remote equipment and you have the vpn , both are great equipment and software, depend of the budget, pfSense is free and they have support if you pay the license very cheap
pfSense is just a basic firewall with VPN and Captive Portal functionality but does its job great. Only needs minimum resources to function. Price is right (FREE)
Sophos UTM is much more, hence the UTM. It does firewall, advance threat protection, VPN, Secure web gateway, email protection (AV, Spam, Encryption, and DLP), endpoint protection, Mobile Device control, Web Application Firewall, User Portal, built in reporting, and central management. It does require more resources but you get a lot more out of it. Two options depending on the size of your office, commercial version or the Free version that you can build on your own hardware. The free version is restricted to 50 IP addresses. (www.sophos.com)
I have used both and both have their place but using Sophos in my environment just because it offers a lot more functionality, nice dashboard, reports, and easy to use through the GUI.
One other big difference is that pfSense is FreeBSD based while Sophos UTM is linux based. It is also worth having a lool on cacheguard which is a proxy oriented product and also Linux based.
I´m afraid I am not able to help in this matter. We´ve decided to for FortiGate as services, based on our relationship with our IT security provider and the FortiGate reviews available on the net.
We used to use pfSence for one particular open network but let the full control on de FortiGate. During the investigation and analysis period we thought of Sophos but felt more comfortable going for FortiGate pretty much based on price and our relationship with our IT security provider. Hence my experience wouldn´t help in this case.
My best advice would is to refer to the article available on:
www.itcentralstation.com