We performed a comparison between OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series 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."Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"Their interface is very easy to use, it is without bugs."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control."
"The VPN server feature is the most valuable. It is integrated with Radius and AAA for doing accounting and authentication. Insight view is also an important feature for me at this time. It allows me to assess our network traffic. I also like the firewall feature. The BSD kernel has a packet filter. It is one of the most solid frameworks for firewalls. Its user interface is one of the best interfaces I have used."
"It has an open license. It works very well, and there is an update every month."
"It's more secure and more reliable."
"OPNsense is easy to use and open source."
"I have found the solution has some great features overall, such as guest access capabilities, dashboards, and ease of use. There is plenty of documentation and support and it has the plugins that I needed."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
"They now know the details about their network traffic that they did not know before: Applications that they are using and some application they did not know they were using."
"It has a good performance which helps you with the stability of your virtual environment."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series's most valuable feature is the visibility of the environment."
"It gives us the ease that we are secure. We have set up the proper things that help make our data safe."
"It has the ability to create Palo Alto VM-series using software."
"In AWS, Palo Alto provides us a better view than flow logs for network traffic."
"The solution strengthens our IT posture."
"What I like about the VM-Series is that you can launch them in a very short time."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"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."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"There is room for improvement related to the logging and reporting aspect."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"The pricing could always be better."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"The interface isn't so friendly user. But we have some technicians here who are quite confident with this tool. OPNSense could maybe add sets of rules so it's simpler to manage different groups with particular needs."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"The ability to set the VPN IP address would be a welcome addition."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"When using the solution at the beginning was difficult. There was a steep learning curve."
"In terms of improvement, the performance could be enhanced."
"I would like better documentation concerning the provided packages and their integration."
"The only minor issue we've faced is with the app's ID configuration, which requires specific matching for application filtering."
"I would like to have automatic daily reporting, such as how many users have connected via SSL VPN."
"There should be an option for direct integration with the Azure platform."
"The user-friendliness of the UI could be improved."
"The product could provide protection above Layer 3, which gets into the application layer and provides better visibility into those aspects of application security."
"The solution needs to improve its visibility. It's not straightforward to use. Understanding the policies, authorizations, and initializing features requires careful review. The product needs to offer proper training."
"The utilization monitoring and GUI have room for improvement."
"The product needs improvement in their Secure Access Service Edge."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall. See our OPNsense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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