pfSense vs Sophos XG
We performed a comparison between pfSense vs Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
"SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"It is very flexible to use."
"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."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"The security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"The web filtering feature and the intrusion protection system are the most valuable. It is a resilient appliance. I never had an issue with it in terms of any security breaches."
"My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much."
"The solution is very easy to use and configure."
"I'm the expert when it comes to Linux systems, however, with the pfSense, due to the web interface, the rest of the staff can actually make changes to it as required without me worrying about whether they've opened up ports incorrectly or not. The ease of use for non-expert staff is very good."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"I have found the feature allowing you to manage everything from a centralized location beneficial."
"Sophos XG has cybersecurity. It integrates with the antivirus software."
"The stability of Sophos XG is very good. However, there have been some issues with other weaker models because they are limited in hardware in resources."
"The most valuable features are the central management, the user VPN, and communications."
"The VPN access for users is also a great thing, especially nowadays when working from home."
"I have found configuring the ports to be easier in Sophos XG compared to the other devices."
"Definitely, its usability is very good, and it's a very robust firewall."
"The user authentication rules are very useful."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more storage in the hardware for log data."
"I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"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."
"There is more demand for UTMs than a simple firewall. pfSense should support real-time features for handling the latest viruses and threats. It should support real-time checks and real-time status of threats. Some other vendors, such as Fortinet, already offer this type of capability. Such capability will be good for bringing pfSense at the same level as other solutions."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
"My only observation is about the quality of the IPSec logs, which are difficult to interpret and are poor in filters."
"More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome."
"Support for this product is something that is really important, and it needs to improve."
"Sophos XG could improve by making the remote access and VPN better."
"Some of the firewall rules are complicated for us to understand, they should be simplified."
"In Sophos XG, the throughput for larger networks is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"There is an area that is very specific to our setup, where working tools you cannot easily establish a VPN between two internal networks."
"The number of ports, especially on the entry-level appliances, should be increased."
"The only area that requires improvement is scalability."
"There could be some room for improvement in its pricing since my clients usually feel like the product is on the expensive side."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. 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 XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, KerioControl, Sophos UTM, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Sophos UTM. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Sophos XG report.
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