We performed a comparison between OPNsense and WatchGuard Firebox 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."FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"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."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"The web tutor and automatic rules by schedule are good features."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"The most valuable features are simplicity, management, and that it's constantly evolving."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"The solution has high availability."
"The most valuable features of OPNsense are the GUI and frequent updates."
"What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control."
"The most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"The solution is good for a basic firewall for a small business or for home use."
"The initial implementation process is simple."
"The DNS-level filtering is impressive for thwarting time scanners."
"I like that this product has very few issues."
"The GUI is easy and intuitive."
"It has everything we need in terms of functionality."
"The solution has a useful traffic monitor."
"It provides us with Layer 2 and Layer 3 security."
"Because we bought two firewalls... we need a central place to manage the policies and deploy them to both devices. It's good that it provides a system management console that is able to manipulate and manage policies in one place and deploy them to different locations."
"As a whole, it has a very low requirement for ongoing interaction. It's very self-sufficient. If properly patched, it has very high reliability. The total cost of ownership once deployed is very low."
"It's hard to pick one feature over another. But if I had to pick one, the UTM would be the most valuable because of the notification. I get notified via email if there is any type of threat detection or alert, telling me something is wrong."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"The IPS solution could be more reliable."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"When using the solution at the beginning was difficult. There was a steep learning curve."
"I would like to see better SD-WAN performance."
"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 solution could be more secure."
"I think the most important thing is that it should be easily accessible, but currently, that doesn't seem to be the case. We need a hardware platform that's based on common standards and open computing principles, which would be like a commodity and benefit us greatly."
"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."
"There is a slight learning curve."
"I'd like to have better access to workstation monitoring, connection monitoring, and the amount of time an address is being used, to better gauge proper network utilization. If I knew that something was connected to a particular external location for an extended period that seems abnormal, I'd be able to act upon it."
"There's always room for improvement, especially if the threats are getting more sophisticated and the IT department cannot sufficiently meet this kind of sophistication with their own knowledge and experience. Knowing that this solution can get up to the level of addressing a lot of these threats is something that everybody wishes for. If we look at the dark web and the lawful web, they are two opposites, and if these two good and bad collide in the world of the internet, you want the best possible product—especially if you cannot get to that point of knowledge. I am just an individual and end user, with limited knowledge of usage. That's why I say there's always room for improvement, from their side and also from mine, because by knowing exactly what they can achieve and the knowledge that they can get on an everyday basis, and the portion that is understandable to me, it's an improvement for them as well."
"There should be better integration and a way to configure multiple vendors into the same data center in order to offer more flexibility."
"Sometimes I would like to copy a rule set from one box to another box in a direct way. This is a feature that is not present at the moment in WatchGuard."
"The solution needs to improve its accessibility."
"We would like to see granular notification settings and more advanced filtering in traffic monitoring."
"I don't think I can get a full-blown DNS client from it. I've been trying to have DNS services. It has forwarding, but I don't get the services of a full DNS client. My main difficulty with it is that I can't run a complete service. I need NTP. I need DNS. I need DHCP for my domain, but I only get forwarding. As far as I can tell, I don't get caching and the kinds of reporting and registration needed to host a DNS for a domain. I have to have a separate solution for that."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our OPNsense vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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