We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense 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."It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"It has improved our organization with control data."
"The simplicity of the product is great. It's very easy to use, which is a compliment we get all the time in terms of feedback."
"I use pfSense because it gives me the flexibility to greatly expand basic firewall features."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"It is a stable solution."
"There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support."
"It has a good web cache. I used to use a DHCP server and DNS server. For my company, I use pfSense as a load balancing application."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"You already can scale it if you put it in Auto Scaling groups. If you put it in a load balancer, it should already be able to scale."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series's most valuable feature is the visibility of the environment."
"In Palo Alto the most important feature is the App-ID."
"The interface with Panorama makes it very easy to use."
"The most effective features for threat prevention are application-based prevention and WildFire. These features cover various threats, such as ransomware, malware, etc. They provide real-time visibility. By applying appropriate policies, threats can be blocked."
"The VM-Series scalability is fast and easy to implement, improving our security posture as our Azure network grows."
"The most valuable feature is that you can control your traffic flowing out and coming it, allowing you to apply malware and threat protection, as well as vulnerability checks."
"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."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility."
"The support system could be improved."
"To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"The reporting in Fortinet FortiGate could improve. Customers are having to purchase additional reporting components. When I have used the Sophos solution it is a complete solution, in Fortinet FortiGate you have to use additional tools to have the features needed."
"I don't really have anything negative to say as far as Fortinet firewalls are concerned. If anything, they can support a user a little bit better. They can stop being so time-sensitive about how much time the support call has taken, and they can help you do it yourself."
"The VPN feature of the solution could improve by adding better functionality and providing easier configure ability."
"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."
"There are some bias issues and some intrusions in our network that have to be addressed. So, we're thinking of changing this firewall to something like a professional hardware-enabled firewall."
"It needs to be more secure."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"The user interface can be improved to make it easier to add more features. And pfSense could be better integrated with other solutions, like antivirus."
"In an upcoming release, the reporting could be more user-friendly. For example, the reporting in graphs and charts for the host can be cumbersome."
"The GUI could use more “bells and whistles”. It's got plenty of info for a Sysadmin but some people like shiny things."
"The solution must improve Zero Trust integration and use cases."
"The implementation should be simplified."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration of multi-factor authentication vendors."
"They made only a halfhearted attempt to put in DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
"The product could provide protection above Layer 3, which gets into the application layer and provides better visibility into those aspects of application security."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series needs to improve its order process."
"I would like to see a more thorough QA process. We have had some difficulties from bugs in releases."
"On the cloud side, they need to come up with more HA solutions to support the multi-region."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, 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 vSRX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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