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.
"Easy to use support and licensing portal as well as activation process."
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"It is a stable solution."
"This solution has helped our organization by protecting our network from attacks."
"A free firewall that is a good network security appliance."
"The intrusion detection feature is the most valuable. It is an open-source firewall, so there is a lot of material on it. I also find the open VPN capability very nice. It is pretty customizable. The clustering and the high availability are the two biggest things to be able to get out of a firewall."
"It is a good firewall with good performance."
"Its reliability and cost-effectiveness stand out."
"The documentation is very good."
"The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems."
"Overall, this is a good product and I would recommend it for small to mid-sized customers."
"Content filtering and intrusion prevention are most valuable. Our customers are fully satisfied with the performance of Sophos. It has all the features that they require in a firewall."
"The solution's most valuable feature stems from its ability to protect our organization's web servers."
"We find it easy to use. Its internal configuration is very easy. It is not complicated in terms of use and configuration. It has been fairly stable, and it is also scalable."
"The most valuable is the synchronized security between Sophos XG and Sophos endpoint because it provides a lot of visibility about unknown applications. The endpoint shares the information of unknown applications, and you can learn about those applications and create policies to allow or block those applications."
"We created and configured a VPN for connecting our remote sites and also to make it more secure and reliable. We also like its two-factor authentication features."
"Sophos XG is very useful, it does many things."
"Sophos offers great disk encryption, anti protection, and the interface is very user-friendly."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"NGN, reporting and controls."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding FortiAnalyzer to its solution, we should not have to use another solution. FortiAnalyzer can provide more detailed information."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"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."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"We would like to see ready-made profiles to cover most users' needs."
"I have been using WireGuard VPN because it is a lot faster and more secure than an open VPN. However, in the latest version of pfSense, they have removed this feature, which is one of the main features that I need. They should include this feature."
"The GUI could use more “bells and whistles”. It's got plenty of info for a Sysadmin but some people like shiny things."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"Their support could be better in terms of the response time."
"The solution could improve by making the graphical interface better and increasing the performance."
"All of the options should be available when I renew my subscription for the year. As it is now, there are some limitations."
"Technical support can be slow to respond, which is something that should be improved."
"There should be web caching to improve bandwidth utilization. It should have a very good caching feature. That's because we are in a very poor continent, and the connectivity cost is very high. We have low bandwidth, and the intensive usage of bandwidth is not easy here in Africa. If they improve services for web caching, it would be better."
"Since Sophos took over Cyberoam, the online technical library and support library have become super messy. To get a piece of information is becoming a nightmare. They need to reorganize the online technical support and technical library."
"In feature releases of the solution, I would like there to be an increase in the detection capability."
"The security of Sophos XG could be improved."
"They should expand their DDoS feature. It's basic. They need to enhance it."
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.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.