We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: pfSense comes out on top in this comparison. It is high performing and, according to reviews, it is a more comprehensive solution than Azure Firewall. pfSense also received higher marks in the support category.
"This product is definitely scalable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"The solution is stable."
"The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"The dashboard I have found the most valuable in Fortinet FortiGate."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI."
"The solution can autoscale."
"I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"The solution is stable."
"One of the best features is that it natively integrates with Azure Services and tools. When you have a third-party offering, that is not the case. But Azure Firewall provides a comprehensive and seamless security solution for your Azure resources."
"One of the notable advantages of Azure Firewall is its user-friendly interface, which closely resembles or shares similarities with other Azure components."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"Great security and connectivity."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"It is a stable solution."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"This solution has increased the level of security, given us more control, provided a deep insight into network traffic, and is a great VPN solution."
"Open source and support are valuable. I have community support."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions."
"The threat intelligence aspect of this particular firewall is not at par with other providers."
"The solution lacks artificial intelligence and machine learning. It might be in the roadmap. However, currently, it's not available."
"Azure should be able to work better as a balancer also, instead of just being a firewall. It should have a wider mandate."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"The VPN feature of the solution could improve by adding better functionality and providing easier configure ability."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"The solution’s interface must be improved."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
"The GUI. There are TONS of plugins for pfSense, as such, if a user wants to add quite a bit of functionality, the GUI will feel a little congested."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Azure Front Door, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Azure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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