We performed a comparison between Hillstone E-Series and Netgate pfSense 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."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."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"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."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"I am impressed with the application filtering feature."
"Very reliable solution with good scalability and straightforward implementation."
"Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients a secure connectivity."
"Five out of five ROI."
"The most valuable features of the Hillstone E-Series are its hardware capacity, innovation, and the throughput that the hardware can take."
"This solution has two main features that we find very valuable; a threat-intelligence option, and a web/application filtering option. The technical support team are very good and very quick."
"The most valuable feature of the Hillstone E-Series is its user-friendliness."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"It is a better firewall than others and it has better features."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"I can manage it easily by myself."
"It is a stable solution."
"Content protection, content inspection, and the application level firewall."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"The "OpenVPN Client Export" package is really helpful in exporting the VPN client software on most popular devices: iOS/Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and a handful of SIP handsets."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"The non-error conserve mode has room for improvement."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"Its price could be better."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"They've become quite expensive."
"Having frequent live webinars on a monthly basis would really help."
"The current usage reporting is very basic."
"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."
"The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature."
"Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."
"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."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
"It should integrate with LDAP, Active Directory, etc, to improve the way in which the traces and connections of each IP, or user connected through the firewall, are shown."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"Their support could be better in terms of the response time."
"The integration should be improved."
"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."
Hillstone E-Series is ranked 33rd in Firewalls with 9 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Hillstone E-Series is rated 9.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Hillstone E-Series writes "A user-friendly and marketable solution with a virtual switching capability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Hillstone E-Series is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, OpenVPN Access Server, Sangfor SSL VPN and Meraki MX, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Hillstone E-Series vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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