We performed a comparison between Juniper SRX Series Firewall and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is appreciated for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and robust assistance. It provides functionalities like site-to-site VPN, firewall security, and routing capabilities. pfSense is highly regarded for its capacity to obstruct IP addresses, user-friendly dashboards, and open-source characteristics. It offers features such as secure VPN connections, scanning, filtering, and network security capabilities.
Juniper SRX Series Firewall could use enhancements in capacity limitations, reporting and alerts, user interface, device reliability, documentation, and feature enhancements. pfSense would benefit from improvements in instructional videos, web interface clarity, stability, mobile application, centralized management, GUI for SMBs, sandboxing, security, hardware support, user-friendliness, log analysis, VPN capacity, documentation, configuration processes, and SD-WAN integration.
Service and Support: Customers have generally praised Juniper SRX Series Firewall's customer service for being helpful and knowledgeable, despite occasional slower response times. pfSense's customer service varies among users, with some having positive experiences with technical support and others relying on clear documentation and community resources.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Juniper SRX Series Firewall can be done within a day for smaller branch offices, whereas pfSense be set up in just 15 minutes. Juniper may demand familiarity with CLI, while pfSense is commonly referred to as being easy to use.
Pricing: Juniper has extra charges for advanced security features and APS, whereas pfSense provides updates without any additional fees. The specific licensing costs for pfSense are not clearly stated.
ROI: Juniper SRX Series Firewall provides advanced security features and reliable performance, leading to a favorable return on investment. pfSense stands out for its affordability, minimal management expenses, and substantial hardware cost savings. Users also emphasize its superior ROI compared to pricier alternatives such as FortiGate.
Comparison Results: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is the preferred product over pfSense. Users appreciate its simplicity, intuitive interface, reliability, scalability, and exceptional customer support. It offers convenient configuration, site-to-site VPN capabilities, and effective firewall protection. Additionally, Juniper SRX Series Firewall is considered a more cost-effective and secure solution.
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"FortiGate improved our security. It's one of the best hardware firewalls."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"We mostly use the Layer 4 firewall functions: Access rules, NAT, and site-to-site IPsec VPN."
"It is a part of the infrastructure when we're selling Juniper. That's what clients are familiar with and that's what they rely on."
"Most of our clients use it as a traditional firewall, blocking Layer 3 and Layer 4, blocking by transport."
"It helps us perform our daily jobs."
"The IPSec configuration is going well."
"Juniper is one of the most powerful network security solutions while remaining simple to use, set up, and scale."
"It's easily scalable."
"What I like the most about Juniper is that they have the same CLI on all routers, switches, and firewalls. If you have worked with any Juniper device, such as a Juniper router, you will be able to work with an SRX, which is really cool. It is a nice experience to work with every device of Juniper, not only firewalls."
"What I like about pfSense is that it works well and runs on an inexpensive appliance."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"What I found most valuable is the cost of the platform, the flexibility of the platform, and the fact that the ongoing fees are not there as they are with the competitor. Some people may think you're taking a risk with using Opensource. I think it just provides the end user, specifically for us small, medium business providers of services, the flexibility we need at the right cost to provide them a higher end, almost enterprise type service."
"It is easy to use and has integrity with other systems, such as proxies and quality of service."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"I handle the scanning for the finance department. I recently encountered an issue with the PCL bills, our company bills. I resolved the matter, cleared the bill, and received calls regarding it using pfsense.The user interface is extremely user-friendly, which is why we use it across various plant sites. Our IT representatives at the plants find it easy to use and manage because of its straightforward interface."
"The stability of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"The Web-filter in this solution is not very good."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"When I was going to upgrade the OS, the solution didn't accept certain USB devices."
"The user interface is something that Juniper needs to improve."
"I think improvement can be done to the security part, particularly the UDM, and the product should have a user-friendly interface similar to FortiGate. It should have the Azure RBAC in the next release."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"It's a good stable firewall, but it's nowhere near what it needs to be for a next-generation type firewall."
"Junos Space should be improved to be on par with FortiGate's solution for managing firewalls and routing."
"The solution could cost less. It's a bit expensive right now."
"It should be easier to escalate support tickets."
"Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time."
"Also, simplifying the rules for the GeoIP. Making it simpler to understand would be an improvement."
"Network monitoring and device inventory could use some improvements. I'm using SpiceWorks for this because it never really worked in pfSense."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"The solution could use better reporting. They need to offer more of it in general. Right now, the graphics aren't the best. If you need to provide a report to a manager, for example, it doesn't look great. They need to make it easier to understand and give users the ability to customize them."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"My only observation is about the quality of the IPSec logs, which are difficult to interpret and are poor in filters."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 87 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Juniper SRX Series Firewall is rated 7.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Juniper SRX Series Firewall writes "Highly scalable, user-friendly UI, and easy to maintain". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Check Point NGFW and Meraki MX, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl and Sophos UTM. See our Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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