We performed a comparison between Juniper vSRX 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 are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network."
"The technical support is great."
"Overall, the pricing of the solution is very good. The product offers good value."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy."
"The hardware is stable."
"The initial setup is pretty simple."
"We like the solution’s protocol and its dashboard system."
"This solution works well. Their switches and firewall are good."
"The solution has good features."
"The features we found most valuable are using the IDS and IPS during protection. The application filtering feature is great."
"The product's scalability is good, and my company has 150 users."
"The authentication part is seamless and easy for people."
"At our peak time, we have reached more than 5,000 concurrent connections."
"It has a very nice web interface, and it is very simple to use. The way policies are working is also good."
"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."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"I have found the firewall portion for the blocking most valuable."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"It is a stable solution."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"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."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"We worked with Cisco's support and Juniper's support and there are some differences, to be honest, Cisco is more available and is more competent at addressing our cases."
"They really need to improve the GUI."
"The GUI interface needs improvement."
"It could use more tutorials."
"VPN access is an area that needs improvement."
"The user interface could always be better. They could make it simpler and more intuitive."
"The GUI really needs a lot of work, and it has got worse with successive version updates."
"The solution's GUI needs improvement."
"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 router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"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."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"The stability could 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."
"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."
Juniper vSRX is ranked 24th in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Juniper vSRX is rated 7.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Juniper vSRX writes "Fast with good usability and fairly scalable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Juniper vSRX is most compared with Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Juniper vSRX vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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