We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Zscaler Internet Access 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."It is user friendly, and has all the features you need."
"It is a safe product."
"The initial installation is very straightforward."
"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"The security on offer is very good."
"One of the advantages of pfSense is that it is very easy to work with. It is a very good open-source solution, and it works really well. pfSense provides a complete package. For some features, it could be the first solution in the world. It is a very good alternative in the market for a firewall solution. You don't need to go to Cisco or other brands with expensive firewalls. pfSense also allows us to offer some support services."
"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."
"It is a better firewall than others and it has better features."
"Its scalability is a strong point."
"It works. I put pfSense in, and it works. I can't think of any trouble I ever had with it. It runs on heat-sensitive appliances. They don't need a fan, so they don't overheat. It is affordable, fast, and very high-speed. It is built on BSD Unix, and it pretty much runs on any Intel processor."
"The documentation is very good."
"The scalability is very good, where you can do an HA configuration and then bring in another box, if necessary."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"The solution is stable."
"Zscaler excels in security protection and the cloud is always up-to-date. It does not matter if you are a small or big organisation, you will receive the same security quality."
"The solution offers a distributed organization to master and to control all of the endpoints."
"The solution has reduced cyberattacks."
"We enjoy all of the proxy capabilities and the capability to integrate into the SIEM/SOC solution."
"Tech support is good."
"It is easy to set up the solution."
"One on the main benefits is protection all time from anywhere."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"I would like to see better pricing in the next release, as well as a simplification of the installation."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"I would like to see different graphs available in the reporting."
"Also, the GUI is helpful, but it's not user-friendly. It's complicated. It should be more intuitive for the average user and have an excellent graphical view. Of course, the user will typically know about network administration, but it still should be easy to understand."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"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."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"Network monitoring and device inventory could use some improvements. I'm using SpiceWorks for this because it never really worked in pfSense."
"One concern I have with Netgate pfSense is related to packet filtering. Specifically, issues can arise with certain functionalities like GP, and, at times, there may be bugs."
"Do not expect to pay for the service and start using it, like Gmail. Zscaler requires a proper implementation to be done to make it successful."
"The pricing is an issue. It is expensive if you have all of your users in the same location. It is expensive compared to other firewalls on the market."
"Zscaler Internet Access's troubleshooting is very limited, and their textbook logs need to be more informative."
"They block Zscaler IPs when the traffic origin is from Zscaler IPs. They've been blocked by certain government organizations so the end users are not able to visit those websites unless we ask them to unblock those IP. This is a bit problematic."
"One thing that they could improve is the ability to import rules from other platforms."
"Currently, the solution's interface is not that user-friendly."
"It needs better integration with other applications. It takes a fair amount of regular activity to apply the by-passes because it is very strict in its restrictions and frequently you have to go in and open things up to allow the workforce to work."
"The tool should improve the predefined dictionaries."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Zscaler Internet Access 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 Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Appgate SDP. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
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