We performed a comparison between OPNsense and WatchGuard Firebox 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."The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"It is a one box solution, which covers most of the edge device’s requirements."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"It's a firewall that secures our internal network. I have been using it since 2013, and I find that most of the features are advanced, and very user friendly."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"What I like best about OPNsense is that, as a firewall, it's pretty good. I'm quite impressed with it. I had an excellent experience with OPNsense, which helped me achieve the targets I wanted."
"It's open source."
"We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"OPNsense is easy to use and open source."
"I find the solution to be user-friendly. It has a lot of reports and easy settings."
"It has an open license. It works very well, and there is an update every month."
"It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features."
"There are no problems with the technical support. If a problem occurs it gets resolved immediately with our technical support partners."
"Firebox's best feature is the access portal."
"As a whole, it has a very low requirement for ongoing interaction. It's very self-sufficient. If properly patched, it has very high reliability. The total cost of ownership once deployed is very low."
"The throughput is great. It's perfect. We have no issues whatsoever. The management features are very powerful..."
"The solution has many security features. We have an intrusion provision system and filtering and block filtering."
"I like intrusion detection the most."
"WatchGuard Firebox is the most powerful firewall for Wi-Fi security."
"It provides us with Layer 2 and Layer 3 security."
"Scalability is one of the disadvantages. When it comes to scalability, you have to actually change the box. If you want to upgrade it, you need to actually change the existing box and probably you take the system off to other sites."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"The interface isn't so friendly user. But we have some technicians here who are quite confident with this tool. OPNSense could maybe add sets of rules so it's simpler to manage different groups with particular needs."
"There is room for improvement in SSL inspection."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"While they do have paid options that actually gives better features, for most of the clients, if they tend to take a paid option will instead opt for Fortinet."
"There are issues with stability and reliability."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"OPNsense showed me some problems when using it in different environments. The problem is integration with a virtual server."
"When using the solution at the beginning was difficult. There was a steep learning curve."
"Its documentation could be improved. Sometimes, you need to search a bit longer to find what you are looking for."
"Once you start getting into proxy actions and setting up: "Okay, cool. Once this rule gets triggered, what actions have to happen?" I do know a few people who use WatchGuard and they still have to get assistance when they look at that. So I would file that as a con for WatchGuard. Proxy actions can be a little bit complicated."
"They are working on cloud-based options. However, they do not have the options fully functional in their solution at this time."
"Websense is an application that monitors and filters internet traffic. Websense was derived from WatchGuard. But when you go to WatchGuard to actually implement that particular feature, you have to use some type of additional feature and you have to pay for it, unfortunately. I think it should be free or free in the WatchGuard box itself, as an option. It would be nice if they didn't charge us for that."
"The solution is lacking a professional website, they should be updated more often."
"There's always room for improvement, especially if the threats are getting more sophisticated and the IT department cannot sufficiently meet this kind of sophistication with their own knowledge and experience. Knowing that this solution can get up to the level of addressing a lot of these threats is something that everybody wishes for. If we look at the dark web and the lawful web, they are two opposites, and if these two good and bad collide in the world of the internet, you want the best possible product—especially if you cannot get to that point of knowledge. I am just an individual and end user, with limited knowledge of usage. That's why I say there's always room for improvement, from their side and also from mine, because by knowing exactly what they can achieve and the knowledge that they can get on an everyday basis, and the portion that is understandable to me, it's an improvement for them as well."
"I would like to see more tutorials on setting up the Firebox."
"There should be better integration and a way to configure multiple vendors into the same data center in order to offer more flexibility."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our OPNsense vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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