We performed a comparison between Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall 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."The technical support is great."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI."
"The performance is good."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"Next Generation Firewall's best feature is that it can be managed on one platform."
"The VPN is great."
"The support is great. They also have very good categorization. It's very good. It captures a lot of threats."
"I found the initial setup process to be very simple and straightforward."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The simplicity of the solution is its most valuable asset. It's very user-friendly."
"When our customer needs some optimization, along with performance and security. If they want everything in one package, I recommend Forcepoint because they have everything."
"The Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is a scalable product."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"Good basic firewall features."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"The product’s documentation is good."
"I can manage it easily by myself."
"Content protection, content inspection, and the application level firewall."
"The documentation is very good."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"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."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"The process of configuring firewall rules appears excessively complex."
"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."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"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."
"Its interface is complex when compared with a firewall like FortiGate. Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall needs a management console, whereas FortiGate doesn't need any console. When you have a few devices, a console is not really necessary. It's good to have a private console only when you have a lot of devices."
"Its management center should be easier to use. The management interface of Forcepoint is unique and a little bit different from some of the firewall solutions on which people might have worked before. Sometimes, the customers say that it is not very friendly, and we help them with how to use this management interface. It just takes a little bit of time, and after some time, it gets easy to manage or use. It is quite similar to Palo Alto, Fortinet, and legacy Juniper solutions. Their support should be faster. We have received complaints that they are not responding fast, which is not good for the vendor and us."
"In larger companies with extensive infrastructure, retrieving logs for a longer period of time can sometimes take a bit longer than desired."
"The network interface could be better, and it could be cheaper."
"We feel the product's technical support could be better, as this relates to the solution itself, to the installation of the product, and to having a proper understanding of the case."
"Management could be better. They can improve the management. I think all our customers can't accept firewalls that have standalone management. So, they prefer Fortinet or Palo Alto. But overall, inspection and other features are working fine."
"The solution's support could use improvement."
"When it comes to a complex deployment, the rules, firewall features, SD-WAN core features, and auto-scaling can cause the device to be not quite stable."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"pfSense could improve by having a sandboxing feature that I have seen in SonicWall. However, maybe it is available I am not aware of it."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
"The integration could be improved."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"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."
"Could be simplified for new users."
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Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is ranked 25th in Firewalls with 41 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is rated 7.6, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall writes "Provides decent protection for the LAN but complicated interface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention, Check Point NGFW, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and Darktrace, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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