We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiOS 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."Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth."
"We are very happy with the general bandwidth agility we have seen from one website to another website."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"The user experience is great. The graphical user interface is also good."
"There are a lot of features that we like within the solution. The resources or performance of the firewall is very good. However, the real selling point is the fact that the solution offers so many features, it gives our clients a lot of extras that they can work with. There's a lot on offer."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiOS network segregation, UTM, and antivirus, freight management protection, such as DDoS. Additionally, the CLI and the GUI are easy to use. The architecture makes sense, and the command in the CLI are organized well. They have quite a lot of features are easy to use, and are user-friendly. Any novice can use Fortinet FortiOS without an issue."
"Their classification inside of that database of the various threats is typically very, very good."
"FortiOS's most valuable feature is a next-generation firewall that can be used as the APT solution in advanced threat protection."
"Fortinet FortiOS's valuable features include intuitive policy creation and deployment, precise parameter settings to determine thresholds, and security profiles such as web filtering and remote application filtering, among others."
"Has a very simple OS and a good price point."
"We found the initial setup to be straightforward."
"The VPN is my favorite feature."
"The initial setup is easy."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well."
"The solution is very easy to use and configure."
"What I like about pfSense is that it works well and runs on an inexpensive appliance."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"I need user-behavior analytics, to find threat scenarios from inside the organization, insider attacks. That would be very helpful for us. In addition, I would like next-generation features for small and medium businesses. These businesses require UTM, all in one product. Fortinet must include it."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."
"Some features I have found to be hidden and cannot be accessed through the graphical user interface, you can only access them through the command-line interface(CLI). All the features should be accessible through the graphical user interface."
"It would be better if AWS instances were available. If I want to upgrade from T2.small to T2.medium, it should be available rather than having a big instance and paying a lot of money for that. The issue is that we had deployed in AWS Cloud, and we were using a very small instance. Recently we wanted to move in-house and deploy it on the big instance because it was struggling with the RAM. If we use T2.small, we cannot upgrade it to the T2.medium. It has predefined instances in the marketplace with a lot of cost differences. If I can increase the RAM, I have to choose the T3.large instance. If I'm paying $270 for the small instance, I have to pay more than double the cost for T3.large. It is about $850, and this is not good. So, it would be better if it was cheaper. I think both AWS and Fortinet should think about that. They should provide it on lower instances as well. If I want to upgrade it from T2.small to T2.medium, it should be available, but it's a problem."
"Fortinet FortiOS is stable. However, last month we had an issue with a released patch. We had to receive another update to fix the firewall issue consuming all of the resources. The patches should be tested more before going into circulation."
"The complexity of the VPNs should be improved."
"The solution needs to adjust its pricing models. With the way they are structured, everything is very disparate and sold separately, and, depending on the solution, it can get quite pricey."
"Their technical support needs improvement."
"The central management can improve in Fortinet FortiOS. It is sometimes difficult to manage all the devices."
"I can only compare it with SonicWall, and it is missing many advanced features that SonicWall has."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"It was difficult to configure our web printer through the solution. This process could be easier. Additionally, integration with SD-WAN solution."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"There are some bias issues and some intrusions in our network that have to be addressed. So, we're thinking of changing this firewall to something like a professional hardware-enabled firewall."
"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."
Fortinet FortiOS is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 73 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Fortinet FortiOS is rated 8.4, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiOS writes "Provides effective filtering features, good stability but initial setup is moderately challenging". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Fortinet FortiOS is most compared with Fortinet FortiManager, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Fortinet FortiWeb, Darktrace and OPNsense, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Fortinet FortiOS vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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