We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: pfSense has an edge in this comparison as it is a free, open-source solution while Palo Alto Networks is considered expensive by its users.
"It is a safe product."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"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."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"The feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"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."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"At our peak time, we have reached more than 5,000 concurrent connections."
"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."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"The documentation is very good."
"We standardized on the product and got rid of several other types of firewalls from different vendors."
"I like the navigation of the general Panorama solution. I can easily navigate around and get to the thing I need. I'm not wasting time trying to find something."
"The most valuable feature is the security provided by the ATP."
"The most valuable features are the IPS/IDS subscriptions."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the network protection."
"I'm using most of its features such as antivirus, anti-spam, and WAF. I'm also using its DNS Security and DNS sinkhole features, as well as the URL filtering and application security features."
"The most valuable features include the different security zones and the ability to identify applications not only by port numbers but by the applications themselves... And with the single-pass architecture, it provides a good trade-off between security and network performance. It provides good security and good network throughput."
"It is very scalable."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"I would like some automated custom reporting."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system."
"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."
"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."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"The solution could use better reporting. They need to offer more of it in general. Right now, the graphics aren't the best. If you need to provide a report to a manager, for example, it doesn't look great. They need to make it easier to understand and give users the ability to customize them."
"The solution requires a lot of administration."
"The integration should be improved."
"The bugs can be improved."
"The initial configuration is complicated to set up."
"The support could be improved. Palo Alto does not have a support team located in Bangladesh, and their support team operates from another location. Therefore, when we raise a ticket, it takes some time for them to respond, which can be problematic for us."
"The solution is not straightforward."
"The only area I can see for improvement is that Palo Alto should do more marketing."
"Customers don't want to buy extra things for extra capabilities"
"There is a tradeoff between security and network performance, as security is always top-notch, but performance can sometimes lag and has room for improvement."
"Palo Alto keeps coming out with antivirus and malware updates. When we have to integrate those updates we face some problems with the cloud platform, not the on-prem setup. The device works fine, but sometimes the sync doesn't happen on time."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 163 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Check Point NGFW, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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