We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Zscaler Cloud Firewall 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."Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"We've found the solution to be pretty stable."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"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."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"The product’s documentation is good."
"There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"I had some outages in the network and we provide services for our company. We sell mobile credits. The terminal gets access to our own server inside the network and if one internet fails, then the other one is still up and we have a back-up link on the devices."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"It helps a lot of companies to reduce their downtime. Also, It helps businesses in terms of being secured and protected from any threats."
"Includes advanced tech protection."
"The scalability is okay. We have around 2200 people using this solution."
"Zscaler provides effective protection against various cyber threats ensuring a safe environment"
"It provides in-depth visibility into your network, ensuring that traffic flowing into your organization, be it from offices or individual users, is effectively filtered and secured through multiple layers of protection."
"The solution is scalable."
"The product’s firewall and VPN package are fantastic compared to any other solution."
"I like the ease of deployment and its flexibility. We don't need to deal with license, quotes, procurement, delivery, and installation. Everything is software-based, and it's very easy to operate."
"The scalability could be better."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve to be on par with its competitors, such as Palo Alto and Sophos. They are the market leaders. Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve its capabilities. However, we are happy with Fortinet FortiGate."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"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 GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"My only observation is about the quality of the IPSec logs, which are difficult to interpret and are poor in filters."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"The GUI could use more “bells and whistles”. It's got plenty of info for a Sysadmin but some people like shiny things."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"Certain criteria need to be met if you want to scale this solution."
"Instead of the standard license, they should certainly provide customers with the visibility to access and view the logs."
"Pricing is a challenge."
"Its technical support services could be better."
"Zscaler Cloud Firewall should have a better understanding of all dynamic cloud applications."
"Because it's on cloud, it doesn't allow application of extra settings."
"We are having some issues with internet access being denied when organizational ID-based policies change. For example, a lower level employee ends up getting the same level of access as that of a higher level employee."
"The issue right now is probably that Zscaler is not providing web browser isolation. Another solution, Menlo, offers this. For one customer, we had to send traffic to Menlo to do the isolation for us. It was requested by the customer so that they could integrate any iframe. Zscaler needs to add this type of feature in their next release."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Zscaler Cloud Firewall is ranked 26th in Firewalls with 15 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Zscaler Cloud Firewall is rated 8.4. 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 Cloud Firewall writes "A highly stable and comprehensive cloud security and access solution". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Zscaler Cloud Firewall is most compared with Azure Firewall, OPNsense, Cisco Multicloud Defense, Cisco Secure Firewall and Check Point NGFW. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall report.
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