We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Zyxel Unified Security Gateway 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."
"This solution has solid UTM features combined with a nice GUI."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."
"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 solution is scalable."
"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."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"The solution is very robust."
"The solution is very easy to use and configure."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"It is a stable solution."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus."
"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."
"The solution can scale well."
"Its customer service could be better."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"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."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"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."
"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 main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
"The solution’s interface must be improved."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"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."
"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."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved."
"The product has some scalability and data management issues where improvements are required."
"Sometimes it reboots when you least expect it, and that's the main issue."
More Zyxel Unified Security Gateway Pricing and Cost Advice →
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is ranked 14th in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 3 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is rated 6.0. 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 Zyxel Unified Security Gateway writes "Offers good anti-spam and web filtering features but needs to improve in the area of scalability". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Stormshield Network Security, whereas Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, WatchGuard Firebox, SonicWall TZ and Meraki MX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway report.
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