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."Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"The solution can scale well."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"Performance-wise, I think FortiOS is much better than its Juniper counterpart. Based on our actual experience and performance metrics, FortiOS-based products are much better than Juniper."
"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."
"We found the initial setup to be straightforward."
"The solution is extremely scalable."
"This is an easy means of setting up high-availabilty firewall protection."
"The customer service and support team are excellent."
"It's simple to use in terms of inbound and outbound traffic management."
"The initial setup is easy. It's the easiest firewall installation process on the market. I work with three or four other products and this one is the easiest."
"It is a good firewall with good performance."
"The VPN is my favorite feature."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"It's a good solution for end-users. It's pretty easy to work with."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"It works. I put pfSense in, and it works. I can't think of any trouble I ever had with it. It runs on heat-sensitive appliances. They don't need a fan, so they don't overheat. It is affordable, fast, and very high-speed. It is built on BSD Unix, and it pretty much runs on any Intel processor."
"I'm the expert when it comes to Linux systems, however, with the pfSense, due to the web interface, the rest of the staff can actually make changes to it as required without me worrying about whether they've opened up ports incorrectly or not. The ease of use for non-expert staff is very good."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"The reports are very basic."
"You can enable and disable certain modules in it. However, with disabling, nobody can really tell us if that module is disabled."
"SD-WAN configuration could be easier."
"The complexity of the VPNs should be improved."
"Their first-level support is often poorly trained."
"Fortinet's central management needs to be improved. FortiManager's technical tool provider ability should manage all Fortinet security products. Right now, FortiManager only manages the configuration of FortiGate."
"Technical support could be better. Some competitors have much more responsive support teams."
"Lacks flexibility for different scenario configurations."
"FortiOS's bandwidth and interface could be improved."
"If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson."
"The hotspot and the portal feature in this solution are not stable for WiFi access. We use it at least once or twice every day and it crashes. Some modules can be better by improving detection and having new updates. Additionally, we have some issues with clustering and load balancing that could improve."
"It should integrate with LDAP, Active Directory, etc, to improve the way in which the traces and connections of each IP, or user connected through the firewall, are shown."
"The GUI could use more “bells and whistles”. It's got plenty of info for a Sysadmin but some people like shiny things."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
"Lacks instructional videos."
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.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.