We performed a comparison between Perimeter 81 and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Perimeter 81 offers single sign-on, multiple networks, a user-friendly interface, fast and secure VPN, reliable connection, privacy, efficient customer service, mobile and desktop support, a lightweight mobile app, and implementation of SD-WAN and zero trust access. pfSense is praised for its ability to block IP addresses, user-friendly dashboards, open-source nature, scanning and filtering capabilities, stability, customization abilities, cost-effectiveness, availability of plugins and add-ons, simplicity, flexibility, and scalability. Both options provide a range of useful features for users.
Perimeter 81 has room for improvement in terms of specifying various sites, incorporating a separate login option for bypassing website logins, allowing customization of interface colors, enhancing the user interface, providing notifications for session timeouts, and enhancing network traffic distribution. pfSense could benefit from the addition of instructional videos, a more user-friendly web interface, stability improvements, integration with a mobile app, and enhanced reporting and graphing features.
Service and Support: Perimeter 81 receives positive feedback for their efficient and useful customer service, while pfSense's support garners mixed opinions, with some users praising it and others noting its limited assistance and reliance on online communities.
Ease of Deployment: Perimeter 81 is praised for its straightforward and user-friendly initial setup, although it may become more complex in a hybrid environment. pfSense is generally easy to set up, but some users recommend clearer guidance or a configuration wizard for improved usability.
Pricing: Perimeter 81 has a flexible setup cost based on specific needs. In contrast, pfSense provides a free open-source solution and offers paid support. The pricing for pfSense varies depending on the setup.
ROI: Perimeter 81 offers the opportunity for a favorable return on investment through various benefits such as lower supply expenses, enhanced engineering, decreased repair costs, and improved product stability. pfSense is highly regarded for its cost efficiency and significant savings, making it a valuable option for businesses operating with limited financial resources.
Comparison Results: Perimeter 81 is the preferred product over pfSense. It is praised for its easy and intuitive setup process, single sign-on capabilities, multiple networks feature, user-friendly interface, fast and secure VPN, and efficient customer service. Perimeter 81 offers a more user-friendly and efficient experience according to the reviews.
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"It is easy to manage, and it doesn't need much knowledge from the team. It is a stable device, and there are many features that are included out of the box."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"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."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"The main benefit is the grouping of our security monitoring."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"It's an easy solution to set up."
"Its scalability is a strong point."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"I use pfSense because it gives me the flexibility to greatly expand basic firewall features."
"The intrusion detection feature is the most valuable. It is an open-source firewall, so there is a lot of material on it. I also find the open VPN capability very nice. It is pretty customizable. The clustering and the high availability are the two biggest things to be able to get out of a firewall."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"Perimeter 81 is very pretty."
"Even after restarting, it tries to quickly reestablish connection which is very helpful."
"Our operators can work from home without any problems."
"The ease of use not only translates to quick adoption rates - it also ensures that our employees remain compliant with our cybersecurity protocols, enhancing the overall security posture of our organization."
"It has provided a seamless gateway to much-needed platforms."
"The feature that I have found to be most valuable is the reputation that the company has regarding privacy. Nowadays, this is critical, especially when you do all of your work online."
"Scaling Perimeter 81 was easy to do."
"The setup is really easy...I rate the support team a ten out of ten."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"You do need some IT knowledge in order to effectively work with the solution."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"The integration of pfSense with EPS and EDS could be better. Also, it should be easier to get reports on how many users are connecting simultaneously and how sections connect in real-time."
"pfSense could improve by having a sandboxing feature that I have seen in SonicWall. However, maybe it is available I am not aware of it."
"A malware blocker should be included. I do not know if it is included yet. However, until now, we have not experienced a large malware invasion."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"There are several levels of firewall configuration such as beginner, advanced, and expert configurations. At each level, it becomes more complex and more tricky to set up the firewall. For example, if you want to install the firewall on your computer system, it would be a lot easier if it just tells you that this is the internet NIC and this is the Wi-Fi NIC."
"If a user doesn't have a large amount of experience in Linux systems, they will have problems using this solution. Users need to be highly skilled in troubleshooting competency. Users who do not have such skills will find the product difficult to use."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"In the future, maybe P81 can improve the network traffic balancing and redundancy."
"One of the more negative experiences using Perimeter 81 is the fact that I am logged off after a pre-determined amount of time which cuts off access to some of my company's resources."
"One of our challenges is ensuring the security of our cloud-based operations."
"The overall UI could be improved and updated to bring a simpler feel to the application."
"If I were to be nitpicky, I would ask that Perimeter 81 offer the option for us to change the color of the graphical user interface, like maybe pink or green or so on."
"The solution's speed of upload and download is an area where it lacks"
"Offering in-app explanations detailing what each feature does, its benefits and potential use cases can help users better understand and utilize the tool to its full potential."
"I would suggest adding more networking and security features that allow more customization within their platform."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Perimeter 81 is ranked 11th in Firewalls with 22 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Perimeter 81 is rated 9.2. 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 Perimeter 81 writes "Great SAML and SCIM support with the ability to deploy site-2-site tunnels with specific IP restrictions". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Perimeter 81 is most compared with Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Cato SASE Cloud Platform, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare Access and Cisco Umbrella. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Perimeter 81 report.
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