pfSense vs Sophos XG
We performed a comparison between pfSense vs Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
"There are lots of features and most of them are deployed for internet security. Users are protected if they accidentally go to some malicious sites."
"We use a lot of function on the IPS and it works well for us."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"It blocks the vulnerabilities that can negatively impact us."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"My company mainly works in the health and educational domain, schools and universities. I prevent the improper use of content from schools and universities. I defend the medical records for the patients in our hospitals. That is the main use case for me for the firewall."
"The solution is very easy to use and has a very nice GUI."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"pfSense is a nice product, and I find that there's a lot of information out there. There are some good tutorials on YouTube and other websites with helpful information."
"The documentation is very good."
"A free firewall that is a good network security appliance."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"One feature of Sophos XG that I found incredibly beneficial for threat prevention is its endpoint protection."
"Reporting is the most valuable feature."
"Definitely, its usability is very good, and it's a very robust firewall."
"It has a very friendly interface like the Cyberoam iNG units, it has customizable policies, it has proper templates that you can even modify, and you can customize the rules, down to each single user."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XG are user-friendliness and it is highly secure."
"I like their firewall and the intrusion detection feature"
"I like how you can integrate with other endpoints and Intercept X in one central management platform. I think it's a perfect solution. Sophos will manage everything in one container. You can manage many firewalls or endpoints within one panel."
"To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
"The usage reports can be better."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"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."
"Network monitoring and device inventory could use some improvements. I'm using SpiceWorks for this because it never really worked in pfSense."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
"Its user interface is a little bit slow."
"The response time could stand improvement."
"Support for this product is something that is really important, and it needs to improve."
"The cloud support needs to be improved."
"Could have a more simplified functionality for users."
"Its price should be improved. Its features are pretty okay, but the price is the area where we have to fight more. They should do something about the price structure."
"Lacking network access control, user profiling and analytics dashboards."
"The two main areas where this product needs improvement are routing and reporting."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. 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 Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, KerioControl, Sophos UTM, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Sophos UTM. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Sophos XG report.
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