We performed a comparison between Juniper SRX Series Firewall and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is appreciated for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and robust assistance. It provides functionalities like site-to-site VPN, firewall security, and routing capabilities. pfSense is highly regarded for its capacity to obstruct IP addresses, user-friendly dashboards, and open-source characteristics. It offers features such as secure VPN connections, scanning, filtering, and network security capabilities.
Juniper SRX Series Firewall could use enhancements in capacity limitations, reporting and alerts, user interface, device reliability, documentation, and feature enhancements. pfSense would benefit from improvements in instructional videos, web interface clarity, stability, mobile application, centralized management, GUI for SMBs, sandboxing, security, hardware support, user-friendliness, log analysis, VPN capacity, documentation, configuration processes, and SD-WAN integration.
Service and Support: Customers have generally praised Juniper SRX Series Firewall's customer service for being helpful and knowledgeable, despite occasional slower response times. pfSense's customer service varies among users, with some having positive experiences with technical support and others relying on clear documentation and community resources.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Juniper SRX Series Firewall can be done within a day for smaller branch offices, whereas pfSense be set up in just 15 minutes. Juniper may demand familiarity with CLI, while pfSense is commonly referred to as being easy to use.
Pricing: Juniper has extra charges for advanced security features and APS, whereas pfSense provides updates without any additional fees. The specific licensing costs for pfSense are not clearly stated.
ROI: Juniper SRX Series Firewall provides advanced security features and reliable performance, leading to a favorable return on investment. pfSense stands out for its affordability, minimal management expenses, and substantial hardware cost savings. Users also emphasize its superior ROI compared to pricier alternatives such as FortiGate.
Comparison Results: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is the preferred product over pfSense. Users appreciate its simplicity, intuitive interface, reliability, scalability, and exceptional customer support. It offers convenient configuration, site-to-site VPN capabilities, and effective firewall protection. Additionally, Juniper SRX Series Firewall is considered a more cost-effective and secure solution.
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"The interface is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the policy routing and application control."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"The most valuable features of the Juniper SRX Series Firewall are the user-friendly UI, and accessing the solution is simple."
"It protects the data behind our switches."
"The command line in Juniper SRX is extremely powerful, in my opinion. It's one of the best command lines I've used in networking products."
"Using a Juniper CLI, you configure a "candidate configuration", then "commit" it to bring it live. If you do not like it or messed up something, you just "rollback" to the previous configuration. It can all be done in a matter of minutes. This is super handy once you get use to it."
"It integrates well with Fortinet and Palo Alto."
"I like the routing and firewall features."
"The solution has proven to be quite stable."
"If we need to define our user system from an anti-spam perspective, we can constantly update the antivirus."
"It is a very good solution for enterprises that need a VPN for their employees. It is the best way to provide a remote work facility to employees at a very low cost. Other solutions that I have had in the past were very expensive. Enterprises don't always have that kind of money to invest."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection."
"I use pfSense because it gives me the flexibility to greatly expand basic firewall features."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"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."
"There is one big configuration file with no separations for the unique VDOMs. Maybe they could separate individual VDOM configuration files with the root VDOM configuration file referencing the individual VDOM config files."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"It could improve areas which need high performance."
"We purchased three devices and all three have been replaced under RMA."
"Juniper SRX could improve by adding an IPX feature."
"Juniper needs to focus more on their perimeter firewalls."
"While the GUI is pretty good on the Juniper side, there can still be tweaks made to it that will make it even better."
"In comparison to other enterprise-level firewalls, such as Cisco FTD, Cisco has improved significantly. In the past, I believed that Juniper SRX was superior, but after seeing the advancements in the FTD platform, Cisco has better functionality. I have not recently explored Juniper SRX's next-generation firewall capabilities as we only use basic firewall filtering in our enterprise network."
"It does have its nuances in terms of deployment. There are always areas to make something easier or more intuitive or make the system auto-negotiate more with existing hardware."
"It should be easier to escalate support tickets."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"The GUI. There are TONS of plugins for pfSense, as such, if a user wants to add quite a bit of functionality, the GUI will feel a little congested."
"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 integration could be improved."
"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."
"I would like to see pfSense integrate WireGuard. Currently, pfSense uses OpenVPN, and there's nothing wrong with it, but WireGuard is a lot leaner and meaner."
Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 86 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Juniper SRX Series Firewall is rated 7.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Juniper SRX Series Firewall writes "Highly scalable, user-friendly UI, and easy to maintain". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Check Point NGFW and Meraki MX, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl and Sophos UTM. See our Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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