We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between the two solutions is that Meraki MX is expensive, while pfSense is an open-source solution and is free of charge. In addition, Meraki’s monitoring capabilities could use improvement.
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"It is easy to use and performs very well."
"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."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup."
"Fortinet FortiGate protects against internet-based threats, both internal and external. It is scalable, stable, easy to use, and easy to install."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"Traffic Shaping: The device lets you decide how you want to use your internet services. Due to the fact that Meraki can accept dual WAN, you can decide the way you balance the data traffic."
"The technical support people from Meraki are brilliant."
"The cloud management system is really valuable."
"It is very fast to implement."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"The security level of our organization has changed by using Meraki MX Firewalls. We didn't have the UTM before, but now we have sandboxing, tray scanning, attack preventions and monitorization. Our security level has improved."
"Managed centrally over the web: You can manages all your Meraki devices in a single account."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"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."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"It is a good firewall with good performance."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"Open source and support are valuable. I have community support."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"The logging details need to be improved."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"Its filtering is sometimes too precise or strict. We sometimes have to bypass and authorize some of the sites, but they get blocked. We know that they are trusted sites, but they are blocked, and we don't know why."
"It is very expensive, and their support is not very good. I hope that their technical support will be better in the future."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"The product is quite complex to set up."
"We feel that Cisco provides smaller features, with fewer possibilities versus other solutions out there."
"It can be hard to get a hold of the solution’s technical support team."
"What I would like to see in the next version is to have more interfaces for WAN links."
"The configuration options for firewall and IPS have limitations."
"As far as what needs to be improved — nothing really comes to mind. It does what we need it to do."
"The product could incorporate tools like ThousandEyes into the system so we can see things directly."
"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."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"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."
"It requires more attention to provide a better alternative for open source to small government or educational institutions with reduced budgets in terms of technology."
"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 integration should be improved."
"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 solution’s interface must be improved."
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 58 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and SonicWall NSa, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Stormshield Network Security. See our Meraki MX vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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