We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series 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."The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well."
"The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"The "OpenVPN Client Export" package is really helpful in exporting the VPN client software on most popular devices: iOS/Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and a handful of SIP handsets."
"One of the advantages of pfSense is that it is very easy to work with. It is a very good open-source solution, and it works really well. pfSense provides a complete package. For some features, it could be the first solution in the world. It is a very good alternative in the market for a firewall solution. You don't need to go to Cisco or other brands with expensive firewalls. pfSense also allows us to offer some support services."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"App-ID and User-ID have repeatedly shown value in securing business critical systems."
"The product provides more visibility into our traffic."
"The technical support for the solution is very good."
"Using Palo Alto Networks Panorama, we were able to deploy a single point of management and visualization of the firewall infrastructure in cloud, on-premise and integrated with Azure to automate scale up. Its security features, i.e. anti-malware, threat prevention, URL Filtering, VPN, and antivirus are the most valuable. The ID-User integrated with AD and 2FA features are also very useful to provide secure access to servers and some users in the company. "
"It provides complete security posture from end-to-end. This has given us better visibility into what our security aspects are."
"AWS has improved our agility to apply firewall rules. It has reduced the amount of time that it takes to apply firewall rules because everything is based in the cloud."
"The solution enables organizations to enforce policies."
"They now know the details about their network traffic that they did not know before: Applications that they are using and some application they did not know they were using."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"The security could be improved."
"One concern I have with Netgate pfSense is related to packet filtering. Specifically, issues can arise with certain functionalities like GP, and, at times, there may be bugs."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"It would be great to add more to security."
"There are some bias issues and some intrusions in our network that have to be addressed. So, we're thinking of changing this firewall to something like a professional hardware-enabled firewall."
"Network monitoring and device inventory could use some improvements. I'm using SpiceWorks for this because it never really worked in pfSense."
"As an open-source solution, there are so many loopholes happening within the product. By design, no one is taking ownership of it, and that is worrisome to me."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration of multi-factor authentication vendors."
"Integrative capabilities with other solutions should be addressed."
"It has to be more scalable for the deployment of VMs on the cloud."
"The reporting part of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The only minor issue we've faced is with the app's ID configuration, which requires specific matching for application filtering."
"It'll help if Palo Alto Networks provided better documentation."
"Its web interface is a bit outdated, and it needs to be updated. They can also improve the NAT functionality. We have had issues with the NAT setup."
"The product could be better in terms of performance than one of its competitors."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper vSRX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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