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.
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"With FortiClient, you can easily connect when you are home, check out what you want to do, and connect to your network when you are not at work. You can switch on servers and you can check what is wrong."
"The pricing is great and very reasonable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"It has a very nice web interface, and it is very simple to use. The way policies are working is also good."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"I'm the expert when it comes to Linux systems, however, with the pfSense, due to the web interface, the rest of the staff can actually make changes to it as required without me worrying about whether they've opened up ports incorrectly or not. The ease of use for non-expert staff is very good."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"The documentation is very good."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"Sophos Intercept X is scalable. Currently, we have almost 30 people using it in our company."
"I handle the scanning for the finance department. I recently encountered an issue with the PCL bills, our company bills. I resolved the matter, cleared the bill, and received calls regarding it using pfsense.The user interface is extremely user-friendly, which is why we use it across various plant sites. Our IT representatives at the plants find it easy to use and manage because of its straightforward interface."
"Price-wise the solution offers acceptable rates. You can find cheaper solutions on the market but when you go cheaper you have fewer features. Today, based on iQuate market the price is very reasonable and affordable, and it's good if you get a good discount. Discounts can be offered by the vendor. If it's a competitive upgrade which means the customer is upgrading from another vendor, Sophos provides extra discount so they can win the deal. In general, it is a good price."
"It's a good security tool and it aligns with the rest of our security stack."
"The simplicity and timely updates."
"They really work scalability into the solution at the outset."
"The solution offers a good firewall endpoint and email encryption."
"The most valuable feature is web filtering."
"Because of the pandemic, the VPN is the most valuable feature."
"All of the features are amazing, especially Sandstorm, which prevents bad traffic or downloaded files from reaching our customers' and partners' networks."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
"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."
"The product must provide integration with other solutions."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"Could be simplified for new users."
"The reports could improve, they do not seem complete and more information could be added."
"They can lower its price. It is very expensive. We are looking for a less expensive solution depending on our budget. They can also improve it in terms of firewall protection."
"SD-WAN needs to be improved because it often fails at the network security level."
"In feature releases of the solution, I would like there to be an increase in the detection capability."
"There have been some issues when upgrading. For some reason, parts of the configuration become unconfigured, I then have to reconfigure it. I should not need to keep reconfiguring it after upgrades."
"There are issues with electricity with this solution."
"It would be better if they made their own hardware like Palo Alto and Fortinet. They use their own ASICs and claim it is more secure."
"I would prefer if Sophos XG were cheaper. A lower price would benefit me as a system provider for the end customer. The cost of the license and renewal for all the software and devices is somewhat high."
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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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.