We performed a comparison between OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: OPNsense is highly regarded for its ability to adapt and grow, its ability to allow guest access, its user-friendly interface, its versatility, its reliability, its intrusion detection and prevention system, and the availability of a free version. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls excel in their incorporation of machine learning, their ability to prevent attacks in real-time, their unified platform, and their robust security capabilities.
OPNsense has room for improvement in interface simplicity, bandwidth management, high availability, logging, integration, hardware updates, reporting, SSL inspection, and learning curve. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls can enhance customization, SD-WAN configuration, logging accuracy, management interface, documentation, VPN availability, training materials, external dynamic list feature, and internet filtering.
Service and Support: Some users find the customer service for OPNsense excellent, while others believe it could be enhanced. Opinions on Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' customer service are divided. Some customers appreciate the support team's expertise and promptness, while others have faced challenges in contacting support.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for both OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is described as straightforward. Users with or without IT experience can easily navigate through either setup. The deployment time for both options can vary depending on specific circumstances. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls provide training materials that contribute to the simplified and user-friendly setup experience.
Pricing: OPNsense primarily incurs expenses for hardware, while the software is available for free. Additional costs may involve public IPs and underlying VMs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are generally perceived as having higher pricing due to licensing and subscriptions. Nevertheless, this higher cost is deemed reasonable given the level of security and features offered by the product.
ROI: OPNsense delivers cost savings within a short period, eradicating the need for ongoing expenses. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls enhance visibility, reporting, and security, streamlining administration and ensuring a sense of security.
Comparison Results: Based on user feedback, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is the preferred choice when compared to OPNsense. Users find the initial setup of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be straightforward and easy. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is highly regarded for its embedded machine learning capabilities, strong security features, and comprehensive logging.
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"The web filtering feature and the intrusion protection system are the most valuable. It is a resilient appliance. I never had an issue with it in terms of any security breaches."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The most valuable features of OPNsense are the GUI and frequent updates."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"It is a very good solution. I like the dashboard. I can see what is going on and manage it as I like it."
"I feel that its valuable features are that it is simple and free."
"We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience."
"The initial setup is easy. It only takes 15-30 minutes to deploy."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"I find the solution to be user-friendly. It has a lot of reports and easy settings."
"Compared to other firewalls from Check Point, Fortinet, and Cisco, for example, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls use the most advanced techniques. They have sandbox integration and others in the orchestrator. Palo Alto's security features are at a higher level than those of the competitors at the moment."
"The user experience is good and the configuration is very easy."
"The strengths of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are application visibility and application awareness. Their strong point is identifying applications for traffic. So all of the policies that are configured are related to the application and not to a port."
"It is critical that Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls embeds machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. In my environments, we have an integration with a third-party vendor. As soon as there is new information about new threats and the destination that they are trying to reach on any of our network devices, that traffic will be stopped."
"A feature introduced by Palo Alto with the version 10-OS is embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. Machine learning analyzes the network traffic and detects if there is any usual traffic coming from outside to inside. Because of Palo Alto, organizations detect around 91% of malicious attacks using machine learning. The machine learning helps customers by implementing firewalls in critical and air gap areas so there is no need to integrate with the cloud sandbox."
"The solution does a great job of identifying malicious items and vulnerabilities with URL filtering."
"I have found it to be reliable and very easy to use. I haven't really encountered many problems with it because its documentation is clear and readily available on their website."
"The packet level inspection is the most valuable feature. The traffic restriction features allow us to restrict the sub-features of any platform."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"Scalability is one of the disadvantages. When it comes to scalability, you have to actually change the box. If you want to upgrade it, you need to actually change the existing box and probably you take the system off to other sites."
"They've become quite expensive."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"The solution could be more secure."
"The IPS solution could be more reliable."
"I think the most important thing is that it should be easily accessible, but currently, that doesn't seem to be the case. We need a hardware platform that's based on common standards and open computing principles, which would be like a commodity and benefit us greatly."
"There are issues with stability and reliability."
"Given that OPNsense plays a pivotal role as a firewall, safeguarding against various threats, having a reliable backup ensures uninterrupted protection even if unforeseen events impact the primary virtual machine."
"The support for OPNsense is good because we have documents available on the internet. The support could improve a little."
"There is room for improvement in SSL inspection."
"OPNsense showed me some problems when using it in different environments. The problem is integration with a virtual server."
"Palo Alto can do a little bit better when it comes to the User-ID part. I've been facing problems related to double authentication. You have a computer user, but you also have a VPN user, and when you do a single sign-on to another page, these logs can sometimes generate a problem notification. It doesn't happen a lot, but in some networks, it could be a problem. It would be very helpful to have the ability to restrict the connections that you can have in your VPN. For example, if you have the credentials, you can connect with the same user account from different computers or devices. If you have the domain information, you can connect from different devices. That's a problem that they need to address and resolve. They should ensure that at any moment, only one person is connected through a specific user account."
"The advanced manual protection needs to be improved a little bit because they used to make a cloud manual analysis for the cloud."
"We're working with the entry-level appliances, so I don't know what the higher-end ones are like, however, on the entry-level models I would say commit speeds need to be improved."
"Its scalability for on-prem deployments can be better. For an on-prem deployment, the hardware has to be replaced if the volume goes up to a certain level."
"The scalability compared to other products is not good. You need to change the box whenever you want your number of connection sessions to increase."
"I would like the option to be able to block the traffic from a specific country in a few clicks."
"The data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities need to be beefed up."
"It's not so easy to scale out your security capabilities."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and Sophos XGS, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Sophos UTM. See our OPNsense vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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