We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall vs. pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure Firewall and pfSense come out about equal in this comparison. Cisco ASA Firewall has a slight edge when it comes to service and support, but pfSense has an edge when it comes to pricing.
"The management console is pretty simple, so anyone who understands networking can initially deploy the solution."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"It is easy to use and performs very well."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"The solution is scalable."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"Technical support services are excellent."
"Even in very big environments, Cisco comes in handy with configuration and offers reliability when it comes to managing multiple items on one platform."
"The most valuable feature is IPS. It's a feature that's very interesting for tackling the most current attacks."
"The most important features are the intrusion prevention engine and the application visibility and control. The Snort feature in Firepower is also valuable."
"The solution is used for the protection of the mobile data network. It is protecting 3G/4G Internet customers and the Private APN."
"The CLI is the most valuable feature. This solution is very flexible and offers different functionality including firewalls and VPN connectivity."
"This solution is easy to use if you know how to set it up."
"The most valuable feature for the customers is that they can control what communication is allowed and what is not allowed. That is, they can allow or deny client traffic."
"It is a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"The documentation is very good."
"I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection."
"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."
"For everyday tasks, we just get alerts. It's anything that's suspicious, including from our Netgate. So, it's part of how we maintain cybersecurity in our school. This is working alongside our endpoint security solution."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"It is a stable solution."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"Currently, FortiGate is providing SSL VPN. But they're missing some features that are available in Palo Alto's SSL VPN."
"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."
"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"When comparing the graphical interface of this solution to other vendors it is more difficult to configure. There is a higher learning curve for administrators in this solution."
"FirePOWER does a good job when it comes to providing us with visibility into threats, but I would like to see a more proactive stance to it."
"Intrusion prevention, we currently need to apply deep bracket inspection manually to use web filtering."
"They should allow customers to talk to them directly instead of having to go through the reseller."
"There is no support here in Georgia. If something goes wrong, support is not always very helpful with the other firewalls or other products."
"The main problem we have is that things work okay until we upgrade the firmware, at which point, everything changes, and the net stops working."
"The product would be improved if the GUI could be brought into the 21st Century."
"I believe that the current feature set of the device is very good and the only thing that Cisco should work on is improving the user experience with the device."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
"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 GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"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 technical support needs to be improved."
"Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting."
"The solution could use better reporting. They need to offer more of it in general. Right now, the graphics aren't the best. If you need to provide a report to a manager, for example, it doesn't look great. They need to make it easier to understand and give users the ability to customize them."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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