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.
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"We are a visual effects company, and there have been a number of high profile security issues in our industry. This has brought us to a higher standard of security, which our clients are very keen on these days."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"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."
"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 most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"Cisco Secure Firewall improved our organization. We have it in every one of our French offices."
"It is one of the fastest solutions, if not the fastest, in the security technology space. This gives us peace of mind knowing that as soon as a new attack comes online that we will be protected in short order. From that perspective, no one really comes close now to Firepower, which is hugely valuable to us from an upcoming new attack prevention perspective."
"A stable and solid solution for protection from external threats and for VPN connections."
"VPN load balancing has been particularly essential for my connections to integrate via multiple time zones."
"IPS and Snort are very important because they also differentiate Cisco from other vendors and competitors."
"If only a Layer 4 FW is needed, this is a good solution."
"We have not had to deal with stability issues."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be the access control and IPsec VPN."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"What I like about pfSense is that it works well and runs on an inexpensive appliance."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"Content protection, content inspection, and the application level firewall."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"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."
"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."
"The solution is very expensive."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"The support from Fortinet FortiGate could improve. They are not easily accessible when we need them. They could improve their response time."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"It can be improved when it comes to monitoring. Today, the logs from the firewalls could be improved a bit more without integrating with other devices."
"The annual subscription cost is a bit high. They should try to make it comparable to other offerings. We have a number of Chinese products here in Pakistan, which are already, very cheap and have less annual maintenance costs compared to Cisco."
"One feature lacking is superior anti-virus protection, which must be added."
"The intelligence has room for improvement. There are some hackers that we haven't seen before and its ability to detect those types of attacks needs to be improved."
"In terms of next-generation capabilities, Cisco is a little behind, and it is way behind the market leaders."
"This product is managed using the Firepower Management Center (FMC), but it would be better if it also supported the command-line interface (CLI)."
"Cisco wasn't first-to-market with NGFWs... they should look at what other vendors are doing and try not only to be on the same wavelength but a little bit better."
"It needs more tunneling capabilities."
"I would like to see SD1 integration into the software. That would be fantastic."
"The solution’s interface must be improved."
"This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
"I have been using WireGuard VPN because it is a lot faster and more secure than an open VPN. However, in the latest version of pfSense, they have removed this feature, which is one of the main features that I need. They should include this feature."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
"The usage reports can be better."
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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