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.
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"The primary benefits of using Cisco Secure solutions are time-saving, a robust API, and convenience for the security team."
"The IP filter configuration for specific political and Static NAT has been most valuable."
"One thing I like about the product is the logging features, the way it logs, the way it forwards the logs in Syslog."
"Its VPN and ASN features are very stable."
"I have experience with URL filtering, and it is very good for URL filtering. You can filter URLs based on the categories, and it does a good job. It can also do deep packet inspection."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ASA firewalls. I like to have features like most integrated systems in ACI."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Firewall is its ease of configuration and that it's scalable for firewalls and VPNs."
"The dashboard is the most important thing. It provides good visibility and makes management easy. Firepower also provides us with good application visibility and control."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"I use pfSense because it gives me the flexibility to greatly expand basic firewall features."
"This solution has increased the level of security, given us more control, provided a deep insight into network traffic, and is a great VPN solution."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"The initial setup was straightforward, therefore I wanted to continue using the product."
"The documentation is very good."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"FortiGate support could do some improvements on their IPv6 configuration. Right now it's still in the very early stage for utilizing in an enterprise level network environment."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"The solution's deployment is time-consuming, which should be minimized and made more user-friendly for us."
"The ASA needs to incorporate the different modules you have to integrate to achieve UTM functions, especially for small businesses."
"Critical bugs need to be addressed before releasing the version."
"We are Cisco partners, and when we recommend Cisco FirePower to customers, they always think that FirePower is bad. For a single installation of FirePower, if I have to write about 18 tickets to Cisco, it's a big problem. There was an issue was related to Azure. We had Active Directory in Azure. The clients had to connect to FirePower through Azure. We had a lot of group policies. After two group policies, we had to make groups in Azure, and they had to sign in and sign back. It was a triple-layer authentication, and there was a big problem, so we didn't use it."
"The performance should be improved."
"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."
"It is expensive."
"The user interface for the Firepower management console is a little bit different from traditional Cisco management tools. If you look at products we already use, like Cisco Prime or other products that are cloud-based, they have a more modern user interface for managing the products. For Firepower, the user interface is not very user-friendly. It's a little bit confusing sometimes."
"The integration of pfSense with EPS and EDS could be better. Also, it should be easier to get reports on how many users are connecting simultaneously and how sections connect in real-time."
"The VPN feature of the solution could improve by adding better functionality and providing easier configure ability."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"Also, simplifying the rules for the GeoIP. Making it simpler to understand would be an improvement."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"It requires more attention to provide a better alternative for open source to small government or educational institutions with reduced budgets in terms of technology."
"The GUI. There are TONS of plugins for pfSense, as such, if a user wants to add quite a bit of functionality, the GUI will feel a little congested."
"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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