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.
"Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features are ease of use, flexibility, and most of the configuration we can be done using the GUI. When we compare Fortinet FortiGate with other solutions the firewall policy are very easy to understand."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"The most important feature is its categorization because on the site and social media you are unified in the way they are there."
"The most valuable features are the provision of internet access, AnyConnect, and VPN capabilities."
"Cisco ASA is very strong."
"The ASA has seen significant improvement due to the IPS."
"On the network side, where you create your rules for allowing traffic — what can come inside and what can go out — that works perfectly, if you know what you want to achieve. It protects you."
"It protects our network."
"The content filtering is good."
"Cisco Secure Firewall is a scalable solution."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"The built-in open VPN and the VPN Client Export are the solution's most valuable aspects."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"I have found the firewall portion for the blocking most valuable."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"It is a better firewall than others and it has better features."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"The ASAs are being replaced with the new Firepowers and they have a different type of structure in the configuration to be able to migrate from one to the other."
"The solution's deployment is time-consuming, which should be minimized and made more user-friendly for us."
"The pricing is a bit high."
"The solution’s GUI could be better."
"The maturity needs to be better."
"The ability to better integrate with other tools would be an improvement."
"Its configuration through GUI as well as CLI can be improved and made easier."
"The throughput highlighted on the datasheet (10Gbps) should be reviewed. This throughput is only for a UDP running environment, which you will never find in the real world. Rather consider a multiprotocol throughput."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
"Needs services on additional features, such as managing inventory and generating reports."
"The integration could be improved."
"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 technical support needs to be improved."
"I believe improving integration with various antivirus vendors could be beneficial."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 112 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 15 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Includes multiple tools that help manage and troubleshoot, but needs SD-WAN for load balancing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Juniper SRX Series Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Untangle NG Firewall. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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