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 pricing is excellent. It's much less expensive than Cisco."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"Overall, the pricing of the solution is very good. The product offers good value."
"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"So far, it has been very stable."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"The high-availability and remote VPN features are most valuable."
"The user interface, the UI, is excellent on the solution."
"The most valuable feature would be ASDM. The ability to go in, visualize and see the world base in a clear and consistent manner is very powerful."
"I'm a big fan of SecureX, Cisco's platform for tying together all the different security tools. It has a lot of flexibility and even a lot of third-party or non-Cisco integration. I feel like that's a really valuable tool."
"They provide DDoS protection and multi-factor authentication. That is a good option as it enables work-from-home functionality."
"The features that are most valuable within the firewall are the IPS as well as the Unified Communications. We also really like the dynamic grouping."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal."
"The "OpenVPN Client Export" package is really helpful in exporting the VPN client software on most popular devices: iOS/Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and a handful of SIP handsets."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"Its reliability and cost-effectiveness stand out."
"The scalability is very good, where you can do an HA configuration and then bring in another box, if necessary."
"The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"The performance and speed are aspects of the solution that could always be improved upon."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"Virtual patching would be helpful for servers that are not able to update patches due to compatibility issues."
"The user interface is a little clunky and difficult to work with. Some things aren't as easy as they should be."
"The initial setup could be simplified, as it can be complex for new users."
"The integration between different tools could be improved. For example, with SecureX, I am yet to find out how to forward security events to different tools such as Microsoft Sentinel, which is what we use for log detection."
"Cisco Secure Firewall should be easier to handle. It uses ASDM, which is not easy to understand. It would be better if there was direct access via HTTPS."
"If you need to reschedule a call with the support team when you face a new issue with the product, then it may get a bit of a problem to get a hold of someone from the support team of Cisco."
"It has poor performance."
"It is slowly not supported and other vendors are a few years ahead of Cisco in development."
"The solution could always work at being more secure. It's a good idea to continue to work on security features and capabilities in order to ensure they can keep clients safe."
"I've never tried it in large environments. All my clients are small businesses with a handful of employees, so I am not sure how it works in large environments. I keep up with recent versions, and there's nothing I'm waiting for, and nothing breaks when I get a new version."
"The usage reports can be better."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing."
"The security could be improved."
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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