We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiOS and Netgate pfSense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The next-generation firewall is great."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"The solution is scalable."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"The user experience is great. The graphical user interface is also good."
"The pricing is excellent."
"The interface is good."
"The product is scalable and easily expands."
"The classification of the websites is helpful."
"I have found the most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiOS is the low maintenance."
"It's simple to use in terms of inbound and outbound traffic management."
"The solution is very easy to configure and has a good interface, plus it offers more configuration options than other vendors."
"There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support."
"It is a very good solution for enterprises that need a VPN for their employees. It is the best way to provide a remote work facility to employees at a very low cost. Other solutions that I have had in the past were very expensive. Enterprises don't always have that kind of money to invest."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"The solution is very easy to use and has a very nice GUI."
"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."
"It works. I put pfSense in, and it works. I can't think of any trouble I ever had with it. It runs on heat-sensitive appliances. They don't need a fan, so they don't overheat. It is affordable, fast, and very high-speed. It is built on BSD Unix, and it pretty much runs on any Intel processor."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"I think there could be more QoS features"
"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."
"The GUI could be improved to make it more usable, easier to administer, and easier to configure."
"Their first-level support is often poorly trained."
"In the future I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards and a drop in the price."
"Some features I have found to be hidden and cannot be accessed through the graphical user interface, you can only access them through the command-line interface(CLI). All the features should be accessible through the graphical user interface."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the pricing could be lower. The price is very steep."
"There is some room for improvement in the support."
"There are some issues with the performance. We also had some issues while updating the firmware."
"The solution needs improvement with DDoS protection."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"The security could be improved."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time."
Fortinet FortiOS is ranked 15th in Firewalls with 73 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Fortinet FortiOS is rated 8.4, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiOS writes "Provides effective filtering features, good stability but initial setup is moderately challenging". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Fortinet FortiOS is most compared with Fortinet FortiManager, Fortinet FortiWeb, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection and OPNsense, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Fortinet FortiOS vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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