We performed a comparison between Hillstone CloudEdge and Netgate pfSense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."The most valuable feature is the VDOM, which allows the customer to have multiple firewalls in a single campus."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"The security on offer is very good."
"The solution is very easy to download and configure. The initial setup was very easy. The technical support is very good."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"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."
"A free firewall that is a good network security appliance."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"FortiLink is the interface on the firewall that allows you to extend switch management across all of your switches in the network. The problem with it is that you can't use multiple interfaces unless you set them up in a lag. Only then you can run them. So, it forces you to use a core type of switch to propagate that management out to the rest of the switches, and then it is running the case at 200. It leaves you with 18 ports on the firewall because it is also a layer-three router that could also be used as a switch, but as soon as you do that, you can't really use them. They could do a little bit more clean up in the way the stacking interface works. Some use cases and the documentation on the FortiLink checking interface are a little outdated. I can find stuff on version 5 or more, but it is hard to find information on some of the newer firmware. The biggest thing I would like to see is some improvement in the switch management feature. I would like to be able to relegate some of the ports, which are on the firewall itself, to act as a switch to take advantage of those ports. Some of these firewalls have clarity ports on them. If I can use those, it would mean that I need to buy two less switches, which saves time. I get why they don't, but I would still like to see it because it would save a little bit of space in the server rack."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"The reports are very basic."
"The solution needs more granular level reporting on system usage."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"There is more demand for UTMs than a simple firewall. pfSense should support real-time features for handling the latest viruses and threats. It should support real-time checks and real-time status of threats. Some other vendors, such as Fortinet, already offer this type of capability. Such capability will be good for bringing pfSense at the same level as other solutions."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
Hillstone CloudEdge is ranked 32nd in Firewalls with 1 review while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Hillstone CloudEdge is rated 10.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Hillstone CloudEdge writes "A stable solution that is easy to configure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Hillstone CloudEdge is most compared with , whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall.
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