We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series 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."Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"There are lots of features and most of them are deployed for internet security. Users are protected if they accidentally go to some malicious sites."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"I really like the captive portal feature for our guest network. It has nice VLAN features in terms of separating our network. The anti-virus is also good."
"The feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"With FortiClient, you can easily connect when you are home, check out what you want to do, and connect to your network when you are not at work. You can switch on servers and you can check what is wrong."
"I have found the firewall portion for the blocking most valuable."
"For everyday tasks, we just get alerts. It's anything that's suspicious, including from our Netgate. So, it's part of how we maintain cybersecurity in our school. This is working alongside our endpoint security solution."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of 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 GUI is easy to understand."
"It's a good solution for end-users. It's pretty easy to work with."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"The initial setup was straightforward, therefore I wanted to continue using the product."
"It gives us the ease that we are secure. We have set up the proper things that help make our data safe."
"The most valuable feature is that you can control your traffic flowing out and coming it, allowing you to apply malware and threat protection, as well as vulnerability checks."
"Centralized management is valuable because it allows us to configure settings in one location and apply them across all three locations."
"The most effective features for threat prevention are application-based prevention and WildFire. These features cover various threats, such as ransomware, malware, etc. They provide real-time visibility. By applying appropriate policies, threats can be blocked."
"The technical support for the solution is very good."
"It has excellent scalability."
"It allows us to see all our traffic to properly secure it and only allow what is needed through the firewall."
"It offers a single pane of glass for all the different types of installations."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"Fortinet doesn't provide multiple virtual firewalls which would facilitate end users and customers."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
"Web interface could be enhanced and more user friendly."
"Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time."
"The hotspot and the portal feature in this solution are not stable for WiFi access. We use it at least once or twice every day and it crashes. Some modules can be better by improving detection and having new updates. Additionally, we have some issues with clustering and load balancing that could improve."
"It was difficult to configure our web printer through the solution. This process could be easier. Additionally, integration with SD-WAN solution."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"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."
"The solution requires a lot of administration."
"The user-friendliness of the UI could be improved."
"The product's AIOps process needs improvement."
"The DLP functionality or data classification can be improved in the solution's basic firewalling."
"The product could provide protection above Layer 3, which gets into the application layer and provides better visibility into those aspects of application security."
"Integrative capabilities with other solutions should be addressed."
"The solution must improve Zero Trust integration and use cases."
"There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution."
"In the next release, I would like to see better integration between the endpoints and the firewalls."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper vSRX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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