We performed a comparison between pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both products received high marks from reviewers, but WatchGuard ultimately won out in this comparison. According to reviews, WatchGuard appears to be a more secure solution.
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"The main benefit is the grouping of our security monitoring."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"FortiGate SD-WAN facilitated a smooth transition for our customers between their two internet service providers, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity without any downtime."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"This product is definitely scalable."
"I appreciate FortiGate's flexibility, which allows for centralized management through FortiManager."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"Content protection, content inspection, and the application level firewall."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"I handle the scanning for the finance department. I recently encountered an issue with the PCL bills, our company bills. I resolved the matter, cleared the bill, and received calls regarding it using pfsense.The user interface is extremely user-friendly, which is why we use it across various plant sites. Our IT representatives at the plants find it easy to use and manage because of its straightforward interface."
"It is a better firewall than others and it has better features."
"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."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"My company mainly works in the health and educational domain, schools and universities. I prevent the improper use of content from schools and universities. I defend the medical records for the patients in our hospitals. That is the main use case for me for the firewall."
"They've done a lot of work with their SD-WAN, which we do use, to have our old internet service with our new internet service. If anything goes down on a particular interface, I can have different rules applied. Most of my users don't even know when our primary internet goes down anymore... I don't have to be here to do anything to switch it to our backup internet or to switch it back."
"The solution has many security features. We have an intrusion provision system and filtering and block filtering."
"What I found most valuable in WatchGuard Firebox is that it's a functional platform that works, and each of its features works well. The solution also has good reporting and dashboard capabilities. I also find the overall performance of WatchGuard Firebox great."
"Easy to change the model if you need more performance, with good cohesion in the whole lineup of devices."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the FireWall features. The management side of WatchGuard is quite easy because it supports two ways to manage it - by the web and the other one they call WatchGuard systems manager. I used to be familiar with WSM only, but they improved their GUI in the web browser and now it is much easier to do it within the web browser."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is its ease of use."
"I like the High Availability features of the newest ones I'm using because they allow a firewall to fail and still be up and running."
"It is a scalable solution."
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"The GUI could use more “bells and whistles”. It's got plenty of info for a Sysadmin but some people like shiny things."
"It would be great to add more to security."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"The stability could be improved."
"The solution is lacking a professional website, they should be updated more often."
"I would like to see more training become available for us."
"Make WatchGuard Firebox capable of integrating with third-party vendors like FireMon, Splunk, Tenable, etc."
"The performance of the solution's processor needs to be faster."
"Sometimes I would like to copy a rule set from one box to another box in a direct way. This is a feature that is not present at the moment in WatchGuard."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"Firebox would be improved with integration for endpoint protection solutions."
"When working with WatchGuard, specifically in configuring Panda Security on the portal for the first time, it was challenging for me."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while WatchGuard Firebox 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Untangle NG Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Netgate pfSense vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
