Comparison conclusions:
pfSense offers paid options for additional support and features (pfSense Plus), a wider range of features and a larger community, but might have a steeper learning curve.
OPNsense provides a clean interface and built-in security features, but its community and documentation are smaller
The summary above is based on 40 interviews we conducted with pfSense and OPNsense users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"FortiGate has a very strong unified threat management system."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"We generally use it because it's cheap. When we need something more robust we use Barracuda and Sony Wireless Routers. For certain clients, we use pfSense because it's compatible with the VoIP platform."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"What I like about pfSense is that it works well and runs on an inexpensive appliance."
"The VPN server feature is the most valuable. It is integrated with Radius and AAA for doing accounting and authentication. Insight view is also an important feature for me at this time. It allows me to assess our network traffic. I also like the firewall feature. The BSD kernel has a packet filter. It is one of the most solid frameworks for firewalls. Its user interface is one of the best interfaces I have used."
"The graphic user interface is very good and it is user-friendly which makes the product easy-to-use."
"I find the solution to be user-friendly. It has a lot of reports and easy settings."
"The interface and the dashboard are the most valuable features of this solution."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"It's open source."
"OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
"We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience."
"The security of Fortinet FortiGate could improve."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"They need to improve their technical support."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"Fortinet currently has many products bundled with FortiGate including the basic firewall and load balancer, and I think that that they need to have separate product portfolios for each of these specialized services."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"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."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"It was difficult to configure our web printer through the solution. This process could be easier. Additionally, integration with SD-WAN solution."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"It needs to be more secure."
"Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"Needs services on additional features, such as managing inventory and generating reports."
"Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"I would like to see better SD-WAN performance."
"Its interface should be a little bit better."
"The user interface could be improved, and the DNS section should be more intuitive."
"The ability to set the VPN IP address would be a welcome addition."
"The interface of the solution is an area with shortcomings."
"I think the most important thing is that it should be easily accessible, but currently, that doesn't seem to be the case. We need a hardware platform that's based on common standards and open computing principles, which would be like a commodity and benefit us greatly."
"An area for improvement in OPNsense is the hardware, which needs to be updated more frequently. DNS blocking is another good feature I want to be added to the solution. pfSense has a peer-blocking feature that I also want to see in OPNsense."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while OPNsense is rated 8.4. 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 OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Netgate pfSense is most compared with Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM, IPFire and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Netgate pfSense vs. OPNsense report.
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