We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Palo Alto Networks WildFire based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"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."
"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"The interface is straightforward and easy to use."
"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."
"Good basic firewall features."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"Stability has been excellent. We have experienced no issues; it never fails."
"The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"The most valuable feature for us is the VPN."
"They have many different options with Palo Alto WildFire and the set-up is quick. If you have all the details in hand, it does not take more than 15 minutes to deploy a firewall."
"It helps us when segmenting and securing the network and all sort of technologies, all sort of next generation needs. It's next generation phases of firewall like anti-virus, sandboxing, wifi, and VPN."
"Whole team can use the firewall and understand it."
"We have found that Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable. We currently have six thousand users for the product."
"Being an application-based firewall, this is one of the critical focus factors along with the threat prevention services it provides."
"The backup is the best feature."
"The graphic user interface of Palo Alto is good and it's easy to configure."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"The Wi-Fi controller needs a lot of improvement."
"In some cases, its initial setup could be hard for customers."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"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."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"My only observation is about the quality of the IPSec logs, which are difficult to interpret and are poor in filters."
"Layer 7 advanced firewall features are not included in the solution."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"It would be great to add more to security."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
"As an open-source solution, there are so many loopholes happening within the product. By design, no one is taking ownership of it, and that is worrisome to me."
"I would like to see them continue on their developmental roadmap for the product."
"They provide a medium level of technical support."
"The cost of this solution could still be improved, in particular, giving product discounts for charitable causes."
"I don't think it needs to improve anything, except maybe the speed to deploy the changes."
"The price could be better."
"The initial setup was complex."
"I think it would be nice for Palo Alto to work without the connection to the cloud. It is 100% powerful when connected to the cloud. But, if you disconnect from the cloud, you only get 40-50% power."
"The automation and responsiveness need improvement."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 58 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks WildFire 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 Palo Alto Networks WildFire writes "Good technical support and provides automatic analysis that saves us time in filtering email". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Fortinet FortiSandbox and Microsoft Defender for Office 365.
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