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."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."
"What I like the most is the configuration and that it's simple, and straightforward to maintain."
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"This solution has helped our organization by protecting our network from attacks."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"The solution is very easy to use and configure."
"I had some outages in the network and we provide services for our company. We sell mobile credits. The terminal gets access to our own server inside the network and if one internet fails, then the other one is still up and we have a back-up link on the devices."
"It catches modified signatures of known viruses."
"Installing this product as a datacenter firewall for segregation and segmentation, and also configuring policies between zones has improved my organization."
"For example, if a security Intel threat talks about an IOC. We can then go to our MSP and say, "Is there a signature for this particular type of malware that just came out?" And if they'll say yes, then we'll say, "Okay. Does it apply to these firewalls? And have we seen any hits on it?" There's absolutely value in it."
"WildFire's application encryption is useful."
"The most valuable feature is the Automatic Verdict, to recognize whether something is a threat, or not."
"The way that the solution quickly updates to adjust to threats is the solution's most valuable aspect. When there's a security attack, within five minutes, all Wildfire subscribers have access to updates so that all systems will be safe. Its threat prevention is way better than other vendor products."
"Intuitive threat prevention and analysis solution, with a machine learning feature. Scalable, stable, and protects against zero-day threats."
"With this product, we receive the best monitoring and reports."
"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"There aren't really any negative aspects to discuss."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve if it had a cloud-managed solution."
"Its customer service could be better."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"The GUI. There are TONS of plugins for pfSense, as such, if a user wants to add quite a bit of functionality, the GUI will feel a little congested."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"I have been using WireGuard VPN because it is a lot faster and more secure than an open VPN. However, in the latest version of pfSense, they have removed this feature, which is one of the main features that I need. They should include this feature."
"In an upcoming release, the reporting could be more user-friendly. For example, the reporting in graphs and charts for the host can be cumbersome."
"If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson."
"I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"The usage reports can be better."
"The main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection."
"The GUI is better in 8.0, but I still feel it lacks the fast response most of us desire. Logs are much quicker."
"I would give this product a rating of 9 out of 10 due to some slight issues of performance."
"The technical support response needs improvement."
"They should make their user interface a little more user-friendly."
"The free version does not have real-time updates. It is slow."
"The configuration should be made a little bit easier. I understand why it is as it is, but there should be a way to make it easier from the user side."
"The product fails to offer protection when dealing with high-severity vulnerabilities, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"In the future, I would like to see more automation in the reporting."
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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