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."The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"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."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"It's very easy to set up, it's very easy to make policies and, for an organization, that means you don't need IT expert in firewalls. You just need to have somebody who knows a little bit of IT, and that's it. With other products, you need someone with a "Masters" degree in firewalls."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"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."
"I can manage it easily by myself."
"It is a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"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 the best device in comparison to other network products in the marketplace."
"We have found that Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable. We currently have six thousand users for the product."
"It is stable and pretty much scalable."
"Whole team can use the firewall and understand it."
"Installing this product as a datacenter firewall for segregation and segmentation, and also configuring policies between zones has improved my organization."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is how it keeps up-to-date with viruses."
"The solution has plenty of features."
"It catches modified signatures of known viruses."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"I could not configure sFlow from the FortiGate graphical user interface. I realized that the sFlow configuration is available only from the CLI, and discovered that sFlow is not supported on virtual interfaces, such as VDOM links, IPsec, or GRE."
"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."
"This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing."
"One concern I have with Netgate pfSense is related to packet filtering. Specifically, issues can arise with certain functionalities like GP, and, at times, there may be bugs."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"I would like to see pfSense integrate WireGuard. Currently, pfSense uses OpenVPN, and there's nothing wrong with it, but WireGuard is a lot leaner and meaner."
"We would like to see ready-made profiles to cover most users' needs."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"The price of WildFire should be reduced in order to make it more affordable for our customers."
"The only problem with this solution is the cost. It's expensive."
"I would like to see them continue on their developmental roadmap for the product."
"High availability features are lacking."
"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 product fails to offer protection when dealing with high-severity vulnerabilities, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Our main concern is that everything has to be synced with the WildFire Cloud and has to be checked through the subscription."
"The price could be better."
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 Cloudflare.
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.