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 main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy."
"You can purchase switches and you don't need to do anything with them. You just put in the firewall and the switches get all the policies and rules that you already have in the firewall. With Fortinet, you just connect the FortiSwitch to the Fortinet and that's it."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"It is a safe product."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"There is an easy process for configuring it, and it is straightforward to implement the device from scratch."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"The most valuable features are the VPN and the capture photo."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"This solution has helped our organization by protecting our network from attacks."
"What I found most valuable is the cost of the platform, the flexibility of the platform, and the fact that the ongoing fees are not there as they are with the competitor. Some people may think you're taking a risk with using Opensource. I think it just provides the end user, specifically for us small, medium business providers of services, the flexibility we need at the right cost to provide them a higher end, almost enterprise type service."
"My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much."
"It is easy to use and has integrity with other systems, such as proxies and quality of service."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"It is a good firewall with good performance."
"The most valuable features are all of the security features in terms of protection and SSL and VPN."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is how it keeps up-to-date with viruses."
"Remote access is excellent."
"Detailed reporting on analysis of content. The inspections are easily applied to security policy profiles and profile groups, and may be assigned on a per-rule basis."
"The reporting feature helps our performance."
"You have better control because you define apps. You just don't define ports. You define apps, and the apps are monitored in the traffic. It is more specific than the Cisco firewall when it comes to our needs."
"WildFire's application encryption is useful."
"What I like about Palo Alto is that it is a complete product, with everything in it."
"We sometimes have issues with FortiGate's routing table in the latest firmware update. We had to downgrade the device because our customers complained about bugs."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"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."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"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."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"Web interface could be enhanced and more user friendly."
"This solution is good for small businesses but it is not as stable as other competitors such as Fortinet."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"The initial setup was complex."
"The system performance degrades after the solution has been deployed for some time. The data that it gives us becomes a little bit slow. When you try to get some data for troubleshooting, it seems like it's working hard to extract that data."
"The automation and responsiveness need improvement."
"The VPN and decryption need improvement."
"Our main concern is that everything has to be synced with the WildFire Cloud and has to be checked through the subscription."
"The GUI is better in 8.0, but I still feel it lacks the fast response most of us desire. Logs are much quicker."
"They can keep on doing more updates. As new malware and viruses are coming out, they can make sure that WildFire is up to date."
"There are some formats that the solution cannot support ."
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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