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 security fabric is excellent."
"It is very flexible to use."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"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."
"It works. I put pfSense in, and it works. I can't think of any trouble I ever had with it. It runs on heat-sensitive appliances. They don't need a fan, so they don't overheat. It is affordable, fast, and very high-speed. It is built on BSD Unix, and it pretty much runs on any Intel processor."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"Remote access is excellent."
"It has a user-friendly interface."
"With this product, we receive the best monitoring and reports."
"High availability with active-active and active-passive modes."
"The most valuable feature is the improved security that it offers."
"My primary use case for this solution is for a secure gateway."
"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."
"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."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"Some of the web policy reports could be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"Pricing for it is a bit high. It could be cheaper."
"Its reporting and pricing need improvement."
"The solution could always work at being more secure. It's a good idea to continue to work on security features and capabilities in order to ensure they can keep clients safe."
"The solution’s interface must be improved."
"I believe improving integration with various antivirus vendors could be beneficial."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"There are some bias issues and some intrusions in our network that have to be addressed. So, we're thinking of changing this firewall to something like a professional hardware-enabled firewall."
"It should integrate with LDAP, Active Directory, etc, to improve the way in which the traces and connections of each IP, or user connected through the firewall, are shown."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
"There are some formats that the solution cannot support ."
"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."
"It would be nice if there was an easier way to install and deploy it, such as through the inclusion of wizards."
"Palo Alto Networks WildFire could improve by adding support for manual submission of suspicious files and URLs. Additionally, it would be an advantage to add rule-based analysis. Currently, it uses only static and AI. We need to be able to analyze archive files."
"The global product feature needs improvement, the VPN, and we need some enhanced features."
"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 initial setup was a little bit complex, mainly due to the GUI console and management challenges."
"They provide a medium level of technical 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 Cloudflare.
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