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 user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"The FortiGate controls the user's activities and maximizes my bandwidth use overall."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"Stability has been excellent. We have experienced no issues; it never fails."
"I can manage it easily by myself."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is how it keeps up-to-date with viruses."
"The most valuable features of this solution are sandbox capabilities."
"The solution has plenty of features."
"A good tool for file scanning and email threat detection, especially when it comes to attachments and communications."
"The scalability is acceptable."
"Whole team can use the firewall and understand it."
"It gives a more accurate assessment of a virus in terms of whether it's truly a virus, malware, or a false positive. We have some legacy software that could pop up as being something that is malware. WildFire goes through and inspects it, and then it comes back and lets us know if it's a false positive. Usually, when it finds out that it's not a virus, it lets us know that it's benign, and it can exclude it from that scan, which means I don't even have to worry about that one popping up anymore."
"Some configuration elements cannot be easily altered once created."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve if it had a cloud-managed solution."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet."
"Application management can be improved."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"The VPN feature of the solution could improve by adding better functionality and providing easier configure ability."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"The stability could be improved."
"We have not had any problems with it, and we also do not have a need for any new features. If anything, its reporting can be better. Sophos has better reporting than pfSense. Sophos has more detailed information. pfSense is not as detailed. It is summarized."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
"As a firewall and 360 degrees of security, there needs to be more maturity."
"When you contact support, there is no guarantee that they will be available to help you tackle the issue that you are facing."
"The size of Palo Alto's cloud is big but it could be easier to use from a product management perspective."
"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."
"I don't think it needs to improve anything, except maybe the speed to deploy the changes."
"The product's false positive logs could be more user-friendly to understand. They could provide examples of precious cases to learn."
"In the future, Palo Alto could reduce the time it takes to process the file."
"The GUI is better in 8.0, but I still feel it lacks the fast response most of us desire. Logs are much quicker."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) 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, Cisco Secure Firewall and KerioControl, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Fortinet FortiSandbox and WatchGuard Firebox.
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