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 solution is very user-friendly."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"Its performance in fulfilling our requirements has been satisfactory."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"FortiGate improved our security. It's one of the best hardware firewalls."
"It's very easy to configure."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well."
"The solution is very robust."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"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."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"The solution is easy to use and the Panorama feature is good. The software management or the malware blocking and some authentication management system are good."
"Scalable ATP solution that's quick to set up. It demonstrates good performance and stability."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Networks WildFire is its ability to adapt to environments and its robustness."
"Whole team can use the firewall and understand it."
"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."
"The reporting feature helps our performance."
"The backup is the best feature."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"The support system could be improved."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"The solution's framework needs to be frequently updated in order to have a stable solution."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"They've become quite expensive."
"Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system."
"The solution’s interface must be improved."
"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."
"More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"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."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"It requires more attention to provide a better alternative for open source to small government or educational institutions with reduced budgets in terms of technology."
"I would give this product a rating of 9 out of 10 due to some slight issues of performance."
"In the future, I would like to see more automation in the reporting."
"When comparing this solution to others it is not as good overall."
"The size of Palo Alto's cloud is big but it could be easier to use from a product management perspective."
"They provide a medium level of technical support."
"Other vendors have some sort of bandwidth management built into the firewall itself and Palo Alto is missing that."
"The product fails to offer protection when dealing with high-severity vulnerabilities, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The global product feature needs improvement, the VPN, and we need some enhanced features."
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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