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 inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"The multi-tenancy feature is most valuable. It integrates very well with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer."
"The most important features of Fortinet FortiGate are the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and firewall control applications."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"This is an easy solution to deploy."
"The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"The solution is very easy to use and has a very nice GUI."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"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 a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"I mostly like all of it. Whatever we use is valuable."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"Its reliability and cost-effectiveness stand out."
"The VPN is my favorite feature."
"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."
"The graphic user interface of Palo Alto is good and it's easy to configure."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is how it keeps up-to-date with viruses."
"The most valuable feature is the cloud-based protection against zero-day malware attacks."
"It catches modified signatures of known viruses."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten since we never faced any issues."
"The reporting feature helps our performance."
"The most valuable features of the solution are user-friendliness, price, good security, and cloud-related options."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"We'd like more management across other integrations."
"The stability could be improved."
"There is more demand for UTMs than a simple firewall. pfSense should support real-time features for handling the latest viruses and threats. It should support real-time checks and real-time status of threats. Some other vendors, such as Fortinet, already offer this type of capability. Such capability will be good for bringing pfSense at the same level as other solutions."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"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."
"The solution could use better reporting. They need to offer more of it in general. Right now, the graphics aren't the best. If you need to provide a report to a manager, for example, it doesn't look great. They need to make it easier to understand and give users the ability to customize them."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
"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."
"They should make their user interface a little more user-friendly."
"The deployment model could be better."
"The global product feature needs improvement, the VPN, and we need some enhanced features."
"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."
"Our main concern is that everything has to be synced with the WildFire Cloud and has to be checked through the subscription."
"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 data analytical system for deployment needs to improve."
"There are certain changes that I was expecting in the previous version, and I hope that they are soon fixed. All of the problems that I have faced so far have been resolved."
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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