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 features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"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 pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"The most important feature, normally for small business customers, is link load balancing."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"Their proxy-based inspection is responsive and secure."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"The tools' most valuable feature is load balancing."
"The interface is straightforward and easy to use."
"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 classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"Good basic firewall features."
"Sophos Intercept X is scalable. Currently, we have almost 30 people using it in our company."
"The most valuable features of the solution are user-friendliness, price, good security, and cloud-related options."
"What I like about Palo Alto is that it is a complete product, with everything in it."
"They have many different options with Palo Alto WildFire and the set-up is quick. If you have all the details in hand, it does not take more than 15 minutes to deploy a firewall."
"The most valuable feature is the cloud-based protection against zero-day malware attacks."
"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."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"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."
"Stability is never a concern."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"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 tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"Needs services on additional features, such as managing inventory and generating reports."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"It's not really their problem, it's a problem across the board. There will always be problems with interrupted traffic. We have to set it up where we're playing a middle man game where we're stripping it out, looking at it, and then putting it back together and sending it on its way. That requires CPU cycles. And there's some overhead with that."
"The cost of this solution could still be improved, in particular, giving product discounts for charitable causes."
"They provide a medium level of technical support."
"The deployment model could be better."
"The only complaint that we receive from our customers is in regards to the price."
"The solution can improve its traffic management."
"The configuration should be made a little bit easier. I understand why it is as it is, but there should be a way to make it easier from the user side."
"The cost of the solution is excessively high."
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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