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 feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup."
"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"Secure, user-friendly, stable, and scalable network security solution. Installation is straightforward."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"Their interface is very easy to use, it is without bugs."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"A free firewall that is a good network security appliance."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"The performance and functionality are good."
"At our peak time, we have reached more than 5,000 concurrent connections."
"pfSense is a nice product, and I find that there's a lot of information out there. There are some good tutorials on YouTube and other websites with helpful information."
"It has a user-friendly interface."
"It catches modified signatures of known viruses."
"The scalability is acceptable."
"Stability is never a concern."
"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."
"WildFire's application encryption is useful."
"Installing this product as a datacenter firewall for segregation and segmentation, and also configuring policies between zones has improved my organization."
"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."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"NGN, reporting and controls."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"It was difficult to configure our web printer through the solution. This process could be easier. Additionally, integration with SD-WAN solution."
"The integration could be improved."
"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."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"Also, simplifying the rules for the GeoIP. Making it simpler to understand would be an improvement."
"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."
"If a user doesn't have a large amount of experience in Linux systems, they will have problems using this solution. Users need to be highly skilled in troubleshooting competency. Users who do not have such skills will find the product difficult to use."
"In the future, I would like to see more automation in the reporting."
"They provide a medium level of technical support."
"The deployment model could be better."
"Management and web filtering can be improved. There should also be better reporting, particularly around web filtering."
"The initial setup was a little bit complex, mainly due to the GUI console and management challenges."
"The data analytical system for deployment needs to improve."
"The size of Palo Alto's cloud is big but it could be easier to use from a product management perspective."
"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."
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, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection, Fortinet FortiSandbox and Microsoft Defender for Office 365.
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