We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Sophos UTM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"The solution is stable."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"The interface is very good."
"Fortinet FortiGate has many valuable features, such as IDS, and intrusion detection. It has security features that are in part with the technologies that are available in the market."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"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."
"Its scalability is a strong point."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"This solution has helped our organization by protecting our network from attacks."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"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."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"If a computer does get infected the Sophos appliance lets us know via it's Advanced Threat Protection so we can get a much faster response time."
"Sophos UTM's best feature is SIM in the cloud, which combines the gateway solution and endpoint solution to send telemetry data to the cloud and provides full contact visibility regarding security."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the simple-to-use interface."
"Sophos UTM has a good user interface and granular security controls."
"It does not take much effort or thinking to understand how it works."
"It's easy to use."
"Efficient and effective - it's easy to separate rules."
"We've found the technical support to be helpful."
"The cloud features and integration could 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."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"The reports are very basic."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"Also, simplifying the rules for the GeoIP. Making it simpler to understand would be an improvement."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
"If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"The technical support team’s response time could be improved."
"We didn’t find any issues but I know there have been some in the last few years."
"In Sophos UTM there is always a problem with the routing tables. If you want to see the routing table, you have to use the UI. You can't do it via a web browser. The routing table is better in Fortinet."
"The classification segregation of applications lacks sufficient definition."
"Sophos should be more user-friendly, have more dashboards, and an easier implementation."
"The solution is not scalable."
"The logs are not clear, which means that you need an additional piece of software in order to read them clearly."
"We need a better VPN client for the customers."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 110 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Sophos UTM 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 Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall and Untangle NG Firewall. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Sophos UTM report.
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pfSense is opensource and has been the last 10 years in the top 10 best
firewall solutions in the world, it is free, stable, scalable, and easy to
administer ... and above all very safe, since it is one of the few systems
that could have been violated. It's free.
In fact, Karl, the 50-IP free version is for home use only, and not even then if it also protects business assets. You did a great job of explaining the difference, so I won't comment further.
To the original poster, it's cheaper to hire a Sophos consultant to create your original configuration. It costs twice as much to get a configuration "repaired" that wasn't correctly designed. A Sophos Solution Partner that has a Sophos Certified Architect with plenty of experience and good referrals is probably your best bet.
With Sophos is easy to configure and you have the support from the frabicant, with pfSense you have to learn from the community and learning curve is a little hard, last occasion with pfSense it don't have support for vpn dynamic, with Sophos they have RED equipment that is an extension from the core, only you need the serial number from the remote equipment and you have the vpn , both are great equipment and software, depend of the budget, pfSense is free and they have support if you pay the license very cheap
pfSense is just a basic firewall with VPN and Captive Portal functionality but does its job great. Only needs minimum resources to function. Price is right (FREE)
Sophos UTM is much more, hence the UTM. It does firewall, advance threat protection, VPN, Secure web gateway, email protection (AV, Spam, Encryption, and DLP), endpoint protection, Mobile Device control, Web Application Firewall, User Portal, built in reporting, and central management. It does require more resources but you get a lot more out of it. Two options depending on the size of your office, commercial version or the Free version that you can build on your own hardware. The free version is restricted to 50 IP addresses. (www.sophos.com)
I have used both and both have their place but using Sophos in my environment just because it offers a lot more functionality, nice dashboard, reports, and easy to use through the GUI.
One other big difference is that pfSense is FreeBSD based while Sophos UTM is linux based. It is also worth having a lool on cacheguard which is a proxy oriented product and also Linux based.
I´m afraid I am not able to help in this matter. We´ve decided to for FortiGate as services, based on our relationship with our IT security provider and the FortiGate reviews available on the net.
We used to use pfSence for one particular open network but let the full control on de FortiGate. During the investigation and analysis period we thought of Sophos but felt more comfortable going for FortiGate pretty much based on price and our relationship with our IT security provider. Hence my experience wouldn´t help in this case.
My best advice would is to refer to the article available on:
www.itcentralstation.com