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."Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"I'm the expert when it comes to Linux systems, however, with the pfSense, due to the web interface, the rest of the staff can actually make changes to it as required without me worrying about whether they've opened up ports incorrectly or not. The ease of use for non-expert staff is very good."
"It has a very nice web interface, and it is very simple to use. The way policies are working is also good."
"One of the advantages of pfSense is that it is very easy to work with. It is a very good open-source solution, and it works really well. pfSense provides a complete package. For some features, it could be the first solution in the world. It is a very good alternative in the market for a firewall solution. You don't need to go to Cisco or other brands with expensive firewalls. pfSense also allows us to offer some support services."
"What I like about pfSense is that it works well and runs on an inexpensive appliance."
"At our peak time, we have reached more than 5,000 concurrent connections."
"This solution has helped our organization by protecting our network from attacks."
"The documentation is very good."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"The solution is stable."
"It helps us with protection, with concurrent use of the VPN."
"I would recommend UTM over XG because it's easier to manage."
"The most valuable feature is ransomware protection."
"The product is extremely intuitive."
"This is a very stable product."
"The UTM features are reasonably strong and the patterns are updated on a regular basis"
"The initial setup was easy."
"Price, of course, can always be more competitive or better."
"I don't like that anything more than very basic reporting is not included."
"The search tool needs improvement. It's very difficult to search for policies right now."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time."
"The GUI. There are TONS of plugins for pfSense, as such, if a user wants to add quite a bit of functionality, the GUI will feel a little congested."
"It needs to be more secure."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
"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."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"It does have built-in policies, which enable you to disable USB devices, etc. It would be nice if they had more policies because there are not that many of them."
"The scalability of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"We need to speed up the support."
"The virus updates will always depend on new viruses that are discovered. Maybe they can send a notification or a reminder for update time."
"I would like this solution to support ICAP. Also, they no longer support on-premises management, and are forcing clients to use centralized management via the cloud, which I don't agree with."
"There's an issue that when we deploy UTM on fiber, it automatically upgrades to the latest version without giving an option to stay on the current one."
"The support could be better."
"I don't really have any notes for improvements."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 15 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 29 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". 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, Cisco Secure Firewall, KerioControl and Untangle NG Firewall, 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. (https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-utm-home-edition.aspx)
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:
https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/pfsense_vs_sophos-utm