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."FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"It works very well. It has a lot of different functionalities. Its cost is also fine for our customers."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"I like several features that this product has, such as antivirus and internet navigation inspection. It is also simple to use."
"The most valuable feature is the policy routing and application control."
"A very stable product that lasts over time, easy to understand, and administer."
"The initial setup was straightforward, therefore I wanted to continue using the product."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"What I found most valuable is the cost of the platform, the flexibility of the platform, and the fact that the ongoing fees are not there as they are with the competitor. Some people may think you're taking a risk with using Opensource. I think it just provides the end user, specifically for us small, medium business providers of services, the flexibility we need at the right cost to provide them a higher end, almost enterprise type service."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"It's easy to use."
"The packet filtering's great. You get out what you put into it. It works great as long as you know your security and configure everything adequately. If you just pop one in and it's not configured, then it's basically wide open. It kind of depends on the admin skill, but it's an excellent product."
"What I like about Sophos UTM is that it improves my company's security. The solution is easy to set up, which I like, and it's very stable."
"The most valuable feature is the IPS. It also protects us from malware."
"It has helped by identifying threats within the company. If there are computers or servers that are compromised, then we are able to identify them right away in the system."
"It is a very good product. The threat monitoring process is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of Sophos UTM are the ease of use, it is very user-friendly. You can understand what they implement in the new firmware, and it's easy to manage the firewalls."
"Efficient and effective - it's easy to separate rules."
"I would like to have logs, monitoring, and reporting for a month without extra fees."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"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 cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"It needs more available central management."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"It should integrate with LDAP, Active Directory, etc, to improve the way in which the traces and connections of each IP, or user connected through the firewall, are shown."
"The integration should be improved."
"This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"It needs to be more secure."
"Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time."
"It was difficult to configure our web printer through the solution. This process could be easier. Additionally, integration with SD-WAN solution."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"The technical support team’s response time could be improved."
"The lack of import/export functions for network and service options drives me mad."
"The virus updates will always depend on new viruses that are discovered. Maybe they can send a notification or a reminder for update time."
"Stay away from the wireless models, since you cannot put them in HA. They start to give you some weird issues once you start getting into multiple SSIDs and networks."
"Initially, there were issues with the wireless network as wireless access points were disappearing from the dashboard after some time."
"This product could use some improvement with web filtering. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up and maintain."
"The solution needs better integration with captive portals and XGs."
"Monitoring and reporting are areas that need improvement."
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, 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