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."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."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"Easy to use support and licensing portal as well as activation process."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"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."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"The solution is stable."
"We generally use it because it's cheap. When we need something more robust we use Barracuda and Sony Wireless Routers. For certain clients, we use pfSense because it's compatible with the VoIP platform."
"Open source and support are valuable. I have community support."
"What I like about pfSense is that it works well and runs on an inexpensive appliance."
"The initial setup was straightforward, therefore I wanted to continue using the product."
"The tools' most valuable feature is load balancing."
"Good basic firewall features."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"For everyday tasks, we just get alerts. It's anything that's suspicious, including from our Netgate. So, it's part of how we maintain cybersecurity in our school. This is working alongside our endpoint security solution."
"The cost of the solution is very reasonable."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the efficiency and mail filtering module."
"The stability of Sophos UTM is very good. The solution has been stable since Sophos took over Cyberoam which was the original company providing this solution."
"Stability-wise, I rate this solution a ten out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate this solution a ten out of ten."
"Sophos UTM is the simplest of these products to setup."
"So far, the solution has been problem-free."
"The management suite is easy and the agent is easy to develop."
"We use Sophos UTM as our main firewall with all its features included. Mainly, it controls all of our network perimeter security: firewall, IDS/IPS, and web application firewall (including VoIP)."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"Its customer service could be better."
"The cloud features can be improved."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"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."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"There are several levels of firewall configuration such as beginner, advanced, and expert configurations. At each level, it becomes more complex and more tricky to set up the firewall. For example, if you want to install the firewall on your computer system, it would be a lot easier if it just tells you that this is the internet NIC and this is the Wi-Fi NIC."
"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."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
"The solution could always work at being more secure. It's a good idea to continue to work on security features and capabilities in order to ensure they can keep clients safe."
"We'd like to see them offer their services on mobile devices like tablets. I'm not sure if that's an option or not."
"VPN needs IKEv2, but it’s in the roadmap. Also, all new, cool features will only come to the new Sophos XG Firewall."
"It's stable, but the reaction time of the GUI is terrible."
"The UI can be cumbersome and, sometimes, features are not where you think they should be."
"It needs a better user interface. The one they have is not so good."
"The logs are not clear, which means that you need an additional piece of software in order to read them clearly."
"There needs to be some improvement in the IPsec VPN. There is implementation only support. I have version one. I'd be most interested in having IP version two from the protocol."
"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."
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