We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard XTM [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"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."
"Their interface is very easy to use, it is without bugs."
"The most valuable feature is the policy routing and application control."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"The "OpenVPN Client Export" package is really helpful in exporting the VPN client software on most popular devices: iOS/Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and a handful of SIP handsets."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse."
"WatchGuard XTM is fairly basic. We use it as the perimeter firewall. The main point is to protect from attack software and hacking."
"It is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time."
"I like the hostwatch because I can see what traffic uses the most bandwidth and I can block that site."
"SNMP status monitoring and the Central Management Software."
"Reputation Enabled Defense indicates that some websites are so infested that it's not even worth visiting them, and therefore saving the bandwidth of going through the detection process."
"There is a site-to-site VPN configuration between others people."
"They have a reporting system which can store data over a very long period of time. Not many other firewall vendors provide a reporting system, but if they do, like Fortinet does, then you've got buy that as an additional product and that can be more than twice as expensive as the initial investment in the firewall. And without reporting over a long-term period, you're just about wasting your time."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"It is quite new for us, and we need to go more in-depth into the monitoring tools. It provides different features that we need to do what we want. So far, it is okay for us. In terms of improvement, in the future, they can provide a faster implementation of features. Some of the features are first available in other solutions. Fortinet sometimes takes a little bit longer than other solutions, such as Check Point, to implement new features."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"It needs to be more secure."
"One concern I have with Netgate pfSense is related to packet filtering. Specifically, issues can arise with certain functionalities like GP, and, at times, there may be bugs."
"The integration could be improved."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"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."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"It could use a little bit of improvement in the reporting."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"The initial setup is neither simple nor complex. If you know the base in networking and how the firewall works, you will be able to figure it out."
"Sometimes we have had issues with stability of the product."
"The VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting."
"WatchGuard doesn't have a product that allows them to get into the data center. And that's just because there is no hardware to do the job. The software could do it, but there's no hardware that allows that to happen at the moment. So it doesn't scale as well as some other products, that's for sure."
"The setting policies need improvement. It needs an easier way to do static NAT and check on what policy is being used for that specific traffic."
"I would like them to improve the product's overall protections. This would be good for all product users."
"Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer)."
"One huge issue with WatchGuard XTM is that I'm not getting reports in a readable format. Readable means, I don't want Excel online. We repeat auditing when we trigger the report or setup calendar. That functionality is what we are looking for from WatchGuard XTM here."
Earn 20 points
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while WatchGuard XTM [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Firewalls. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is rated 8.0. 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 WatchGuard XTM [EOL] writes "The multi-layer security of the products are the primary reason we use these appliances, however, the gateway wireless functionality for managing access points leaves much to be desired". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is most compared with .
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