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."Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"This product is definitely scalable."
"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 user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"The technical support is great."
"It blocks the vulnerabilities that can negatively impact us."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"A free firewall that is a good network security appliance."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems."
"The performance and functionality are good."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"It is a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"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."
"SNMP status monitoring and the Central Management Software."
"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."
"We have used technical support for WatchGuard many times and overall, we are satisfied with it. They are always listening and there is a good reaction time to our findings. When there are issues, they really try to resolve them."
"It configures in all-in-one place."
"After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse."
"It is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time."
"Application Control is fantastic with over 2,500 applications and the granularity that we can either allow people to view but not be able to log on to Facebook; or view it and log onto it if they're in the marketing department, but not play Facebook games. There are all sorts of different options like that. So it's highly granular."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding FortiAnalyzer to its solution, we should not have to use another solution. FortiAnalyzer can provide more detailed information."
"The reports are very basic."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"One of the problems I was having was with user mapping, and it is an issue for which I have escalated tickets with Fortinet support."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"It requires more attention to provide a better alternative for open source to small government or educational institutions with reduced budgets in terms of technology."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
"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 has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing."
"Sometimes we have had issues with stability of the product."
"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."
"The VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting."
"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."
"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."
"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)."
"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."
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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