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."Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"There are lots of features and most of them are deployed for internet security. Users are protected if they accidentally go to some malicious sites."
"The security on offer is very good."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"The initial setup is easy."
"I have found the firewall portion for the blocking most valuable."
"I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection."
"I had some outages in the network and we provide services for our company. We sell mobile credits. The terminal gets access to our own server inside the network and if one internet fails, then the other one is still up and we have a back-up link on the devices."
"It is a very good solution for enterprises that need a VPN for their employees. It is the best way to provide a remote work facility to employees at a very low cost. Other solutions that I have had in the past were very expensive. Enterprises don't always have that kind of money to invest."
"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."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"The tools' most valuable feature is load balancing."
"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."
"SNMP status monitoring and the Central Management Software."
"It is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time."
"There is a site-to-site VPN configuration between others people."
"It configures in all-in-one place."
"WatchGuard XTM is fairly basic. We use it as the perimeter firewall. The main point is to protect from attack software and hacking."
"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."
"Monitoring of network activity is included in the box."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"The improvement is related to logs. Instead of the CLI, we should be able to have more insights into the logs of the firewall in the GUI."
"I would like to see improvements in the support from Fortinet. Here in the Philippines, whenever we have problems with a Fortinet product, we mostly ask for support from distributors and resellers and not directly from Fortinet."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"FortiOS is not simple."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"The security could be improved."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"I would like to see pfSense integrate WireGuard. Currently, pfSense uses OpenVPN, and there's nothing wrong with it, but WireGuard is a lot leaner and meaner."
"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."
"A malware blocker should be included. I do not know if it is included yet. However, until now, we have not experienced a large malware invasion."
"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."
"Sometimes we have had issues with stability of the product."
"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."
"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."
"I would like them to improve the product's overall protections. This would be good for all product users."
"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."
"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."
Earn 20 points
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 15 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 "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". On the other hand, Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, Cisco Secure Firewall and KerioControl, whereas WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is most compared with .
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