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."Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use."
"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"We purchased Fortinet because of the pricing, its functionality, because it met our requirements, and the total cost of ownership over five years was quite reasonable. In the market, Fortinet is rated quite well."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"It is a better firewall than others and it has better features."
"I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I like the hostwatch because I can see what traffic uses the most bandwidth and I can block that site."
"There is a site-to-site VPN configuration between others people."
"Monitoring of network activity is included in the box."
"It configures in all-in-one place."
"It is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"The pricing could be reduced or include the first year warranty."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"The support system could be improved."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"The user interface can be improved to make it easier to add more features. And pfSense could be better integrated with other solutions, like antivirus."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
"The usage reports can be better."
"Also, the GUI is helpful, but it's not user-friendly. It's complicated. It should be more intuitive for the average user and have an excellent graphical view. Of course, the user will typically know about network administration, but it still should be easy to understand."
"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."
"I would like them to improve the product's overall protections. This would be good for all product users."
"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."
"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 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."
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, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is most compared with .
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