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."Its stability is the most valuable."
"In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"The UTM feature is quite good. FortiAP is easy to deploy because both Fortigate and FortiAP are under the same brand. Otherwise, you need to do more work on the configuration."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"The scalability is very good, where you can do an HA configuration and then bring in another box, if necessary."
"After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse."
"Monitoring of network activity is included in the box."
"WatchGuard XTM is fairly basic. We use it as the perimeter firewall. The main point is to protect from attack software and hacking."
"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."
"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."
"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 is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"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."
"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."
"There can be more security in hybrid implementations. When a customer has a hybrid environment where some parts are in the cloud, we need a consistent security solution for such scenarios."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having better visibility. Palo Alto has better visibility."
"Web interface could be enhanced and more user friendly."
"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."
"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."
"Their support could be better in terms of the response time."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"The VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting."
"Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer)."
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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