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."Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."
"This product is definitely scalable."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtering testing applications, web filtering, and the new VPN."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"I have found the firewall portion for the blocking most valuable."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"Monitoring of network activity is included in the box."
"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."
"After installing the product, we achieved awareness of our data protection needs and email misuse."
"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."
"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 like the hostwatch because I can see what traffic uses the most bandwidth and I can block that site."
"It configures in all-in-one place."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"There is more demand for UTMs than a simple firewall. pfSense should support real-time features for handling the latest viruses and threats. It should support real-time checks and real-time status of threats. Some other vendors, such as Fortinet, already offer this type of capability. Such capability will be good for bringing pfSense at the same level as other solutions."
"The main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"The integration should be improved."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"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."
"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."
"Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer)."
"Sometimes we have had issues with stability of the product."
"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, Sophos UTM, Cisco Secure Firewall and KerioControl, whereas WatchGuard XTM [EOL] is most compared with .
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