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."
"The security on offer is very good."
"The performance is good."
"The product is easy to use and is stable. The SV1 functionality is a benefit."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"This solution made it very easy to manage our bandwidth."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"It is a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Monitoring of network activity is included in the box."
"There are mainly two areas of improvement in Fortinet FortiGate— the licensing cost and the timing of upgrading licenses for boxes."
"I think that the infrastructure for the VPN could be improved. The way that it is bundled also made it difficult to use and sell as it is too expensive."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"There are just some services that aren't available. For example, the Ethernet or point-to-point protocols. They could add these services to their product offering - especially services for ISPs."
"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."
"The solution lacks sufficient filtering."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"In an upcoming release, the reporting could be more user-friendly. For example, the reporting in graphs and charts for the host can be cumbersome."
"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."
"The GUI could use more “bells and whistles”. It's got plenty of info for a Sysadmin but some people like shiny things."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"I believe improving integration with various antivirus vendors could be beneficial."
"More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome."
"I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"There are some bias issues and some intrusions in our network that have to be addressed. So, we're thinking of changing this firewall to something like a professional hardware-enabled firewall."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Syslog (Dimension) is focused on presentation, but needs more focus on utility like SonicWall syslog (GMS/Analyzer)."
"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."
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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