We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: pfSense comes out on top in this comparison. It is high performing and, according to reviews, it is a more comprehensive solution than Azure Firewall. pfSense also received higher marks in the support category.
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature is the policy routing and application control."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and the UI. It has always provided me with what I needed. I have no need for additional costs that other solutions have, such as Sophos."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"The solution should be capable of self-scaling, which is one of the features we like about it."
"I like its order management feature. It doesn't have the kind of threat intelligence that Palo Alto has, but the order management makes it much simpler to know the difference."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is the control over the network permissions and the network."
"It provided ease of maintenance. If a new firewall was needed, we only had to run the pipelines for this. So, the maintenance was very easy."
"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems."
"The initial setup is easy."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"Technical support could be better. You don't always get the level of help you need right away."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"Compared to some other products, the DLP is not at par for the moment."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"It is a cloud service, but the lending speed for each region is not always the same. For example, in China, the speed is slow. They need to think about how to make sure that the service pace or speed is always the same in all regions. It would be a great improvement if they can provide the same pace worldwide."
"There should be better monitoring and logging. Currently, it is put in Sentinel. It should be more seamless and from the interface."
"Azure Firewall definitely needs a broader feature base. It should be able to go all the way up to layer 7 when looking at applications and things like that."
"Azure should be able to work better as a balancer also, instead of just being a firewall. It should have a wider mandate."
"Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories."
"Azure Firewall should have a free trial version for new users so that they can evaluate it before deploying it."
"For large organizations, a third-party firewall would be an added advantage, because it would have more advanced features, things that are not in Azure Firewall."
"There could be a way to remote to it through a mobile app. You can always browse through your browser on your mobile phone or tablet, but it would be good to have a dedicated app. I understand that iOS and Android developers are expensive, but there should be a mobile app."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
"The main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection."
"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."
"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."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"The security could be improved."
"Needs services on additional features, such as managing inventory and generating reports."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Azure Front Door, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Azure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.