We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and OPNsense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is highly regarded for its robust security features, including geofencing, firewalling, IPS, and antivirus. Users also appreciate its user-friendly interface. OPNsense is notable for its scalability and ability to accommodate guest access. Its dashboards, IDS and IPS capabilities, and availability of a free version are also highlighted as valuable features.
Fortinet FortiGate-VM could benefit from enhancements in key activation, log management, IPsec failover, monitoring tools, hardening, availability, VPN connectivity, operating system stability, data center clustering, throughput, web application firewall integration, pricing model, troubleshooting forum, and guidance. OPNsense requires improvements in interface simplification, integration, DNS blocking, peer-blocking, installation, deployment, reporting, SSL inspection, and learning curve.
Service and Support: Fortinet FortiGate-VM's customer service has received both positive and negative feedback. Some customers appreciate the support team's quick response times and expertise. However, others have faced challenges in obtaining prompt assistance and finding information easily. OPNsense has been commended for its exceptional support, rapid response times, and helpful guidance. Nonetheless, a few users have noted the lack of easy accessibility to the support service and have recommended the addition of an associated support service.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Fortinet FortiGate-VM is typically simple. OPNsense is not overly complicated or difficult. FortiGate-VM may take more time for larger deployments, however, it provides a user-friendly installation and configuration experience. Clients can perform the OPNsense setup themselves, and it can be completed within a few hours.
Pricing: Fortinet FortiGate-VM requires licensing fees with no extra expenses. OPNsense, being open-source, doesn't require a license, however, hardware costs are involved.
ROI: Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers enhanced security and stability. Users consider its ROI to be highly satisfactory. OPNsense delivers a quick return on investment, typically within three months, and eliminates the need for ongoing fees.
Comparison Results: The analysis of user feedback indicates that Fortinet FortiGate-VM outperforms OPNsense in various aspects. Users highly value Fortinet FortiGate-VM for its robust security capabilities, user-friendly interface, effortless deployment, scalability, and extensive filtering options. Moreover, users appreciate the availability of support from Fortinet.
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"We have been able to offer several services to customers in a single box."
"Fortinet FortiGate has many valuable features, such as IDS, and intrusion detection. It has security features that are in part with the technologies that are available in the market."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"The solution offers good documentation."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are the servers, analyzer, and track protection."
"The ROI is good since I get free support."
"Web filtering and the IPS functionality."
"Initial setup is very straightforward with a wizard, if needed."
"The reporting is good."
"We use it to ensure that our network is properly protected from viruses and malware."
"I did like the ability to back up the configuration into the cloud, as opposed to having to store the configurations or just downloading them, the backups, to local devices."
"It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features."
"The solution has high availability."
"URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me."
"It's more secure and more reliable."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"What I like best about OPNsense is that, as a firewall, it's pretty good. I'm quite impressed with it. I had an excellent experience with OPNsense, which helped me achieve the targets I wanted."
"The initial setup is easy. It only takes 15-30 minutes to deploy."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"Cisco Meraki products are rising very quickly in the cloud and the connected era. Meraki products offer much better ROI, upgradability, and manageability."
"We'd like more management across other integrations."
"It is stable, but its stability can be improved."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"In the next release, we would like to see full integration with VMware NSX virtualized networks."
"The tech support calls were not the best and could be improved. There have been times when we felt as if we knew more about the device than the support person on the phone."
"Fortinet could improve the availability and delivery of its products. It takes four to six weeks for every purchase to arrive."
"The solution is fairly complex."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM should improve its asset identification, wherein the device can identify assets on the network, like computers."
"It should have the SD-WAN feature. This would increase the number of features that are available in the box."
"Sizing can be challenging for customers interested in using Fortinet FortiGate-VM."
"To improve FortiGate-VM, Fortinet needs to harden it more. For example, if you are using Hyper-V, then you need guidelines for hardening FortiGate-VM that are specific to the Hyper-V environment. If it's VMware, there should be at least a guideline on how to harden the firewall."
"The only thing that I would like to see improved is the Insight or the NetFlow analysis part. It would be good to have the possibility to dig down on the Insight platform. Right now, we can easily do only a few analyses. If this page becomes more powerful, it surely will be a well-adopted platform."
"You will need additional training before you can actually start to use it."
"I think the most important thing is that it should be easily accessible, but currently, that doesn't seem to be the case. We need a hardware platform that's based on common standards and open computing principles, which would be like a commodity and benefit us greatly."
"I would like better documentation concerning the provided packages and their integration."
"There are some add-ons that need enhancements to make management easier for users, especially the reporting features. Some reports don't show the level of detail I'm looking for, and I've had trouble installing certain add-ons, especially for Internet bandwidth shaping within my company."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"The solution would not be suitable for anything large-scale."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while OPNsense is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, Cisco Secure Firewall and Netgate pfSense, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. OPNsense report.
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