We performed a comparison between Hillstone E-Series and Netgate pfSense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"All of the features of Fortinet FortiGate are useful and the security protection is good."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"The solution is highly scalable because they have devices that can handle a large amount of traffic."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"This solution has two main features that we find very valuable; a threat-intelligence option, and a web/application filtering option. The technical support team are very good and very quick."
"Very reliable solution with good scalability and straightforward implementation."
"Five out of five ROI."
"Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients a secure connectivity."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features of the Hillstone E-Series are its hardware capacity, innovation, and the throughput that the hardware can take."
"The installation is easy, we have not had any complaints from our customers."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy."
"What I found most valuable is the cost of the platform, the flexibility of the platform, and the fact that the ongoing fees are not there as they are with the competitor. Some people may think you're taking a risk with using Opensource. I think it just provides the end user, specifically for us small, medium business providers of services, the flexibility we need at the right cost to provide them a higher end, almost enterprise type service."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"It is a stable solution."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"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."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"Its price could be better."
"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."
"The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
"Having frequent live webinars on a monthly basis would really help."
"The current usage reporting is very basic."
"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."
"Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"If a user doesn't have a large amount of experience in Linux systems, they will have problems using this solution. Users need to be highly skilled in troubleshooting competency. Users who do not have such skills will find the product difficult to use."
"I would like to see different graphs available in the reporting."
"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."
"As an open-source solution, there are so many loopholes happening within the product. By design, no one is taking ownership of it, and that is worrisome to me."
"The user interface can be improved to make it easier to add more features. And pfSense could be better integrated with other solutions, like antivirus."
"The security could be improved."
"The usage reports can be better."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
Hillstone E-Series is ranked 33rd in Firewalls with 9 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Hillstone E-Series is rated 9.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Hillstone E-Series writes "A user-friendly and marketable solution with a virtual switching capability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Hillstone E-Series is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, OpenVPN Access Server, Sangfor SSL VPN and Meraki MX, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Hillstone E-Series vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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