We performed a comparison between Juniper SRX Series Firewall and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is appreciated for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and robust assistance. It provides functionalities like site-to-site VPN, firewall security, and routing capabilities. pfSense is highly regarded for its capacity to obstruct IP addresses, user-friendly dashboards, and open-source characteristics. It offers features such as secure VPN connections, scanning, filtering, and network security capabilities.
Juniper SRX Series Firewall could use enhancements in capacity limitations, reporting and alerts, user interface, device reliability, documentation, and feature enhancements. pfSense would benefit from improvements in instructional videos, web interface clarity, stability, mobile application, centralized management, GUI for SMBs, sandboxing, security, hardware support, user-friendliness, log analysis, VPN capacity, documentation, configuration processes, and SD-WAN integration.
Service and Support: Customers have generally praised Juniper SRX Series Firewall's customer service for being helpful and knowledgeable, despite occasional slower response times. pfSense's customer service varies among users, with some having positive experiences with technical support and others relying on clear documentation and community resources.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Juniper SRX Series Firewall can be done within a day for smaller branch offices, whereas pfSense be set up in just 15 minutes. Juniper may demand familiarity with CLI, while pfSense is commonly referred to as being easy to use.
Pricing: Juniper has extra charges for advanced security features and APS, whereas pfSense provides updates without any additional fees. The specific licensing costs for pfSense are not clearly stated.
ROI: Juniper SRX Series Firewall provides advanced security features and reliable performance, leading to a favorable return on investment. pfSense stands out for its affordability, minimal management expenses, and substantial hardware cost savings. Users also emphasize its superior ROI compared to pricier alternatives such as FortiGate.
Comparison Results: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is the preferred product over pfSense. Users appreciate its simplicity, intuitive interface, reliability, scalability, and exceptional customer support. It offers convenient configuration, site-to-site VPN capabilities, and effective firewall protection. Additionally, Juniper SRX Series Firewall is considered a more cost-effective and secure solution.
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"We can use our devices to check all of the perimeters. It secures email websites."
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"The next-generation firewall is great."
"In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"The most valuable features are the security cloud ACP and KPP features."
"It helped us with its routing capabilities which eased the cost, because otherwise I would have had to take a router and firewall, and then integrate it. With this, however, it was an integration of firewall and routing services all together in a single product. That was one thing that I loved about it."
"The most powerful feature in Juniper SRX is definitely NCLS."
"From a protection perspective, it provides a network perimeter security function for our company."
"CLI: Junos CLI is very easy to use, and it is also very easy to find back items in the configuration and to change them."
"Commit: You can update the whole configuration without affecting the production. The new configuration will be loaded once the command "Commit" is submitted. You can also do a Commit confirmed to automatically roll back to the previous config after X minutes."
"The security features and the model collection are the most valuable."
"The CLI works perfectly."
"It is much simpler than other solutions such as Fortinet."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"pfSense is a nice product, and I find that there's a lot of information out there. There are some good tutorials on YouTube and other websites with helpful information."
"The solution is very easy to use and configure."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"I can manage it easily by myself."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"To the best of my knowledge, Fortinet does not have a CASB solution and Fortinet does not have a Zero trust solution."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"Lacks training for new features."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"Juniper needs to focus more on their perimeter firewalls."
"To compare with Fortinet, Juniper needs to improve their security features."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"The web interface on Juniper SRX is just a short conversion from Junos OS CLI; this is not very suitable for users with little expertise/"
"While the GUI is pretty good on the Juniper side, there can still be tweaks made to it that will make it even better."
"It could have features that other products support like blade options and stand-alone endpoint security."
"I would like to see endpoint control and endpoint testing security."
"The reporting is lacking."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"A malware blocker should be included. I do not know if it is included yet. However, until now, we have not experienced a large malware invasion."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"I have been using WireGuard VPN because it is a lot faster and more secure than an open VPN. However, in the latest version of pfSense, they have removed this feature, which is one of the main features that I need. They should include this feature."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 86 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Juniper SRX Series Firewall is rated 7.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Juniper SRX Series Firewall writes "Highly scalable, user-friendly UI, and easy to maintain". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Check Point NGFW and Meraki MX, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl and Sophos UTM. See our Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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