We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Stormshield Network Security 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."It performs very well."
"There is an easy process for configuring it, and it is straightforward to implement the device from scratch."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"The customization potential is quite impressive."
"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"My company mainly works in the health and educational domain, schools and universities. I prevent the improper use of content from schools and universities. I defend the medical records for the patients in our hospitals. That is the main use case for me for the firewall."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"The most valuable features are the VPN and the capture photo."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"Our organization's main concern is stability, and this is a stable solution."
"A very robust product."
"The solution has improved my organization because I can see what traffic is happening and I can use it to block and prevent attacks."
"It's an easy, straightforward management platform to use."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"I like how you can configure the rules. There is the task for the rules and a task for the network configuration. It also provides SMD filtering, and it can be integrated with the active directory for the users, their mission, and the VPN configuration. We are here in Sudan, and Stormshield didn't work in Sudan for more than a decade. Stormshield is a very strong firewall and very easy to configure and maintain. I am just working with the firewall solution, and we don't have any other solutions like endpoint solutions or something like that."
"This solution is quick and easy to configure."
"Easily manageable in a variety of environments."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"We would like to see better pricing."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"Due to its higher cost, Fortinet FortiGate can lead to increased operational expenses."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"I would like to see different graphs available in the reporting."
"There are several levels of firewall configuration such as beginner, advanced, and expert configurations. At each level, it becomes more complex and more tricky to set up the firewall. For example, if you want to install the firewall on your computer system, it would be a lot easier if it just tells you that this is the internet NIC and this is the Wi-Fi NIC."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
"If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson."
"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."
"Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting."
"I believe improving integration with various antivirus vendors could be beneficial."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
"The biggest issue was their support department was not able to help us, then everything stops. This is a no-go area for me."
"Not all the fields are activated yet and we were informed that it will take at least one month."
"The filtering configuration could be better. We have some difficulties with the filtering configuration and the filter extension. It's not that easy. It's not that straightforward. In the next release, I would like to see a reporting system. Stormshield doesn't have any tutorials on how to do the configuration and things like that. They just have documentation on the website. If you want to configure, for example, Cisco or Fortinet, you can find tutorials on YouTube. They show you how to configure the features, and so on. In Stormshield, there is nothing on social media or the internet on how to configure different things. The lack of documentation or the lack of material makes it difficult for others to adopt this solution."
"Improvement is needed in terms of the technical support of the manufacturer."
"This solution has a big problem with web filtering and it needs to be improved."
"The SD card could be more secure."
"With Stormshield, there are difficulties joining things, and it can be complex depending on the architecture."
"This is not a next-generation firewall."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Stormshield Network Security is ranked 9th in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 16 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Stormshield Network Security is rated 7.8. 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 Stormshield Network Security writes "Handles monitoring, collection, analysis, and reporting of data in our HQ and branches". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Stormshield Network Security is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, WatchGuard Firebox and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Stormshield Network Security report.
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