We performed a comparison between OPNsense and WatchGuard Firebox 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."Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"One of the nice things about FortiGate is that it can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises. You can actually do both. That's the biggest reason why I stick with this solution as opposed to something like Cisco Meraki. Another nice thing is that I can log directly into a FortiGate or get to it through their FortiCloud access products. They're pretty reliable and consistent. One of the reasons why I started using the product was their single pane of management. I can deploy their line of firewalls in conjunction with their switching and access points, and I can manage the entire network from one interface. I don't have to log into one interface for the firewall, another one for the access points, and another one for the switches. These firewalls have access point controller functionality built right into the system, so I don't even have to purchase additional devices to manage them."
"FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"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."
"OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
"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 system in general is quite flexible."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"The solution is good for a basic firewall for a small business or for home use."
"I have found the solution has some great features overall, such as guest access capabilities, dashboards, and ease of use. There is plenty of documentation and support and it has the plugins that I needed."
"The interface and the dashboard are the most valuable features of this solution."
"OPNsense is easy to use and open source."
"It saves us time in the respect that we now have the template built for it so we can get in and get it done. We've had much less problem supporting Voice over IP technologies from different companies. Because our client base has grown over the years, we're probably saving 20 to 30 man-hours a month now that we've got this on a good stable level."
"One of my favorite features is the Geolocation service, where you can actually block specific activity or IP addresses registered to certain countries. For example, I don't want any web traffic from Russia or North Korea. I may even lock down certain policies down to 'I only want U.S. IP addresses.' I find that very useful."
"One of the most valuable features is the Geolocation. Because we aren't a multinational corporation, it allows me to look at things which might be suspicious to make sure that they are legitimate transactions rather than people sniffing around the network."
"Among the most valuable features is the ease of use — love the interface — of both the web interface and of the WatchGuard System Manager."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the FireWall features. The management side of WatchGuard is quite easy because it supports two ways to manage it - by the web and the other one they call WatchGuard systems manager. I used to be familiar with WSM only, but they improved their GUI in the web browser and now it is much easier to do it within the web browser."
"The throughput is great. It's perfect. We have no issues whatsoever. The management features are very powerful..."
"There are no problems with the technical support. If a problem occurs it gets resolved immediately with our technical support partners."
"The most valuable features are the VPN and web blocker security."
"The pricing could be reduced or include the first year warranty."
"You do need some IT knowledge in order to effectively work with the solution."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"The initial setup is complex."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"The solution could be more secure."
"They should improve IPEs for security in the future."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"While they do have paid options that actually gives better features, for most of the clients, if they tend to take a paid option will instead opt for Fortinet."
"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."
"The interface needs to be simplified. It is not user-friendly."
"The solution would not be suitable for anything large-scale."
"Given that OPNsense plays a pivotal role as a firewall, safeguarding against various threats, having a reliable backup ensures uninterrupted protection even if unforeseen events impact the primary virtual machine."
"The drawbacks are just sometimes not having the technical information that we need in order to easily make connections with all of our Internet-based clients."
"The way Secure Sign-On authentication is happening needs to be improved. When the Secure Sign-On portal is turned on, anybody who comes into the campus, whether he or she is a staff member or a guest, has to go past the initial portal. One of the shortcomings is the username. It shouldn't allow permutations or combinations with upper or lower cases. For example, when there is a username abc, it shouldn't allow ABC or Abc. It should not allow the same username, but currently, two separate people can go in. Therefore, its authentication or validation should be improved, and the case sensitiveness should be picked up. If I have restricted someone to two devices, they shouldn't be able to use different combinations of the same username and get into the third or fourth device. It shouldn't allow different combinations of alphabets to be used to log in."
"I would like to have a little more control over access points and the ability to see the bandwidth that is passing through a specific access point. We are not able to see that. We can see what traffic is passing through the Firebox itself, but we can't identify if it is coming from a particular access point or not."
"In WatchGuard Firebox, the antivirus and malware detection systems are areas with shortcomings that require improvement since they are the most important elements of a cybersecurity tool."
"Firebox would be improved with integration for endpoint protection solutions."
"It would be wonderful if the WatchGuard team develops nice products for threat intelligence."
"The performance of the solution's processor needs to be faster."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 79 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WatchGuard Firebox writes "Offers a streamlined deployment, intuitive interface and robust security features". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our OPNsense vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors and best Firewalls vendors.
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