We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: The main difference between the two solutions is that Meraki MX is expensive, while pfSense is an open-source solution and is free of charge. In addition, Meraki’s monitoring capabilities could use improvement.
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"The virtual firewall feature is the most valuable. We have around 1,500 firewalls. We did not buy individual hardware, and the virtual firewalls made sense because we don't have to keep on buying the hardware. FortiGate is easier to use as compared to Checkpoint devices. It is user friendly and has a good UI. You don't need much expertise to work on this firewall. You don't need to worry much about DCLA, commands, and things like that."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"The solution has very good threat and content filtering switches."
"The user interface is relatively easy. The devices are easy to deploy and figure out when you have experience with other security appliances."
"In general, Meraki MX is easy to work with."
"The most valuable feature is that we didn't have any problems with Meraki MX."
"Real Auto VPN with load balancer without needing a public IP. It is simple and functional."
"Site to Site VPN: The device can establish a VPN connection to multiple sites in a mesh environment in seconds, and without complex VPN knowledge."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"It has the most advanced security features, for example, layer 3 and layer 7 firewall capabilities and the end team and IPS protection. It also has IPS, and it has very good functioning of cloning services. You don't actually have to touch the device. If you have multiple companies in different countries, you don't really require this device to be touched. You can get it delivered directly to any office of a country, and then you can simply put your configuration over the cloud. It's very simplified and easy to manage. It gives a very good granular visibility about your network. Earlier, a lot of things were lacking in the network. We were unable to identify where the problem was, but after implementing Meraki MX, we are able to dig down and identify where is the problem. We can easily and quickly identify the sources and the root causes of the issues."
"It has a helpful feature for database troubleshooting issues."
"To me, the analytics feature is one of the most valuable in Meraki MX. I also find that it has good usability as it's cloud-based. Another valuable feature of Meraki MX is that it's simple to use and it's user-friendly."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much."
"The most valuable features are the VPN and the capture photo."
"Content protection, content inspection, and the application level firewall."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"The tools' most valuable feature is load balancing."
"It is much simpler than other solutions such as Fortinet."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"The firewall engine is not so strong as of now, in my opinion... My second concern is that, while they have Zero-day vulnerability and anti-malware features, the threat engine needs to be strengthened, its efficiency can be increased."
"It does not have key authentication for admin access."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"Monitoring and reporting could be better."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"Meraki has some hidden features and information that is only privy to their engineers. If that information became available to us, then it would improve our ease of management, and we would be able to make certain adjustments instead of having to go to them."
"We have been having a problem with the VPN. When the energy goes down and is back again, the VPN link doesn't get established. We have to manually turn off the modems and other pieces of equipment and manually establish the VPN. It has been around one month since we have been having this problem, and we don't have enough support from Meraki to solve the problem."
"We do not have account managers in our region for the solution. Some governments don't use the product since it is attached to the internet."
"Meraki MX can come across as an expensive solution."
"The client-side VPN is weak. The product could be improved with deployment templates."
"The product is quite complex to set up."
"We can’t access GUI management and CLI opening features when the Internet is unavailable."
"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's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"We would like to see ready-made profiles to cover most users' needs."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"Lacks instructional videos."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"It would be great to add more to security."
"Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system."
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 57 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and SonicWall NSa, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Check Point NGFW. See our Meraki MX vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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