We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Sophos XGS 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."Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"The main benefit is the grouping of our security monitoring."
"The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"The product’s documentation is good."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"It is a very good solution for enterprises that need a VPN for their employees. It is the best way to provide a remote work facility to employees at a very low cost. Other solutions that I have had in the past were very expensive. Enterprises don't always have that kind of money to invest."
"It works. I put pfSense in, and it works. I can't think of any trouble I ever had with it. It runs on heat-sensitive appliances. They don't need a fan, so they don't overheat. It is affordable, fast, and very high-speed. It is built on BSD Unix, and it pretty much runs on any Intel processor."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"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."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"It is very stable. I have not heard of any issue where clients would have to replace hardware. It's been really stable for a long while."
"It's very easy to manage this solution."
"The product was easy for us to install."
"Sophos XGS that's a good firewall. If you use the endpoint, then you have what Sophos calls synchronized security. That will mean that if one of the endpoints is affected, it will be automatically set in isolation."
"It's easy to deploy and connect."
"The centralized security is very good."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable features in Sophos XGS are bandwidth management, content filtering, and WAN link management failover. If one internet activity or one link would fail, automatically it will switch over to another one."
"They've become quite expensive."
"The inability to scale the FortiAnalyzer to match our growth necessitates the purchase of new hardware."
"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."
"A couple of things I've seen that need improvement, especially in terms of a hard coding. The driver-level active moment really is out-of-the-box and we have to have contact the customer support and sometimes it is difficult to resolve."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"Difficult to add or define, and not that easy to configure and manage."
"The ease of use could be improved."
"Their support could be better in terms of the response time."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"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."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"The stability could be improved."
"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 GUI. There are TONS of plugins for pfSense, as such, if a user wants to add quite a bit of functionality, the GUI will feel a little congested."
"There are some bugs relating to the product that allow VPN users to bypass the firewall."
"In Sophos, the user portal is not user-friendly."
"Reporting could be improved. The structure could be better because most of the reports aren't detailed."
"There are some issues with conversion and user roles when upgrading to Cyberoam."
"Support is great, however, it can always be improved."
"The price of Sophos XGS could improve, it is high."
"In version 18 of Sophos XGS, the log details are not very good. However, in version 19 they are more detailed. The Fortinet FortiGate has better detail overall compared to Sophos XGS. They provide updates to the solution frequently, but they do not fix the problems that exist."
"Sophos XGS would benefit from further development in the SD-WAN area."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Sophos XGS is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 58 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Sophos XGS is rated 8.0. 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 Sophos XGS writes "Easy to use, simple to learn, and offers great reporting". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, WatchGuard Firebox, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Meraki MX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Sophos XGS report.
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