We performed a comparison between OPNsense and Smoothwall Firewall based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"The pipe filter application is an outstanding feature."
"It's user-friendly and easy to operate."
"The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"One of the most valuable features is the network checking. Additionally, the firewall and web filtering functionalities are highly useful."
"The solution is good for a basic firewall for a small business or for home use."
"It's more secure and more reliable."
"The DNS-level filtering is impressive for thwarting time scanners."
"The feature I find most valuable, is that the program helped me to realize all the requested functionality that was needed."
"It has an open license. It works very well, and there is an update every month."
"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 most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility."
"It was easy to initially deploy it."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"You do need some IT knowledge in order to effectively work with the solution."
"It does not have key authentication for admin access."
"OPNsense showed me some problems when using it in different environments. The problem is integration with a virtual server."
"I would like better documentation concerning the provided packages and their integration."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"There are issues with stability and reliability."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the UI. They can improve it by making it so that everything is in one place, so we don't have to jump around to different pages."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while Smoothwall Firewall is ranked 34th in Firewalls with 1 review. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while Smoothwall Firewall is rated 9.0. 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 Smoothwall Firewall writes "Offers good scalability and monitoring features ". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire, whereas Smoothwall Firewall is most compared with Netgate pfSense.
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