We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall 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: pfSense comes out on top in this comparison. It is high performing and, according to reviews, it is a more comprehensive solution than Azure Firewall. pfSense also received higher marks in the support category.
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"Good performance, stability, and virtual domain ability."
"Overall, the pricing of the solution is very good. The product offers good value."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."
"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."
"Azure Firewall is a cloud-native solution that removes the pain of load balancers."
"Great security and connectivity."
"The solution is very stable. When comparing it to other environments, it's actually quite impressive."
"Azure's cost-effectiveness is its major advantage."
"It's helped us improve our security posture."
"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."
"The performance and functionality are good."
"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."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"A free firewall that is a good network security appliance."
"There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"WAN load-balancing could be a lot better at detecting when a link is poor or inconsistent, and not just flat out dead."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"Right now, with Azure Firewall, we cannot have a normal inbound traffic flow. For inbound, Microsoft suggests using application gateways, so the options are very limited. I cannot use this firewall as an intermediate firewall because of the limitations, and I cannot point routing to another firewall. So if I want to use back-to-back firewall architecture in my environment, I cannot use Azure Firewall for that type of configuration either."
"Azure should be able to work better as a balancer also, instead of just being a firewall. It should have a wider mandate."
"It's a little heavy compared to a FortiGate or other firewalls."
"Currently, it only supports IP addresses, so you have to be specific about the IPs that are in your environment."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks."
"The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"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."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"Also, the GUI is helpful, but it's not user-friendly. It's complicated. It should be more intuitive for the average user and have an excellent graphical view. Of course, the user will typically know about network administration, but it still should be easy to understand."
"My only observation is about the quality of the IPSec logs, which are difficult to interpret and are poor in filters."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Azure Front Door, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Azure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
