We performed a comparison between Juniper SRX Series Firewall and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is appreciated for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and robust assistance. It provides functionalities like site-to-site VPN, firewall security, and routing capabilities. pfSense is highly regarded for its capacity to obstruct IP addresses, user-friendly dashboards, and open-source characteristics. It offers features such as secure VPN connections, scanning, filtering, and network security capabilities.
Juniper SRX Series Firewall could use enhancements in capacity limitations, reporting and alerts, user interface, device reliability, documentation, and feature enhancements. pfSense would benefit from improvements in instructional videos, web interface clarity, stability, mobile application, centralized management, GUI for SMBs, sandboxing, security, hardware support, user-friendliness, log analysis, VPN capacity, documentation, configuration processes, and SD-WAN integration.
Service and Support: Customers have generally praised Juniper SRX Series Firewall's customer service for being helpful and knowledgeable, despite occasional slower response times. pfSense's customer service varies among users, with some having positive experiences with technical support and others relying on clear documentation and community resources.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Juniper SRX Series Firewall can be done within a day for smaller branch offices, whereas pfSense be set up in just 15 minutes. Juniper may demand familiarity with CLI, while pfSense is commonly referred to as being easy to use.
Pricing: Juniper has extra charges for advanced security features and APS, whereas pfSense provides updates without any additional fees. The specific licensing costs for pfSense are not clearly stated.
ROI: Juniper SRX Series Firewall provides advanced security features and reliable performance, leading to a favorable return on investment. pfSense stands out for its affordability, minimal management expenses, and substantial hardware cost savings. Users also emphasize its superior ROI compared to pricier alternatives such as FortiGate.
Comparison Results: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is the preferred product over pfSense. Users appreciate its simplicity, intuitive interface, reliability, scalability, and exceptional customer support. It offers convenient configuration, site-to-site VPN capabilities, and effective firewall protection. Additionally, Juniper SRX Series Firewall is considered a more cost-effective and secure solution.
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"This version is stable. I don't have any issues with this solution, in our environment, it works well."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"The SD-WAN is the most valuable feature."
"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"I am "headache free" that I don't have to categorize all the websites and that security has been pre categorized by the people, and that the services are getting updated. At least one part of my problem is over."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"From a protection perspective, it provides a network perimeter security function for our company."
"The most valuable feature is the virtualization because it can be used for customers who are using the mobile data network to request a private connection to a remote site."
"We're primarily using Juniper's EPA feature, but not the other things. We use it to manage different points of firewalling of routing."
"The reason that we picked Juniper SRX is for the scalability, the fit for purpose, the tools that are available, the ongoing support and the ability to monitor, but particularly for the virtual routers in our data centers so that we can quickly upscale them when needed, when we need more throughput."
"The CLI works perfectly."
"It helped us with its routing capabilities which eased the cost, because otherwise I would have had to take a router and firewall, and then integrate it. With this, however, it was an integration of firewall and routing services all together in a single product. That was one thing that I loved about it."
"We think they have a good interface, the operating system is good, it's robust. It has plenty of great features, and the relation between the cost and benefits works for our business."
"Juniper is one of the most powerful network security solutions while remaining simple to use, set up, and scale."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"The solution is very easy to use and has a very nice GUI."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"It is a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"The way everything is set up could be easier. Currently, people need a lot of experience and knowledge to administer it and to link it to devices."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"I think improvement can be done to the security part, particularly the UDM, and the product should have a user-friendly interface similar to FortiGate. It should have the Azure RBAC in the next release."
"Ongoing costs are something that we need to manage and make sure that we're getting value on."
"Juniper needs to focus more on their perimeter firewalls."
"As a networking person, I don't really have any major issues with this device. Based on my experience of using it in a cluster, it could be more stable. I had an incident when one of the SRXs in a cluster couldn't learn ARP. It is a good solution, but firewalls don't seem to be an area of development for Juniper. They are focusing on data centers, routers, and switches, not firewalls."
"The Juniper product has to improve in terms of innovation."
"IPS is one that I would definitely want to be improved. I would also like SSL VPN to be integrated."
"It would be good if Junos had "unique commands" between all hierarchical levels, discarding the use of the "Run" command."
"We'd like to improve the stability and the kill rate."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"There are some bias issues and some intrusions in our network that have to be addressed. So, we're thinking of changing this firewall to something like a professional hardware-enabled firewall."
"pfSense could improve by having a sandboxing feature that I have seen in SonicWall. However, maybe it is available I am not aware of it."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"Also, simplifying the rules for the GeoIP. Making it simpler to understand would be an improvement."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
"I believe improving integration with various antivirus vendors could be beneficial."
Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 86 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Juniper SRX Series Firewall is rated 7.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Juniper SRX Series Firewall writes "Highly scalable, user-friendly UI, and easy to maintain". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Check Point NGFW and Meraki MX, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl and Sophos UTM. See our Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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