We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and SonicWall NSv 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."The usage in general is pretty good."
"The technical support is great."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"The solution can scale well."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"It's a good solution for end-users. It's pretty easy to work with."
"The performance and functionality are good."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"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."
"I mostly like all of it. Whatever we use is valuable."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"One of the standout features of SonicWall is its simplicity in creating and managing rules."
"SonicWall NSV is easy to use, and you can use it to manage the logs easily."
"The security of this system is fantastic, including the IPS and IDS."
"The customization of firewall rules provides great value to our customers as it allows them to lock things up in the way that they desire. When it is used for internal access, with a VPN in place for remote workers, the firewalling services provided by Azure, such as the default services that can be turned on, are applied. However, the use of a software-based virtual firewall gives us greater flexibility in introducing security controls for customers who are publishing applications that are publicly accessible from the public cloud. This virtual firewall provides an additional layer of security and more extensive security control options to ensure the protection of our customers' valuable information and assets."
"We purchased the AGSS Bundle (Advanced Gateway Security Suite) for the security services, such as antivirus, intrusion prevention system, and anti-spyware botnet GUI."
"The solution has no additional charges and no restrictions on the number of users."
"The product helps improve our security."
"I would like to see a more intuitive dashboard."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"It could use more templates for third-party site-to-site VPN setups other than FortiGate and Cisco."
"To some degree, it's almost a question as to why some of this stuff isn't simpler. For example, for an AP deployment, while it's integrated, the number of steps that you have to go through in order to get the AP up, seems like a lot."
"Reporting is limited to providing an external appliance for improving the reporting capabilities of the FortiAnalyzer. It does not offer a central management and is also sold separably as an appliance."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"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."
"Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting."
"Could be simplified for new users."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"The stability could be improved."
"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."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"Web interface could be enhanced and more user friendly."
"We face some challenges when we upgrade the solution."
"I would like to see the reporting opened up and have several more opportunities for automatic reports."
"SonicWall NSV's initial setup is complicated and requires good knowledge."
"There are limitations to bandwidth management."
"An area that could be improved is the export and import settings functionality."
"It has been brought to our attention by a few customers that they are dissatisfied with the fact that our virtualized service is only offered as a subscription option on the cloud. However, it is worth noting that many other similar services are also offered through a subscription model on the cloud and not through perpetual licensing. It is unclear why these customers would have an issue with this subscription service when so many others are utilizing similar methods."
"SonicWall NSV's SSL VPN could increase its number of users to 100-plus users."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while SonicWall NSv is ranked 35th in Firewalls with 7 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while SonicWall NSv 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 SonicWall NSv writes "Easy to use, stable, and the security features work well". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas SonicWall NSv is most compared with Azure Firewall, SonicWall NSa, SonicWall TZ and Fortinet FortiGate-VM. See our Netgate pfSense vs. SonicWall NSv report.
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