We performed a comparison between OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks PA-Series 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."I like Fortinet's cloud management. It allows me to manage all my devices in different branches for three cloud accounts. Even though I use on-prem devices, I can manage everything on the cloud."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"Whenever we raise a complaint with FortiGate, their response and resolution times are minimal."
"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"One of the most valuable features is the network checking. Additionally, the firewall and web filtering functionalities are highly useful."
"It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features."
"We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience."
"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 feature is the Dual WAN in OPNSense, which offers advanced capabilities."
"What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control."
"It is a very good solution. I like the dashboard. I can see what is going on and manage it as I like it."
"It's open source."
"Palo Alto blocks the new threats better than other tools."
"The most effective features for threat prevention in the PA-Series are its integration with Cortex and the use of machine learning AI for advanced threat detection."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It offers application-based policy enforcement. Palo Alto Networks firewalls help us recognize protocol anomalies, contrasting with other vendors that may require policies based on port numbers. With Palo Alto Networks, the port number isn't a constraint because their devices handle protocol traffic at Layer 7, allowing for accurate identification of protocol usage and port numbers. They can identify which protocol actually uses which port."
"It is stable when you set up something and put it into production. Once it works, you don't have other tasks or actions to perform."
"It is scalable. But that depends on what model you are using."
"It is a scalable solution."
"I like the tool's security and web filtering features."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"Its interface should be a little bit better."
"On the customer-side, because I'm a small business, I need a cheaper or free solution option."
"The reporting part could be better."
"There is room for improvement in SSL inspection."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"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."
"The ability to set the VPN IP address would be a welcome addition."
"While they do have paid options that actually gives better features, for most of the clients, if they tend to take a paid option will instead opt for Fortinet."
"Palo Alto should integrate artificial intelligence for security purposes in the background for well-known threats and new risks coming to the market."
"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is complicated to configure compared to one of its competitors."
"Pricing flexibility could be an aspect worth considering, as it has been a concern for some of our clients."
"The support provided by the solution is not that good."
"The technical support offered by Palo Alto is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I have found that the tool works well for me, but there are areas where security testing and protection could be improved, especially in virtual or cloud environments. However, in this project, once we deployed it, we haven't encountered any issues. The cost is currently manageable, but as we migrate fully into the cloud, additional features like capacity upgrading and improvements to hardware resources will be necessary, especially since our equipment consists of older generation switches and routers. So, I'm looking for additional capabilities in these areas."
"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is expensive. We would like to see additional threat hunting features."
"The SD-WAN feature of Palo Alto Networks is not good compared to FortiGate."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 28 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks PA-Series writes "Offers trained customer support, stability and ease of use ". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire, whereas Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is most compared with SonicWall NSa, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense and WatchGuard Firebox. See our OPNsense vs. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series report.
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