Comparison conclusions:
pfSense offers paid options for additional support and features (pfSense Plus), a wider range of features and a larger community, but might have a steeper learning curve.
OPNsense provides a clean interface and built-in security features, but its community and documentation are smaller
The summary above is based on 40 interviews we conducted with pfSense and OPNsense users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"Its stability is the most valuable."
"Fortigate represents a really scalable way of delivering perimeter network security, some level of layer 7 security, WAF, and also a way to create a meshed ADVPN solution."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"The wireless control is helpful."
"The main reason why I purchased the particular unit was that it had good reviews and what other people were saying as far as its completeness and its leading capabilities in terms of endpoint security was very good."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"Sophos Intercept X is scalable. Currently, we have almost 30 people using it in our company."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"The DNS-level filtering is impressive for thwarting time scanners."
"URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me."
"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."
"I find the solution to be user-friendly. It has a lot of reports and easy settings."
"The initial implementation process is simple."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"The graphic user interface is very good and it is user-friendly which makes the product easy-to-use."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"Improvement is needed in the Web Filter quotas to restrict users with allocated quotas."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"The integration should be improved."
"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."
"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."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
"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."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"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."
"They should improve IPEs for security in the future."
"I would like better documentation concerning the provided packages and their integration."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"The IPS solution could be more reliable."
"The ability to set the VPN IP address would be a welcome addition."
"In terms of improvement, the performance could be enhanced."
"There should be more technical documentation."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while OPNsense is rated 8.4. 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 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". Netgate pfSense is most compared with Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM, IPFire and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Netgate pfSense vs. OPNsense report.
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