We performed a comparison between OPNsense and Smoothwall Firewall based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"The ease of setting the solution up is a valuable aspect for us."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is security. They are known for efficiency and are on the top of Gartner Quadrant reviews. Fortinet FortiGate has an easy-to-use platform with a good graphical interface. The configuration is simple and the solution provides an overall good layer of security."
"The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy."
"Some of the key features of the solution is that it has good reporting, you can receive many details from the connection, for example, clients and website information."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"The graphic user interface is very good and it is user-friendly which makes the product easy-to-use."
"It's more secure and more reliable."
"The interface and the dashboard are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable feature is the Dual WAN in OPNSense, which offers advanced capabilities."
"We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience."
"URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me."
"It's open source."
"The initial setup is easy. It only takes 15-30 minutes to deploy."
"It was easy to initially deploy it."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"The license renewal process, annual renewal price, and the web application firewall features should be improved."
"The price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"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."
"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."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"In terms of improvement, the performance could be enhanced."
"On the customer-side, because I'm a small business, I need a cheaper or free solution option."
"There are issues with stability and reliability."
"The only thing that I would like to see improved is the Insight or the NetFlow analysis part. It would be good to have the possibility to dig down on the Insight platform. Right now, we can easily do only a few analyses. If this page becomes more powerful, it surely will be a well-adopted platform."
"The reporting part could be better."
"There is room for improvement in the UI. They can improve it by making it so that everything is in one place, so we don't have to jump around to different pages."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while Smoothwall Firewall is ranked 34th in Firewalls with 1 review. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while Smoothwall Firewall is rated 9.0. 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 Smoothwall Firewall writes "Offers good scalability and monitoring features ". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire, whereas Smoothwall Firewall is most compared with Netgate pfSense.
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