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.
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"The next-gen features, the unified threat management capabilities are something that just about everybody is interested in at this point."
"It has improved our security capabilities."
"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 features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"The most valuable features of the Juniper SRX Series Firewall are the user-friendly UI, and accessing the solution is simple."
"We did not have problems with scaling, as we have less than 500 users in our organization."
"The solution has proven to be quite stable."
"The IPS functionality of Juniper SRX is useful in the telecom industry."
"The solution is relatively easy and inexpensive to maintain."
"The virtualization feature is the most valuable feature. Sometimes customers are requesting a private connection using mobile data when they are connecting to remote sites."
"The most powerful feature in Juniper SRX is definitely NCLS."
"The security features and the model collection are the most valuable."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"It is much simpler than other solutions such as Fortinet."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"When we cluster the two Fortinet FortiGate boxes together we have some issues."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"I've noticed that the management interface could use some updates and upgrades."
"I would like them to add a dashboard because it's difficult to operate."
"Their models for service providers could improve."
"It must be 5G ready. The 5G network is rolling out soon in India, and Juniper must upgrade their firewall slot to the 5G network, or they must manufacture a 5G dongle card for the Juniper firewall. I want Juniper to upgrade their dongle from 4G to 5G. Presently, they have an expansion slot in the SRX 322 series and higher firewalls. In that expansion slot, they can put a 4G mobility SIM card so that whenever our primary link is down, it will automatically connect through this GSM network and form a tunnel."
"This solution needs to update for "Next Generation" needs."
"The solution isn't very granular or detailed."
"It would be ideal if the solution could use cloud services to help update signatures or threat prevention systems."
"While the GUI is pretty good on the Juniper side, there can still be tweaks made to it that will make it even better."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"In an upcoming release, the reporting could be more user-friendly. For example, the reporting in graphs and charts for the host can be cumbersome."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"The GUI. There are TONS of plugins for pfSense, as such, if a user wants to add quite a bit of functionality, the GUI will feel a little congested."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"The solution’s interface must be improved."
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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