We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: pfSense has an edge in this comparison as it is a free, open-source solution while Palo Alto Networks is considered expensive by its users.
"Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"The reporting and monitoring are very good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"FortiGate is flexible and easy to use."
"The base firewall features are quite valuable to us."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"The interface is straightforward and easy to use."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"The solution is very easy to use and has a very nice GUI."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"The DNS sync code in your filtering is the most valuable feature of the Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls."
"Good functionality and features."
"The most important feature is the firewall. We can make rules to filter the application layer of traffic. It's a very helpful feature."
"They have a good system operator in the firewalls and it provides many tools that they can use to protect their networks."
"The user experience is good and the configuration is very easy."
"It is pretty important to have embedded machine learning in the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention, because all these different attacks and threats are constantly evolving. So, you want to have something beyond just hard pass rules. You want it to learn as it is going along. Its machine learning seems pretty good. It seems like it is catching quite a few things."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls saves us time."
"Ability to log each and every application."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"They need to improve their technical support."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"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."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"The integration should be improved."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"The product must provide integration with other solutions."
"More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"A malware blocker should be included. I do not know if it is included yet. However, until now, we have not experienced a large malware invasion."
"The VPN feature of the solution could improve by adding better functionality and providing easier configure ability."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"PA-220 Next-Generation Firewall would be perfect if it has spam filtering."
"I don't deal with it from a day-to-day perspective, but I can say that the evidence that I typically need is there, but sometimes, it's a task to actually get it and pull it out. They can make it easier to gather that evidence."
"Everything has been great. More machine learning would be something great to see, but I don't know if it's a priority for Palo Alto."
"Its stability can be better. Their technical response from the support side can also be better."
"The solution doesn't support routing in virtual firewall creation, and we want that to be enabled."
"This is a difficult product to manage, so the administrator needs to have a good knowledge of it, otherwise, they will not be able to handle it properly."
"The machine learning in Palo Alto NG Firewalls for securing networks against threats that are able to evolve and morph rapidly is good, in general. But there have been some cases where we get false positives and Palo Alto has denied traffic when there have been new updates and signature releases. Valid traffic gets blocked. We have had some bad experiences with this. If there were an ability, before it denies traffic, to get some kind of notification that some traffic is going to be blocked, that would be good."
"The solution could be simplified."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 163 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Meraki MX, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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