We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate, Netgate pfSense, and Sophos UTM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."SSL-VPN is very useful for us and has been very reliable."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"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."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"Mainly the FortiGate reporting system is very good. It guides us through all the expectations of security. Fortinet provides us all that we need for security. Also, Fortinet FortiGate is a next-generation firewall. It is much more advanced than others."
"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."
"It has a good web cache. I used to use a DHCP server and DNS server. For my company, I use pfSense as a load balancing application."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"Great extensibility of the platform."
"It is a good firewall with good performance."
"One of the advantages of pfSense is that it is very easy to work with. It is a very good open-source solution, and it works really well. pfSense provides a complete package. For some features, it could be the first solution in the world. It is a very good alternative in the market for a firewall solution. You don't need to go to Cisco or other brands with expensive firewalls. pfSense also allows us to offer some support services."
"The built-in open VPN and the VPN Client Export are the solution's most valuable aspects."
"We find all of the features valuable because together they fit the needs of our customers."
"I have no problem with the cost or licensing of this solution. This is a primary reason whay I wanted this solution. It does the same thing cheaper than other name brands."
"The initial setup was easy."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is reporting, it is flexible. I can monitor the end user's devices, even when they are not on my network. It has good drill-down capabilities."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to administer."
"It is a very good product. The threat monitoring process is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos UTM is the endpoint protection feature."
"The firmware needs improvement because there are bugs when a new release comes through. Sometimes, the configuration changes, and it's a bit harder to see where the fail is. The first time that you have the firmware, it tends to have some issues, and it's better to wait a bit to update the equipment."
"The feature which gives us a lot of pain is ASIC architecture."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"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."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"The main aspect of FortiGate that could be improved is load balancing. Our management team does not want to buy another appliance for only load balancing."
"Fortinet Fortigate could benefit by simplifying some of their processes."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson."
"pfSense could improve by having a sandboxing feature that I have seen in SonicWall. However, maybe it is available I am not aware of it."
"It could use a little bit of improvement in the reporting."
"Could be simplified for new users."
"Layer 7 advanced firewall features are not included in the solution."
"I would like to see pfSense integrate WireGuard. Currently, pfSense uses OpenVPN, and there's nothing wrong with it, but WireGuard is a lot leaner and meaner."
"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."
"The solution is not scalable."
"We would like to have unique viewable IDs for rules and in the packet filter logfile, for easier debugging of old log files."
"The initial setup may be difficult for those not familiar with the product."
"The ease of use could be a bit better."
"Sophos UTM sometimes falls short in high-availability environments. They used to launch firmware that didn't work very well in a high-availability environment."
"Updates come out agonizingly slowly, a trickle."
"I am going to flat out say technical support is terrible. Being a Platinum level customer, I am not happy with the support."
"The memory and processing were problematic. The interface could be better."
