We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall vs. pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure Firewall and pfSense come out about equal in this comparison. Cisco ASA Firewall has a slight edge when it comes to service and support, but pfSense has an edge when it comes to pricing.
"It is quite easy to handle."
"I am "headache free" that I don't have to categorize all the websites and that security has been pre categorized by the people, and that the services are getting updated. At least one part of my problem is over."
"The interface is very user-friendly and I like it very much."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"The solution is stable."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"One of the valuable features is a standardized OS."
"We are using the FortiGate 100D series. VPN, firewall, anti-malware, OTM, and intrusion prevention are useful features."
"The stability is very good; there's no vagueness. Either it works or it doesn't, and it's also very easy to find out why."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most valuable features for my client are the ASDM and monitoring."
"The features that are most valuable within the firewall are the IPS as well as the Unified Communications. We also really like the dynamic grouping."
"An eight because it's a good security solution. It's more mature than its competitors."
"Its security and filtering are most valuable. Every layer of data that comes into the organization goes through it. After setting up the criteria, it automatically filters the traffic. We don't have to check it often."
"Firepower NGFW has improved my organization in several ways. Before, we were trying to stamp out security threats and issues, it was a one-off type of way to attack it. I spent a lot of manpower trying to track down the individual issues or flare-ups that we would see. With Cisco's Firepower Management, we're able to have that push up to basically one monitor and one UI and be able to track that and stop threats immediately. It also gives us a little more granularity on what those threats might be."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Firewall is its ease of configuration and that it's scalable for firewalls and VPNs."
"It is very easy to use. The interface is quite understandable. There is a good community, and I can take over at any time I want. If there is anything wrong with it, I could just reinstall the whole thing and start all over again, and I'll be up again in less than a few minutes"
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth."
"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."
"Stability has been excellent. We have experienced no issues; it never fails."
"I had some outages in the network and we provide services for our company. We sell mobile credits. The terminal gets access to our own server inside the network and if one internet fails, then the other one is still up and we have a back-up link on the devices."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"The built-in open VPN and the VPN Client Export are the solution's most valuable aspects."
"In the future, I would like to see improvements made to cloud-based management."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The support system could be improved."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"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."
"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"The UI could be improved."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"The only drawback of the user interface is when it comes to policies. When you open it and click on the policies, you have to move manually left and right if you want to see the whole field within the cell. Checkpoint has a very detailed user interface."
"More intuitive support for SIP services are needed. This took a long time to configure properly for the user."
"Integration aspects and traffic shaping need improvement."
"The only con that I have really seen with it is the reporting structure. FirePOWER is good. It has been a great help because, before that, it was not good at all."
"Bandwidth allocation needs improvement."
"This is an older product and has reached end-of-life."
"In terms of next-generation capabilities, Cisco is a little behind, and it is way behind the market leaders."
"In the next release, I would like to see the VPN and UTM features included."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"The VPN feature of the solution could improve by adding better functionality and providing easier configure ability."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"Network monitoring and device inventory could use some improvements. I'm using SpiceWorks for this because it never really worked in pfSense."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"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."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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