We performed a comparison between Cisco IOS Security and Netgate pfSense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"The solution is extremely reliable."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"The most valuable feature is the bundled subscription, which is IPS, TV and web filtering."
"The solution is very, very easy to use."
"Initial setup is easy to configure."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The product's stability is good."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is very user-friendly and easy to deal with."
"It covers everything we need it to without looking to secondary solutions."
"What I have used the most and received the most benefit from is the IPsec technology."
"The product is easy to use."
"The product has valuable features for business intelligence."
"Cisco IOS Security has many good features, but compared to other solutions, it has a more user-friendly interface with steps to apply and manage rules. Another good part of the solution is that it's more straightforward."
"The most valuable features are the VPN and the capture photo."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The features I have found best are ease of use, GUI, and performance."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"It claims it does DLP, but the degree and level of controls are very basic."
"An area for improvement in Cisco IOS Security is the performance because it's not as stable sometimes. There's also some latency in the solution, which could be improved. Cisco IOS Security integrates with other solutions, but you'll encounter many errors after integration, so this is another area for improvement. I'd like to see enhanced performance and a simplified setup in the next version of Cisco IOS Security."
"I think setup could be one area for improvement, because sometimes we don't have people inside so we have to move to the place."
"If they could increase the performance a little better because the device sometimes gets slow."
"I would like to see much more embedded security that works and that isn't a bolt-on."
"We faced significant challenges related to licensing issues, particularly when licenses expire."
"Sometimes I find it difficult to manage. Some configurations are difficult for new engineers, for example."
"While Cisco IOS Security is stable and scalable, I would like to see it improved to be even better."
"We have a very bad experience on the support. They take too much time requesting logs, and they are not coming directly online to resolve the issues."
"We have not had any problems with it, and we also do not have a need for any new features. If anything, its reporting can be better. Sophos has better reporting than pfSense. Sophos has more detailed information. pfSense is not as detailed. It is summarized."
"We would like to see ready-made profiles to cover most users' needs."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"I have been using WireGuard VPN because it is a lot faster and more secure than an open VPN. However, in the latest version of pfSense, they have removed this feature, which is one of the main features that I need. They should include this feature."
"Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting."
"There are several levels of firewall configuration such as beginner, advanced, and expert configurations. At each level, it becomes more complex and more tricky to set up the firewall. For example, if you want to install the firewall on your computer system, it would be a lot easier if it just tells you that this is the internet NIC and this is the Wi-Fi NIC."
"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."
Cisco IOS Security is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 47 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Cisco IOS Security is rated 8.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco IOS Security writes "User-friendly and excels in documentation, making it easier to resolve issues". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Cisco IOS Security is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Meraki MX, Fortinet FortiOS, OPNsense and Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Cisco IOS Security vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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