We performed a comparison between Juniper SRX Series Firewall and OPNsense 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 highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, ease of use, and exceptional support. It boasts advantageous features such as site-to-site VPN functionality and a robust command line. OPNsense is appreciated for its scalability and remarkable features such as guest access capabilities and dashboards. Additionally, the availability of a free version is highly valued. OPNsense also offers features such as IDS and IPS, effortless configuration, and compatibility with pfSense.
Juniper SRX Series Firewall would benefit from enhancements in capacity limitations, reporting and alerts, user interface, device reliability, documentation, and feature enhancements. OPNsense needs improvements in the interface, bandwidth management, high availability, logging, integration, updates, IPS solution, hardware updates, installation, reporting, SSL inspection, and learning curve.
Service and Support: The customer service for Juniper SRX Series Firewall is highly regarded for its knowledgeable and supportive technical assistance. However, there have been occasional delays in response times. OPNsense's customer service has garnered both positive and negative feedback, with some users describing it as exceptional while others believe there is room for improvement.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Juniper SRX Series Firewall can be challenging and time-consuming, depending on the environment and integration needs. OPNsense provides a simple and quick setup that can be accomplished within a few hours, even by individuals without IT expertise.
Pricing: Juniper SRX Series Firewall has a relatively simple setup process, although configuring security settings may require additional time. OPNsense is a cost-effective open-source solution that does not necessitate licensing fees. However, there are associated expenses related to equipment, installation, resources, personnel, and training.
ROI: Juniper SRX Series Firewall provides reliability, consistent operation, and advanced security capabilities, leading to a favorable return on investment. OPNsense delivers a return on investment within a short timeframe of under three months and eliminates the need for ongoing payments.
Comparison Results: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is the preferred product in comparison to OPNsense. It offers a simple and fast setup process, a user-friendly interface, great support, and a wide range of useful features. Users appreciate its stability, scalability, and competitive pricing.
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"UTM/NGFW features and FortiCloud for logs and backups are awesome."
"The notable features that I have found most valuable are that it includes the antivirus, and also IPS, and even SD-WAN."
"The threat prevention is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"It enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"The GUI is good."
"Juniper SRX is a very powerful firewall and sometimes can be used as a router."
"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."
"When compared to Palo Alto, Juniper is a better choice when it comes to the enterprise network and connectivity."
"CLI: Junos CLI is very easy to use, and it is also very easy to find back items in the configuration and to change them."
"Technical support is good. They quickly respond, and they even have local help here. They can actually give you an answer very quickly."
"The GUI is simple to use."
"Great as an inter-segmentation firewall or border or arch-firewall."
"The solution's stability is very good."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"The most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility."
"We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience."
"The graphic user interface is very good and it is user-friendly which makes the product easy-to-use."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"The support is the main thing that needs to be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve if it had a cloud-managed solution."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"I would like to see improvements with the antivirus and IPS as they are not working properly all the time."
"It does not have key authentication for admin access."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"In terms of other features, I'd like to see a web filter, 10 point control, application control and a DNA filter in the next release."
"As a networking person, I don't really have any major issues with this device. Based on my experience of using it in a cluster, it could be more stable. I had an incident when one of the SRXs in a cluster couldn't learn ARP. It is a good solution, but firewalls don't seem to be an area of development for Juniper. They are focusing on data centers, routers, and switches, not firewalls."
"Juniper needs to focus more on their perimeter firewalls."
"The configuration is difficult and it should be easier."
"The workplace management console needs improvement. It should be a little bit more developed. Also, the interface needs a bit more improvement."
"Juniper SRX's UI is very bad."
"JTAC (Juniper Networks Technical Assistance Center) is just okay for technical assistance. However, if you are used to Cisco TAC responsiveness, you will need to adjust your expectations with Juniper Networks TAC."
"I would like to have a better web UI for administration. Juniper could simplify the web UI and make it more compatible with mobile devices."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"The reporting part could be better."
"On the customer-side, because I'm a small business, I need a cheaper or free solution option."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"The user interface could be improved, and the DNS section should be more intuitive."
"An area for improvement in OPNsense is the hardware, which needs to be updated more frequently. DNS blocking is another good feature I want to be added to the solution. pfSense has a peer-blocking feature that I also want to see in OPNsense."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"In terms of improvement, the performance could be enhanced."
Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 86 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Juniper SRX Series Firewall is rated 7.8, while OPNsense is rated 8.4. 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 OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Azure Firewall, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire. See our Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs. OPNsense report.
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