We performed a comparison between McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] and Netgate pfSense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"There are great templates, so you don't have to customize them if you don't want to. You do have the option to custom create some folders and some reports, however, with what is there, you don't really need to go through extra effort, as they already give you a lot of predefined views of reports and so forth."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"The ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."
"The product is very stable, easy to troubleshoot, and configure, so it has reduced the time it takes for support."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"It does give certain protection for everything that is well configured on our McAfee server. We have good protection with it. If we could find a feature and make it work, it would work perfectly, there would be no bugs, and it would be really good."
"The scalability is very good, where you can do an HA configuration and then bring in another box, if necessary."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"This solution has increased the level of security, given us more control, provided a deep insight into network traffic, and is a great VPN solution."
"We generally use it because it's cheap. When we need something more robust we use Barracuda and Sony Wireless Routers. For certain clients, we use pfSense because it's compatible with the VoIP platform."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"The documentation is very good."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"Scalability is one of the disadvantages. When it comes to scalability, you have to actually change the box. If you want to upgrade it, you need to actually change the existing box and probably you take the system off to other sites."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"The visibility of the network can be better. The GUI can be improved for better visibility of the network flow. Other solutions have better GUI in terms of network visibility."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"While FortiGate is cheaper than most other solutions, we're seeing increased license renewal costs. Most of our clients are asking for more significant discounts because the price is going up."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"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."
"Customer support and AV are both lacking and are really hard to come to you when the product is installed. Those are the two major points that they need to work on."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"The usage reports can be better."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
"If a user doesn't have a large amount of experience in Linux systems, they will have problems using this solution. Users need to be highly skilled in troubleshooting competency. Users who do not have such skills will find the product difficult to use."
"The integration of pfSense with EPS and EDS could be better. Also, it should be easier to get reports on how many users are connecting simultaneously and how sections connect in real-time."
"The security could be improved."
"The solution could use better reporting. They need to offer more of it in general. Right now, the graphics aren't the best. If you need to provide a report to a manager, for example, it doesn't look great. They need to make it easier to understand and give users the ability to customize them."
"Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system."
Earn 20 points
McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Firewalls while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] is rated 7.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] writes "For managing multiple MFE firewalls it is incredibly handy but it could be easier for customers to migrate from one version to another. ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". McAfee Firewall Enterprise MFE [EOL] is most compared with , whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall.
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