We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Palo Alto Networks WildFire based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."FortiGate firewalls are easy to manage through a user-friendly web interface. They also have advanced features like DDoS and DLP. However, I wouldn't recommend enabling all of these features on one device because it can cause performance issues."
"Good performance, stability, and virtual domain ability."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"A strong point of FortiGate is the graphical interface is complete and easy to use."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"Customers are more inclined towards FortiGate because of application control, web filtering, and anti-spam features. The support from the FortiGate team is good, and price-wise, it is affordable."
"It is a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"Open source and support are valuable. I have community support."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"The product’s documentation is good."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"It has a user-friendly interface."
"The scalability is acceptable."
"Remote access is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the improved security that it offers."
"The graphic user interface of Palo Alto is good and it's easy to configure."
"It is the best device in comparison to other network products in the marketplace."
"The reporting feature helps our performance."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten since we never faced any issues."
"Sometimes you do need to know some CLI commands, so it's a bit harder for technicians or new people that don't know it."
"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."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having a frequent ask questions(FAQ) area for people to receive quick answers to popular questions. Additionally, it would be beneficial to have an SMS notification feature. For example, if you cannot access your email you could receive an SMS message."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"The web-cache feature which was previously on the FortiGate device, but was deleted with the recent upgrade should be returned. It was a very valuable feature for us."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations. In the past revision of it, there was a bug. Because of the bug, we had to downgrade the version. It happened only with the last revision."
"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."
"It should integrate with LDAP, Active Directory, etc, to improve the way in which the traces and connections of each IP, or user connected through the firewall, are shown."
"I've never tried it in large environments. All my clients are small businesses with a handful of employees, so I am not sure how it works in large environments. I keep up with recent versions, and there's nothing I'm waiting for, and nothing breaks when I get a new version."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"The main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"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."
"The size of Palo Alto's cloud is big but it could be easier to use from a product management perspective."
"The only problem with this solution is the cost. It's expensive."
"The solution can improve its traffic management."
"The deployment model could be better."
"The price of WildFire should be reduced in order to make it more affordable for our customers."
"As a firewall and 360 degrees of security, there needs to be more maturity."
"Any enhancements should likely be focused on the firewall appliance to further strengthen overall security capabilities, such as refining app and user identity features."
"In the future, I would like to see more automation in the reporting."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 58 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks WildFire writes "Good technical support and provides automatic analysis that saves us time in filtering email". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Fortinet FortiSandbox and Microsoft Defender for Office 365.
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