We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Sophos XGS 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."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."
"Offers good security and filtering."
"I think that the UTM features are the most value, as it truly protects my infrastructure."
"It can expand easily."
"Fortinet offers the latest versions to cater to the needs of enterprises."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"The scalability of Fortinet FortiGate is good."
"The secure web gateway module and the application control module are valuable. HA operations are very easy."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It is a good firewall with good performance."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"Open source and support are valuable. I have community support."
"The interface is straightforward and easy to use."
"In this solution, the most valuable feature is that it's a security device. Maintaining security is very valuable for us. The other feature that we did not find in other products is that it works well with thin client environments."
"It's user-friendly and quite easy to configure. It's easy to communicate with the Sophos support team."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The policies are the greatest feature. They allow us to configure granular control over our network traffic."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos XGS is its ease of use."
"The most valuable features in Sophos XGS are bandwidth management, content filtering, and WAN link management failover. If one internet activity or one link would fail, automatically it will switch over to another one."
"It's easy to use, and the service is good. If anything goes wrong, their support system is very reliable."
"Sophos XGS' best features are simplicity and its built-in reporting tool."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"There are some problems that support cannot give you a logical reason as to why it happened. For example, I had a case where I was dealing with a WhatsApp application that was giving issues. Technical support gave more than one reason it could be giving issues, but none of them solved the problem. Eventually I solved the problem, but it was far from the solutions that support had given."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"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."
"They need to improve their technical support."
"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."
"It was difficult to configure our web printer through the solution. This process could be easier. Additionally, integration with SD-WAN solution."
"We would like to see ready-made profiles to cover most users' needs."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"In version 18 of Sophos XGS, the log details are not very good. However, in version 19 they are more detailed. The Fortinet FortiGate has better detail overall compared to Sophos XGS. They provide updates to the solution frequently, but they do not fix the problems that exist."
"The customer service response time can be improved."
"Sophos XGS would benefit from further development in the SD-WAN area."
"I would like to see them in third-party evaluation reports like Gartner, Magic Quadrant, or Forrester to make it easier for us to show our customers that Sophos is a leader in the market."
"It would be good if we could do dual customization."
"Sophos XGS needs improvement with the threshold values. Other solutions have the capacity to handle more users."
"The solution could improve inspection processes and troubleshooting for VPNs because this area is very weak."
"There are issues with some designs being able to work on high availability."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Sophos XGS is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 58 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Sophos XGS is rated 8.0. 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 Sophos XGS writes "Easy to use, simple to learn, and offers great reporting". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, WatchGuard Firebox, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Meraki MX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Sophos XGS report.
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