We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Zscaler Internet Access 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's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The technical support is great."
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it “readable”"
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"It is much simpler than other solutions such as Fortinet."
"It is a good firewall with good performance."
"I had some outages in the network and we provide services for our company. We sell mobile credits. The terminal gets access to our own server inside the network and if one internet fails, then the other one is still up and we have a back-up link on the devices."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"It is a better firewall than others and it has better features."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"For everyday tasks, we just get alerts. It's anything that's suspicious, including from our Netgate. So, it's part of how we maintain cybersecurity in our school. This is working alongside our endpoint security solution."
"The security is excellent."
"We use ZIA for outbound internet connectivity. The internet traffic of on-prem users will be directed to the ZIA cloud for security checks and web filtering."
"Zscaler covers all the features needed to replace a VPN or proxy solution. They are good. They've been on the market for 15 years now, so they are mature enough."
"The solution is scalable and stable."
"The policies are very intuitive and easy to configure, with very little possibility of messing things up."
"SSL inspection is a valuable feature."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"Tech support is good."
"The support structure needs to be improved because every time we contact them, there is a delay in the response."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"MTBF: Hardware failure is more common when compared to SonicWall or Cisco ASA."
"The pricing could always be better."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time."
"The integration could be improved."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"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."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"The stability could be improved."
"Also, the GUI is helpful, but it's not user-friendly. It's complicated. It should be more intuitive for the average user and have an excellent graphical view. Of course, the user will typically know about network administration, but it still should be easy to understand."
"The interface for administration could be better. They should upgrade the management portal."
"There are a few features that are not compatible with the Azure cloud."
"The reporting functionality could be a bit easier to use. There is a reporting function, but it's quite hard to do any good reporting, from a user-management perspective. For example, if a department manager wants to know how his department is using the web, there is a way to get the data, but it's quite cumbersome to get it and show it well. And that's true for comparing between departments."
"Sometimes, support isn't available."
"When you have appliances, SSL inspection is always a headache due to poor performance and/or lack of ciphers implemented. "
"The main issue with Zscaler Internet Access is proxy IP detection, which sometimes makes sites inaccessible."
"Zscaler Internet Access needs to integrate more ISPs. It is good to have more than three ISPs."
"In every cloud service in the world, you have multiple upstream internet providers to create diversity so that if one of your providers fails, your network just continues. In South Africa, there is only one upstream provider, and that's not right. That that's a problem."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. 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 Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Appgate SDP. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
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