We performed a comparison between FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) and Netgate pfSense 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."The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The IPsec tunnels are very easily created, and quite interoperable with devices from other vendors."
"The security features that they have are quite good. On top of that, their licensing model is quite nice where they don't charge you anything for the SD-WAN functionality for the firewall."
"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."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"The setup is easy."
"The solution’s interface is pretty user-friendly."
"It is a stable solution compared to other vendors."
"The solution's application control is very powerful."
"User identification and application identification are valuable features."
"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall can be described as the most complete solution."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to operate."
"Overall, I am satisfied with the product."
"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 gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"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."
"It works. I put pfSense in, and it works. I can't think of any trouble I ever had with it. It runs on heat-sensitive appliances. They don't need a fan, so they don't overheat. It is affordable, fast, and very high-speed. It is built on BSD Unix, and it pretty much runs on any Intel processor."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"At our peak time, we have reached more than 5,000 concurrent connections."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"It should be more stable. There should be full integration within Fortinet products themselves as well as with other third-party products. Especially when you're not dealing with SIEM and the correlation of the security box, we want Fortinet to be able to share that information with as many other products as it can."
"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."
"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'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"The graphical user interface of Fortinet's FortiGate product does not function well with text-based interfaces."
"I would like to have SD-WAN as a part of the Next Generation Firewall. It would enhance high availability."
"Its load balancing feature could be easy to configure."
"When considering the policy of the vendors, they do not offer much of a discount policy, making the licensing model an area that needs improvement."
"There should be better customization in the IPS."
"The product has to be upgraded every few weeks."
"The inability to change passwords when using FortiGate firewall and relying on a local FortiGate database for account creation can be problematic, particularly in non-Active Directory setups."
"The pricing of the solution is expensive, so it could be cheaper."
"The solution needs to improve its support."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"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."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"There could be a way to remote to it through a mobile app. You can always browse through your browser on your mobile phone or tablet, but it would be good to have a dedicated app. I understand that iOS and Android developers are expensive, but there should be a mobile app."
"The usage reports can be better."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
"Could be simplified for new users."
More FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Pricing and Cost Advice →
FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is ranked 14th in Firewalls with 37 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is rated 8.4, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) writes "Easy to set up but needs better pricing and more helpful support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is most compared with OPNsense, Tailscale, Twingate, Fortinet FortiGate-VM and Google Cloud Platform Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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