We performed a comparison between Hillstone E-Series 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 pricing is great and very reasonable."
"The solution can scale well."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"I'm pretty happy with its reliability. It is also very scalable."
"I am "headache free" that I don't have to categorize all the websites and that security has been pre categorized by the people, and that the services are getting updated. At least one part of my problem is over."
"It's very easy to configure."
"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"Five out of five ROI."
"The most valuable feature of the Hillstone E-Series is its user-friendliness."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy."
"I am impressed with the application filtering feature."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"This solution has two main features that we find very valuable; a threat-intelligence option, and a web/application filtering option. The technical support team are very good and very quick."
"The installation is easy, we have not had any complaints from our customers."
"Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients a secure connectivity."
"The scalability is very good, where you can do an HA configuration and then bring in another box, if necessary."
"I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"pfSense is a nice product, and I find that there's a lot of information out there. There are some good tutorials on YouTube and other websites with helpful information."
"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 most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal."
"It would be good if they had fewer updates."
"We had some issues in the beginning while setting it up, but after doing the firmware update, it is working fine."
"It could use better throughput on some of the smaller boxes for the branch offices."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"It can be a little bit more user-friendly in terms of policy definition and implementation. It seems a little bit complicated, and it could be simplified."
"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 price of FortiGate should be reduced because there are some other leading products that are cheaper."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."
"Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"The current usage reporting is very basic."
"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."
"The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"Having frequent live webinars on a monthly basis would really help."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"The integration should be improved."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
Hillstone E-Series is ranked 33rd in Firewalls with 9 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Hillstone E-Series is rated 9.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Hillstone E-Series writes "A user-friendly and marketable solution with a virtual switching capability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Hillstone E-Series is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG, OpenVPN Access Server, Sangfor SSL VPN and Meraki MX, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Hillstone E-Series vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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