We performed a comparison between Juniper SRX Series Firewall and OPNsense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, ease of use, and exceptional support. It boasts advantageous features such as site-to-site VPN functionality and a robust command line. OPNsense is appreciated for its scalability and remarkable features such as guest access capabilities and dashboards. Additionally, the availability of a free version is highly valued. OPNsense also offers features such as IDS and IPS, effortless configuration, and compatibility with pfSense.
Juniper SRX Series Firewall would benefit from enhancements in capacity limitations, reporting and alerts, user interface, device reliability, documentation, and feature enhancements. OPNsense needs improvements in the interface, bandwidth management, high availability, logging, integration, updates, IPS solution, hardware updates, installation, reporting, SSL inspection, and learning curve.
Service and Support: The customer service for Juniper SRX Series Firewall is highly regarded for its knowledgeable and supportive technical assistance. However, there have been occasional delays in response times. OPNsense's customer service has garnered both positive and negative feedback, with some users describing it as exceptional while others believe there is room for improvement.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Juniper SRX Series Firewall can be challenging and time-consuming, depending on the environment and integration needs. OPNsense provides a simple and quick setup that can be accomplished within a few hours, even by individuals without IT expertise.
Pricing: Juniper SRX Series Firewall has a relatively simple setup process, although configuring security settings may require additional time. OPNsense is a cost-effective open-source solution that does not necessitate licensing fees. However, there are associated expenses related to equipment, installation, resources, personnel, and training.
ROI: Juniper SRX Series Firewall provides reliability, consistent operation, and advanced security capabilities, leading to a favorable return on investment. OPNsense delivers a return on investment within a short timeframe of under three months and eliminates the need for ongoing payments.
Comparison Results: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is the preferred product in comparison to OPNsense. It offers a simple and fast setup process, a user-friendly interface, great support, and a wide range of useful features. Users appreciate its stability, scalability, and competitive pricing.
"Its administrative panel is very intuitive and simple. It is simpler than the other solutions that we had. As an administrator, we are always looking for the easiest solution to manage network policies. We are able to filter everything on our network and also use the VPN feature, which is important these days when people are working remotely during COVID."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"The web filtering feature and the intrusion protection system are the most valuable. It is a resilient appliance. I never had an issue with it in terms of any security breaches."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"The solution has very good threat and content filtering switches."
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"It's a user-friendly firewall. Most of the tasks are very simple. It's simple to configure and troubleshoot this firewall."
"The deployment is quite easy and fast."
"It's fine, and it's good. It's very stable."
"It integrates well with Fortinet and Palo Alto."
"We mostly use the Layer 4 firewall functions: Access rules, NAT, and site-to-site IPsec VPN."
"The firewall features and the routing capability are the most valuable."
"The IPS functionality of Juniper SRX is useful in the telecom industry."
"One of Juniper SRX's most valuable features is the site-to-site VPN."
"I like that Juniper SRX is easy to use, scalable, and stable with good performance."
"I have found the solution has some great features overall, such as guest access capabilities, dashboards, and ease of use. There is plenty of documentation and support and it has the plugins that I needed."
"It has an open license. It works very well, and there is an update every month."
"The IDS and IPS features are valuable. From the usability perspective, there is a lot of good documentation. As IT professionals, we found it very easy to configure the firewall. It was easy to configure and use."
"The DNS-level filtering is impressive for thwarting time scanners."
"I find the solution to be user-friendly. It has a lot of reports and easy settings."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control."
"The initial implementation process is simple."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"Maybe they could make some features more accessible, such as a way to translate directions between two networks that share the same subnets."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"The performance could be a bit better. Right now, I find it to be lacking. Having good performance is very important for our work."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"The range of devices should be expanded to include those suitable for a small implementation. Juniper does not have any lower-priced SRX models, useful perhaps for a single ATM or a single bank branch."
"The GUI needs to be easier to handle."
"The web interface on Juniper SRX is just a short conversion from Junos OS CLI; this is not very suitable for users with little expertise/"
"It does have its nuances in terms of deployment. There are always areas to make something easier or more intuitive or make the system auto-negotiate more with existing hardware."
"The product only has basic features."
"As a networking person, I don't really have any major issues with this device. Based on my experience of using it in a cluster, it could be more stable. I had an incident when one of the SRXs in a cluster couldn't learn ARP. It is a good solution, but firewalls don't seem to be an area of development for Juniper. They are focusing on data centers, routers, and switches, not firewalls."
"It did not improve our safety because the IDS does not detect some attacks, but our anti-virus software did."
"Both the web management and the graphical user interface are inadequate and should be improved."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"The reporting part could be better."
"An area for improvement in OPNsense is the hardware, which needs to be updated more frequently. DNS blocking is another good feature I want to be added to the solution. pfSense has a peer-blocking feature that I also want to see in OPNsense."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"The user interface could be improved, and the DNS section should be more intuitive."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"I would like better documentation concerning the provided packages and their integration."
Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 86 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Juniper SRX Series Firewall is rated 7.8, while OPNsense is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Juniper SRX Series Firewall writes "Highly scalable, user-friendly UI, and easy to maintain". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Sophos UTM, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire. See our Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs. OPNsense report.
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