We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series 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 Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"Layer-3 firewall and routing are the most valuable features."
"Web filtering and two-factor authentication are great features."
"The solution is very easy to understand. It's not overly complex."
"We have found it to be very reliable and that's why our teams and various users in our company use it as our main firewall every day."
"Fortinet FortiGate is stable. It's used across all the countries, this is the way most multinationals run their system."
"The solution has very good threat and content filtering switches."
"Its scalability is a strong point."
"The "OpenVPN Client Export" package is really helpful in exporting the VPN client software on most popular devices: iOS/Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and a handful of SIP handsets."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"An incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"A very stable product that lasts over time, easy to understand, and administer."
"pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home."
"It is reliable and the support is very good."
"The most valuable features are web control and IPS/IDS."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is easy to maintain...From a security point of view, I find Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to be a better product compared to the other solutions in the market."
"It provides complete security posture from end-to-end. This has given us better visibility into what our security aspects are."
"In Palo Alto the most important feature is the App-ID."
"The VM-Series scalability is fast and easy to implement, improving our security posture as our Azure network grows."
"Centralized management is valuable because it allows us to configure settings in one location and apply them across all three locations."
"I have not actually called their support line, because we have a direct contact to a senior engineer in the company for any issues that we handle with them. I will say they are very responsive, and they do give you the information you need when you need it."
"They should offer special pricing to premium partners and customers."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The room for improvement is about the global delivery time period. Usually I need to wait for almost one month to deliver it overseas. So if you can shorten the deliver time it'd be great."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more capabilities for troubleshooting VPN connections. For example, I do get some feedback about the current status, but I could use some history and logging of important events. The information is logged in our Syslog server, but I could use that information from the device. If they could provide a GUI to have some more insight on what's going with my VPN would be useful."
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"We would like to see better pricing."
"There are several levels of firewall configuration such as beginner, advanced, and expert configurations. At each level, it becomes more complex and more tricky to set up the firewall. For example, if you want to install the firewall on your computer system, it would be a lot easier if it just tells you that this is the internet NIC and this is the Wi-Fi NIC."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
"The main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"The integration of pfSense with EPS and EDS could be better. Also, it should be easier to get reports on how many users are connecting simultaneously and how sections connect in real-time."
"If a user doesn't have a large amount of experience in Linux systems, they will have problems using this solution. Users need to be highly skilled in troubleshooting competency. Users who do not have such skills will find the product difficult to use."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"There is no proper support channel to follow up on cases."
"It is not very easy to scale up the solution."
"They made only a halfhearted attempt to put in DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
"The web interface is very slow, and it needs to be faster."
"The utilization monitoring and GUI have room for improvement."
"The solution must improve Zero Trust integration and use cases."
"The solution's licensing could be improved, and training should be included before installation."
"There are some delays that I have observed when my company communicates with Palo Alto's support engineers."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 53 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. 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 Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper vSRX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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