We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Zscaler Cloud Firewall 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 enables our organization to become more productive. Also, it protects our NEtWare from viruses and malware."
"The performance is good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"We use the FortiGate Sandbox to detect zero-day vulnerabilities, such as anomalies or malware, that are unknown and have not yet been discovered."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"It is a good firewall with good performance."
"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."
"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."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"We generally use it because it's cheap. When we need something more robust we use Barracuda and Sony Wireless Routers. For certain clients, we use pfSense because it's compatible with the VoIP platform."
"It is effective. We have not had any problems."
"It is a stable solution."
"Once you have Zscaler running you have access to configure it however you want."
"Zscaler Cloud Firewall understands the applications in the current generation and adapts to the present generation cloud applications."
"Includes advanced tech protection."
"Most of the features that Zscaler has to offer, we will deploy."
"The product’s firewall and VPN package are fantastic compared to any other solution."
"The scalability is okay. We have around 2200 people using this solution."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"If they could extend their fabric towards other vendor environments for integration, that would be great."
"I would like to see improvements with the antivirus and IPS as they are not working properly all the time."
"A lack of integration between our data centers."
"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."
"The platform's interface could improve."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve the user interface. There should be more functionality and options through the GUI."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"We have not had any problems with it, and we also do not have a need for any new features. If anything, its reporting can be better. Sophos has better reporting than pfSense. Sophos has more detailed information. pfSense is not as detailed. It is summarized."
"There is more demand for UTMs than a simple firewall. pfSense should support real-time features for handling the latest viruses and threats. It should support real-time checks and real-time status of threats. Some other vendors, such as Fortinet, already offer this type of capability. Such capability will be good for bringing pfSense at the same level as other solutions."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"The stability could be improved."
"Instead of the standard license, they should certainly provide customers with the visibility to access and view the logs."
"They do not provide a few components that are fundamental to differentiate the products"
"We are having some issues with internet access being denied when organizational ID-based policies change. For example, a lower level employee ends up getting the same level of access as that of a higher level employee."
"Zscaler Cloud Firewall should have a better understanding of all dynamic cloud applications."
"The product could improve its integration with some legacy systems."
"Pricing is a challenge."
"Because it's on cloud, it doesn't allow application of extra settings."
"The issue right now is probably that Zscaler is not providing web browser isolation. Another solution, Menlo, offers this. For one customer, we had to send traffic to Menlo to do the isolation for us. It was requested by the customer so that they could integrate any iframe. Zscaler needs to add this type of feature in their next release."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Zscaler Cloud Firewall is ranked 23rd in Firewalls with 15 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Zscaler Cloud Firewall is rated 8.4. 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 Cloud Firewall writes "A highly stable and comprehensive cloud security and access solution". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Zscaler Cloud Firewall is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, OPNsense and Juniper vSRX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall report.
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