We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate, and Netgate pfSense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls.
"The most valuable feature must be AnyConnect. We have quite a few customers who use it. It is easy to use and the stablest thing that we have. We have experienced some issues on all our VPN clients, but AnyConnect has been the stablest one."
"This solution helped us to identify the key areas where we need to focus to block traffic that is malicious to our organization."
"Ease of configuration: It has gotten a lot easier to configure compared to the original Cisco Pix."
"Its ability to work with the traffic."
"We feel that we can trust the security, and our assets and business are well protected. We need to have trust in it, but we also see that it works. We have a security company that has tested that it works."
"It is a very stable product. I've not had any issues with it. It is a super product, and I won't need to change it anytime soon."
"Cisco Secure Firewall improved our organization. We have it in every one of our French offices."
"Simple to deploy, stable."
"The solution is very user friendly. The user interface in particular is quite nice."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"The signature database and zero-day detection are Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"We can run it on any hardware."
"I handle the scanning for the finance department. I recently encountered an issue with the PCL bills, our company bills. I resolved the matter, cleared the bill, and received calls regarding it using pfsense.The user interface is extremely user-friendly, which is why we use it across various plant sites. Our IT representatives at the plants find it easy to use and manage because of its straightforward interface."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"One of the advantages of pfSense is that it is very easy to work with. It is a very good open-source solution, and it works really well. pfSense provides a complete package. For some features, it could be the first solution in the world. It is a very good alternative in the market for a firewall solution. You don't need to go to Cisco or other brands with expensive firewalls. pfSense also allows us to offer some support services."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"The redundancy and scalability ARE very nice."
"We don't have any serious problems. The firewall models that we have are quite legacy, and they have slower performance. We are currently investigating the possibility of migrating to next-generation firewalls."
"You shouldn't have to use the ASDM to help manage the client."
"They should allow customers to talk to them directly instead of having to go through the reseller."
"If you need to reschedule a call with the support team when you face a new issue with the product, then it may get a bit of a problem to get a hold of someone from the support team of Cisco."
"My team tells me that other solutions such as Fortinet and Palo Alto are easier to implement."
"It is slowly not supported and other vendors are a few years ahead of Cisco in development."
"In general, they can make it easier to manage the solutions. They can make it easier in terms of administration and provide a single tool for different firewalling solutions. They have different tools to manage different firewalls, such as Firepower or ASA. Sometimes, both are on the same thing. You have ASA with Firepower modules, so you manage some of the things via HTML, and then you manage some of the things via another management tool. It's not seamless."
"Bandwidth allocation needs improvement."
"Scalability is one of the disadvantages. When it comes to scalability, you have to actually change the box. If you want to upgrade it, you need to actually change the existing box and probably you take the system off to other sites."
"It should provide better visibility over the network and more information in the form of reports for the end users. Its installation should also be easier."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"I would prefer to have more detailed logs within the FortiGate products themselves rather than relying on a separate tool."
"Vulnerability scanning could be improved."
"If they had better integration with security products, such as Cisco ISE or Rapid Threat Containment, then it would be an improvement."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"Technical support for this solution can be improved."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
"The product must provide integration with other solutions."
"Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting."
"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."
"It could use a little bit of improvement in the reporting."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"Also, the GUI is helpful, but it's not user-friendly. It's complicated. It should be more intuitive for the average user and have an excellent graphical view. Of course, the user will typically know about network administration, but it still should be easy to understand."
"The Netgate forums and community don’t provide extensive discussions and topics related to every pfSense service."
