We performed a comparison between FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) 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 application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ease of use and there are several operating systems that can include the hardware capacities. In the newer releases, the resources were more useful because they were included in the operating system."
"The scalability is good in Fortinet FortiGate."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"The SD-WAN feature is the most valuable. This feature evolved from link load balancing. It has helped us in terms of our uptime and privatizing applications whenever we experience an outage. The SD-WAN feature has been a plus for us. Two-factor authentication has allowed us to add more users in terms of remote working. We have two-factor authentication for remote workers to authenticate them before they get on the network."
"Valuable features include the Web Application Firewall, and it even has DLP (data leak prevention)."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is its SD-WAN."
"The most valuable features we found are the SD-WAN, FortiGate SD-WAN, and the standard UTM protection, among others."
"The solution’s interface is pretty user-friendly."
"The usability of the solution is its best feature."
"The tool's most valuable feature is IPS. In my experience, I haven't encountered any issues with integration. It easily integrates with the FortiGate solution. However, verifying through documentation and assessing their support is necessary."
"Routing and reporting are two areas where the product has an added advantage compared to any other product."
"The setup is easy."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Good basic firewall features."
"The solution is very easy to use and has a very nice GUI."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"What I like about pfSense is that it works well and runs on an inexpensive appliance."
"This solution has helped our organization by protecting our network from attacks."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"The solution could be more secure and stable."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"One issue that I have had is that sometimes I need to monitor the traffic, so I need to filter it according to the user and which user is using it the most. I experience a bottleneck most of the time, particularly at the peak time when the number of contracts and users are at maximum."
"The scalability could be better."
"As far as wanting more scalability or things in the network diagram, it's going to cost you."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"The solution's stability should be improved because it is extremely unstable."
"The web process often has a memory leak."
"The product's data guard feature should support a USB port when the internet connection is unavailable."
"One of the weaknesses of the solution is something we noticed, especially after comparing the tool with SD-WAN features, since, unfortunately, in a massive scale size environment, the solution is not good. I"
"The inability to change passwords when using FortiGate firewall and relying on a local FortiGate database for account creation can be problematic, particularly in non-Active Directory setups."
"There should be better customization in the IPS."
"When considering the policy of the vendors, they do not offer much of a discount policy, making the licensing model an area that needs improvement."
"The product keeps hanging."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"Netgate pfSense needs to improve the configuration for a VPN."
"We would like to see ready-made profiles to cover most users' needs."
"Improve analysis of logs and dashboards (control panel) with improved alert functionality."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"The security could be improved."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
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FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is ranked 14th in Firewalls with 37 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is rated 8.4, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) writes "Easy to set up but needs better pricing and more helpful support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is most compared with OPNsense, Tailscale, Twingate, Fortinet FortiGate-VM and Google Cloud Platform Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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