We performed a comparison between Juniper SRX Series Firewall and pfSense 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 appreciated for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and robust assistance. It provides functionalities like site-to-site VPN, firewall security, and routing capabilities. pfSense is highly regarded for its capacity to obstruct IP addresses, user-friendly dashboards, and open-source characteristics. It offers features such as secure VPN connections, scanning, filtering, and network security capabilities.
Juniper SRX Series Firewall could use enhancements in capacity limitations, reporting and alerts, user interface, device reliability, documentation, and feature enhancements. pfSense would benefit from improvements in instructional videos, web interface clarity, stability, mobile application, centralized management, GUI for SMBs, sandboxing, security, hardware support, user-friendliness, log analysis, VPN capacity, documentation, configuration processes, and SD-WAN integration.
Service and Support: Customers have generally praised Juniper SRX Series Firewall's customer service for being helpful and knowledgeable, despite occasional slower response times. pfSense's customer service varies among users, with some having positive experiences with technical support and others relying on clear documentation and community resources.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Juniper SRX Series Firewall can be done within a day for smaller branch offices, whereas pfSense be set up in just 15 minutes. Juniper may demand familiarity with CLI, while pfSense is commonly referred to as being easy to use.
Pricing: Juniper has extra charges for advanced security features and APS, whereas pfSense provides updates without any additional fees. The specific licensing costs for pfSense are not clearly stated.
ROI: Juniper SRX Series Firewall provides advanced security features and reliable performance, leading to a favorable return on investment. pfSense stands out for its affordability, minimal management expenses, and substantial hardware cost savings. Users also emphasize its superior ROI compared to pricier alternatives such as FortiGate.
Comparison Results: Juniper SRX Series Firewall is the preferred product over pfSense. Users appreciate its simplicity, intuitive interface, reliability, scalability, and exceptional customer support. It offers convenient configuration, site-to-site VPN capabilities, and effective firewall protection. Additionally, Juniper SRX Series Firewall is considered a more cost-effective and secure solution.
"The solution is stable."
"Anti-Spam web content filterinG."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"LinkGreat firewall capabilities"
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"The VPN is the most valuable feature."
"The response is very quick and they can visually resolve our problems in a short period."
"It is quite easy to handle."
"The rollback option and Commit Confirmed are great features. They give us the security to change configurations without downtime."
"On a scale from one to ten, one being the worst and ten being the best I'd give Juniper SRX an overall rating of eight because of its' competitive price."
"The technical support is quite good."
"You can scale the solution."
"I have used technical support quite a bit, and they are really good."
"We think they have a good interface, the operating system is good, it's robust. It has plenty of great features, and the relation between the cost and benefits works for our business."
"The scalability is fine."
"One of Juniper SRX's most valuable features is the site-to-site VPN."
"It is very easy to use. The interface is quite understandable. There is a good community, and I can take over at any time I want. If there is anything wrong with it, I could just reinstall the whole thing and start all over again, and I'll be up again in less than a few minutes"
"The solution is very robust."
"It is a stable solution."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"Sophos Intercept X is scalable. Currently, we have almost 30 people using it in our company."
"What I found most valuable is the cost of the platform, the flexibility of the platform, and the fact that the ongoing fees are not there as they are with the competitor. Some people may think you're taking a risk with using Opensource. I think it just provides the end user, specifically for us small, medium business providers of services, the flexibility we need at the right cost to provide them a higher end, almost enterprise type service."
"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."
"The features I have found best are ease of use, GUI, and performance."
"Quality control on their firmware versions needs improvement. When they introduce new firmware, there tend to be bugs."
"There were quite a few problems with the stability of the system."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate can be integrated with different platforms. They have integrations in place, but I can't say they're 100%."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"The cloud features and integration could be improved."
"The initial setup and configuration are not intuitive and require training."
"The setup process should be improved."
"The CLI is verbose. You have to say a lot to do a little. I don't like that part of it. Cisco's command syntax seems to be a good bit more concise. When you're trying to get something done, you don't want to have to type a bunch."
"The capacity can be limiting. We have outgrown its capacity. You can only scale up to a certain extent, depending on the device purchased."
"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."
"Juniper needs to focus more on their perimeter firewalls."
"The reporting is lacking."
"It could improve areas which need high performance."
"I would like them to add a dashboard because it's difficult to operate."
"Their support could be better in terms of the response time."
"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."
"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."
"pfSense is not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly."
"The integration should be improved."
"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."
"The solution could always work at being more secure. It's a good idea to continue to work on security features and capabilities in order to ensure they can keep clients safe."
"It needs better parsing of logs. At the moment, you have to use an external server for this if you want a deeper analysis."
Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 19th in Firewalls with 86 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Juniper SRX Series Firewall is rated 7.8, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. 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 Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Check Point NGFW and Meraki MX, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM and KerioControl. See our Juniper SRX Series Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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