We performed a comparison between Juniper SRX and 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."If configured, Firepower provides us with application visibility and control."
"Another benefit has been user integration. We try to integrate our policies so that we can create policies based on active users. We can create policies based on who is accessing a resource instead of just IP addresses and ports."
"You can also put everything into a nice, neat, little package, as far as configuration goes. I was formerly a command-line guy with the ASA, and I was a little nervous about dealing with a GUI interface versus a command line, but after I did my first deployment, I got a lot more comfortable with doing it GUI based."
"The CLI is the most valuable feature. This solution is very flexible and offers different functionality including firewalls and VPN connectivity."
"It brings us the ability to work from anywhere and has allowed us to work remotely without having to incur a lot of other costs. If we didn't have this type of solution, since we have so many on-prem services that are required, we would have likely lost money and been unable to deliver. We have a video services team who helped build the content for our sporting events. When you are watching a Leaf game and those swipes come by as well as the clips and things, those are all generated in-house. Without the ability to access our on-premise resources, we would have been dead in the water. So, the return on that is pretty impressive."
"Cisco ASA Firewall is a well known product. They're always updating it, and you know what they're doing and that it works."
"It just works for us."
"The user interface is very easy to manage and find rules. You can do object searches, which are very easy. Also, the logging is very simple to use. So, it is a lot easier to troubleshoot and find items inside the firewall."
"It's fine, and it's good. It's very stable."
"Great as an inter-segmentation firewall or border or arch-firewall."
"What I like the most about Juniper is that they have the same CLI on all routers, switches, and firewalls. If you have worked with any Juniper device, such as a Juniper router, you will be able to work with an SRX, which is really cool. It is a nice experience to work with every device of Juniper, not only firewalls."
"When compared to Palo Alto, Juniper is a better choice when it comes to the enterprise network and connectivity."
"The IPS functionality of Juniper SRX is useful in the telecom industry."
"The scalability is fine."
"The GUI is simple to use."
"The solution has proven to be quite stable."
"I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal."
"It is a better firewall than others and it has better features."
"The solution is very easy to use and configure."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"Technical support is perfect, excellent."
"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 features I have found best are ease of use, GUI, and performance."
"Most of the features don't work well, and some features are missing as well."
"I would like to see improvement when you create policies on Snort 3 IPS on Cisco Firepower. On Snort 2, it was more like a UI page where you had some multiple choices where you could tweak your config. On Snort 3, the idea is more to build some rules on the text file or JSON file, then push it. So, I would like to see a lot of improvements here."
"There is huge scope for improvement in URL filtering. The database that they have is not accurate. Their content awareness and categorization for URL filtering are not that great. We faced many challenges with their categorization and content awareness. They should improve these categorization issues."
"The main problem we have is that things work okay until we upgrade the firmware, at which point, everything changes, and the net stops working."
"It lacks management. For me, it still doesn't have a proper management tool or GUI for configuration, logging, and visualization. Its management is not that easy. It is also not very flexible and easy to configure. They used to have a product called CSM, but it is no longer being developed. FortiGate is better than this solution in terms of GUI, flexibility, and user-friendliness."
"Sometimes my customers say that Cisco Firewalls are a bit more difficult compared to Fortigate or Palo Alto. There is complexity in the configuration and the GUI could be improved."
"Other products are becoming easier to access and configure. They are providing UI interfaces to configure, take backup, synchronize redundant machines, and so on. It is very easy to take backup and upgrade the images in those products. Cisco ASA should have such features. If one redundant machine is getting upgraded, the technology and support should be there to upgrade other redundant machines. In a single window, we should be able to do more in terms of backups, restores, and upgrades."
"FirePOWER does a good job when it comes to providing us with visibility into threats, but I would like to see a more proactive stance to it."
"The user interface is something that Juniper needs to improve."
"To compare with Fortinet, Juniper needs to improve their security features."
"Its logging is very good, but we would like to have an easier way of creating more reports. We would like to be able to manipulate the reports or manage the way the reports are coming out."
"The training videos that are available need to be improved, and made more educative."
"In comparison to other enterprise-level firewalls, such as Cisco FTD, Cisco has improved significantly. In the past, I believed that Juniper SRX was superior, but after seeing the advancements in the FTD platform, Cisco has better functionality. I have not recently explored Juniper SRX's next-generation firewall capabilities as we only use basic firewall filtering in our enterprise network."
"J-Web, Juniper Web, is sometimes not working great when users are increasing their internet use. Additionally, they need to improve the GUI, graphical user interface, and the firewall management needs to improve. Their CLI is good, but sometimes the GUI is very slow."
"It could be more secure."
"Their models for service providers could improve."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"The stability could be improved."
"The security could be improved."
"The integration could be improved."
"pfSense could improve by having a sandboxing feature that I have seen in SonicWall. However, maybe it is available I am not aware of it."
"Lacks instructional videos."
Juniper SRX is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 31 reviews while pfSense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 47 reviews. Juniper SRX is rated 8.0, while pfSense is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Juniper SRX writes "Scalable with good technical support and works well for larger organizations". On the other hand, the top reviewer of pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". Juniper SRX is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Meraki MX, Check Point NGFW and Sophos XG, whereas pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall and Stormshield Network Security. See our Juniper SRX vs. pfSense report.
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