We performed a comparison between Kerio Control and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: pfSense has the winning edge in this comparison because it received higher marks in the features, pricing, and service and support categories.
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"Fortinet FortiGate has many valuable features, such as IDS, and intrusion detection. It has security features that are in part with the technologies that are available in the market."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the analytics."
"Fortinet FortiGate's most valuable features are ease of use, flexibility, and most of the configuration we can be done using the GUI. When we compare Fortinet FortiGate with other solutions the firewall policy are very easy to understand."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"It's inexpensive compared to some of the other technology out there."
"Easy to use support and licensing portal as well as activation process."
"The most valuable features of Kerio Control are the IPS and traffic rules. The traffic rules are very user-friendly and the IPS is working well. Additionally, the anti-virus is effective with quick options, such as filtering."
"The ease of use in the GUI itself is the most valuable feature. The GUI is really the best part of it. We like the traffic rules so we can control who can get to what. It's easy to determine the flow of the traffic itself so we aren't having to guess through command lines and reading out basically command-driven output. It's just a very easy-to-use interface. The interface is the best part of the product."
"The firewall and intrusion detection features are good. It has blocked certain things. We have a lot of blocked sites that the staff or anyone using it, the public, etc., can't go on. It works for that. I get quite a few messages every now and again, saying that a virus has been detected and I can go in and block the user who's causing the problem."
"We also like the security. We can control what sites users can go to and we can make sure that where they're going is appropriate and that it's work-related."
"The flexibility of the system, the capacity to provide the right level of security, and the ability to be integrated into different kinds of infrastructures are the most valuable features."
"I love the VPN that we set up. A few of us have it on our computers so that if we leave, we can still access the stores. And we can work from home if needed. When I sign into that Kerio VPN, it links me like I'm sitting in the store. It puts me in our secure network so that I can sign on to each individual store and I can run numbers... If I have to work from home, it's so much faster than the way we used to do it."
"The firewall and intrusion detection features are very useful these days because hackers have a lot of tricks that they use to get into a system. With Kerio Control you can see something that's happening. Otherwise, you have to use other tools to see what's happening on the firewalls. Having IPS in it is quite useful for us."
"I like intrusion detection and prevention and bandwidth management. The routing part is also awesome. It is a good firewall. We never had a major breach from outside. We've never been impacted by ransomware, and our systems have never been infiltrated."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"Open source and support are valuable. I have community support."
"The documentation is very good."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well."
"Creation of certificates and the facility to administer services are valuable features."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by having more storage in the hardware for log data."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"The user interface could be improved to make it less confusing and easier to set up."
"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."
"It would be nice if backups could more easily migrate between different models."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"The renewal price and the availability could be improved."
"Improvements are needed to the Next Generation Firewall Protection, specifically with user-level protection."
"The denial of service could also be improved. There recently was a big issue with denial of service attacks and it was a bit laborious."
"If you have to dive deeper into the firewall or any other features, then you really have to read up a bit about how to set it up properly. Some of my colleagues, in the beginning, jumped in and made a bunch of rules but then it got really messy. If Kerio had a template or guidelines for best practices, at the beginning, that would really help. With Kerio Control it's basically 'find out for yourself.'"
"The reporting needs to be improved. It is hard to get a domain."
"I would like for them to add more security features."
"The comprehensiveness of the security features could be improved upon. However, for the most part, it is pretty good. They could add more logs. I would like to see more detailed reporting, custom reporting from the logs, and more of a streamlined interface for certain aspects."
"After the takeover by GFI, one of the things that Kerio built was MyKerio environment. This has not been very reliable because I get many messages that MyKerio is not functioning. For some reason, there are things that they changed and it is not very reliable at this moment, instead I have to connect to the firewall to see what is happening."
"The one thing that did put me off of the solution was that, after they were taken over by GFI, the licensing and a few other items have gotten very complicated."
"Their support could be better in terms of the response time."
"I would like to see pfSense integrate WireGuard. Currently, pfSense uses OpenVPN, and there's nothing wrong with it, but WireGuard is a lot leaner and meaner."
"Layer 7 advanced firewall features are not included in the solution."
"This solution is good for small businesses but it is not as stable as other competitors such as Fortinet."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"The GUI could use more “bells and whistles”. It's got plenty of info for a Sysadmin but some people like shiny things."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"I would like to see multiple DNS servers running on individual interfaces."
KerioControl is ranked 28th in Firewalls with 54 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. KerioControl is rated 8.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of KerioControl writes "With VPN, any of our guys can log in to the system and effectively be on board; helps with our customers all over the world". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". KerioControl is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos UTM, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox. See our KerioControl vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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