We performed a comparison between McAfee StoneGate [EOL] and Netgate pfSense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"This product is definitely scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the web filter."
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"Our project needs to link two sides through the internet. One of these was in Cairo and the other in another city. We used FortiGate as the integrating solution between the two locations, i.e. the Fortinet 30E & 100E."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the SD-WAN and their IP4 policy."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"We did not have issues with scalabiliy."
"It works well with a highly-active cluster."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"My company mainly works in the health and educational domain, schools and universities. I prevent the improper use of content from schools and universities. I defend the medical records for the patients in our hospitals. That is the main use case for me for the firewall."
"The initial setup is easy."
"I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection."
"The GUI is easy to understand."
"I use pfSense because it gives me the flexibility to greatly expand basic firewall features."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"I had some outages in the network and we provide services for our company. We sell mobile credits. The terminal gets access to our own server inside the network and if one internet fails, then the other one is still up and we have a back-up link on the devices."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"They can do more tests before they release new versions because I would like to be more assured. We had some experiences where they release something new and great, but some of the old features are disabled or they don't work well, which impacts the product satisfaction. The manufacturer should be able to prove that everything works or not only that it might work. This is applicable to most of the other services, software, and hardware companies. They all should work on this. We cannot trust every new release, such as a beta release, on the first day. We wait for some comments on the forums and from other companies that we know. We always wait a few weeks before we use the updated version. They should also extend the VPN client application, especially for Linux versions. Currently, it has an application for Linux devices, but it doesn't work the way we want to connect to the VPN. They use only the old connection, not the new one. They have VPN client applications for Windows and Mac, but they can add more useful features to better manage the devices and monitor the current health of each device. Such features would be helpful for our company."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"There is a lot of improvement needed with SSL-VPN."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"Fortinet should focus on enhancing the capabilities of FortiGate by consolidating its various products, such as FortiGate Cloud, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer."
"After some experience with the solution, we had to do some redesign, but generally, we were happy with the product."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"It requires more attention to provide a better alternative for open source to small government or educational institutions with reduced budgets in terms of technology."
"This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing."
"When I checked other packages, it seems they use different tools that are installed on the PSS for functionality. They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs."
"Web interface could be enhanced and more user friendly."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"The usage reports can be better."
Earn 20 points
McAfee StoneGate [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Firewalls while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. McAfee StoneGate [EOL] is rated 7.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of McAfee StoneGate [EOL] writes "The HA cluster had issues during deployment, but the solution gives us better application control than with our previous solution". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". McAfee StoneGate [EOL] is most compared with , whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall.
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