We performed a comparison between Meraki MX and OPNsense 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 feature I like most is the SD-WAN. It allows you to manage more than one ISP at the same time. And there is a high-availability mode, so if one of your ISPs is down, you still have a backup."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"The technical support in our region is excellent."
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"I like that you are able to manage FortiGate from the FortiManager to create a more centralized environment."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is URL filtering."
"FortiGate is very simple to manage and easy to use."
"We were looking for the VPN feature and controlling the inflow and outflow of all the traffic within the site and across the sites. We are also using it for the VPN and VLANs."
"I think cloud management is key. The cloud management and support are the two things that make the product great."
"Since it has an integrated dashboard for all the products, customers can get complete network analytics regarding what the user is doing, monitoring, and observing."
"What I like best about Meraki MX is that it's easy to deploy remotely. The product works. It has automatic updates. I also like that Meraki MX is a brilliant device. You turn it on, stick the key in there, activate it, and then you're done. Meraki MX does what my customers need at the end of the day, so I also like that."
"Point-to-point VPNs can dynamically follow IP changes with no need for static IPs."
"Dual WAN connections are greatly simplified and point-to-point VPNs automatically connect regardless of what WAN connection is active."
"The most valuable feature of Meraki MX is I can manage the solution from anywhere remotely, I can throttle bandwidth, and create all rules. Additionally, it is secure for our customers."
"Very easy to use and navigate."
"WAN optimization is the best feature of the solution."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"It's open source."
"What I like best about OPNsense is that, as a firewall, it's pretty good. I'm quite impressed with it. I had an excellent experience with OPNsense, which helped me achieve the targets I wanted."
"I feel that its valuable features are that it is simple and free."
"It has an open license. It works very well, and there is an update every month."
"The solution has high availability."
"It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"Their software support needs improvement. I would prefer to have better support for bug fixes. Sometimes, we open a ticket, and it is very difficult to get a solution. Specifically, we are not at all happy with their support for load balancing."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"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."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"They have to just improve its performance when we enable all UTM features. When you enable all the features, the performance of FortiGate, as well as of Sophos and SonicWall, goes down."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"Performance and technical support are the main issues with this solution."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"Meraki MX firewalls are great for small to medium-sized businesses, but other solutions are better for enterprise-sized companies."
"Meraki tech support staff have a lot more visibility into your network than you do, which is frustrating at times. I understand the approach is to keep the dashboard easier to understand. This will frustrate more advanced users at times."
"MX can only be managed via a web interface, but I'm accustomed to using a CLI or a graphical interface. I would also like to see more reporting features. It doesn't provide enough information for me to know precisely about some clients."
"The product is quite complex to set up."
"The configuration options for firewall and IPS have limitations."
"It would be nice to get detailed logging information without third-party software."
"We can’t access GUI management and CLI opening features when the Internet is unavailable."
"Pricing is an area where the solution lacks since it is an expensive tool."
"An area for improvement in OPNsense is the hardware, which needs to be updated more frequently. DNS blocking is another good feature I want to be added to the solution. pfSense has a peer-blocking feature that I also want to see in OPNsense."
"While they do have paid options that actually gives better features, for most of the clients, if they tend to take a paid option will instead opt for Fortinet."
"I would like better documentation concerning the provided packages and their integration."
"The interface of the solution is an area with shortcomings."
"The support for OPNsense is good because we have documents available on the internet. The support could improve a little."
"The IPS solution could be more reliable."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"They should improve IPEs for security in the future."
Meraki MX is ranked 3rd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 20 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 20 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 7.8, while OPNsense is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Great solution that can manage multiple devices (security, switches, APs, Cameras) with a single pane of glass". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OPNsense writes "There are lots of capabilities built-in: Few would be High Availability, Proxy, DNS, Intrusion detection/prevention, content filtering, traffic and bandwidth management with 2factor autn. ". Meraki MX is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Meraki MX vs. OPNsense report.
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