"Dual WAN connections are greatly simplified and point-to-point VPNs automatically connect regardless of what WAN connection is active."
"I love the simplicity of Meraki MX — specifically, the simplicity of the dashboard."
"We've had no issues with the scalability or the stability of this solution"
"Meraki MX offers advanced filtration options, plus it behaves like a router and a firewall at the same time."
"The technical support people from Meraki are brilliant."
"It is very easy to use and manage. It is also very easy to scale."
"Point-to-point VPNs can dynamically follow IP changes with no need for static IPs."
"Meraki makes it easy to be secure and know where the holes are to fix them. We have been fixing anything that we have ever found for 20 years. We keep up-to-date with firmware upgrades. We just try to stay on top of everything for security, like maintaining updates and getting rid of old systems. I feel like we're on top of it."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"The solution is very easy to use and has a very nice GUI."
"I like pfSense's security features."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"When we do API integrations with Meraki, they have always been hard as well as tedious to build. The data that we want out of the API integrations has been only recently available. Six months ago, it was hard to get someone to build something correctly or useful with Meraki APIs. Recently, they have made more data available on the API, but it is just a start. They need to do more."
"It would be nice if the different services, including the SIEM SOC and endpoint detection and response (EDR) were integrated into one, so that I don't have to go to different vendors for different services."
"They need to improve the link between Meraki and Active Directory."
"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."
"As far as what needs to be improved — nothing really comes to mind. It does what we need it to do."
"Management can be improved in Meraki MX."
"We have been having a problem with the VPN. When the energy goes down and is back again, the VPN link doesn't get established. We have to manually turn off the modems and other pieces of equipment and manually establish the VPN. It has been around one month since we have been having this problem, and we don't have enough support from Meraki to solve the problem."
"From the improvement perspective, we need more monitoring capabilities. We want to have full-based access visibility, such as, what is happening when something is trying to reach and it is denying. We cannot see some parts of it. The integration of active directory with this product is not very fruitful. It has some bugs or lacks in the functionality of active directory integration. We are unable to identify where exactly and whether it has really applied our policy."
"There are some bias issues and some intrusions in our network that have to be addressed. So, we're thinking of changing this firewall to something like a professional hardware-enabled firewall."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"The interface is not very shiny and attractive."
"The user interface can be improved to make it easier to add more features. And pfSense could be better integrated with other solutions, like antivirus."
"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."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
Meraki MX is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 17 reviews while pfSense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 60 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.4, while pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Makes it easy to stay on top of everything for security". On the other hand, the top reviewer of pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". Meraki MX is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Cisco ASA Firewall, Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall, Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos UTM, Sophos XG and Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall. See our Meraki MX vs. pfSense report.
We monitor all Unified Threat Management (UTM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
