We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Palo Alto Networks PA-Series 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."It is easy to use and performs very well."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"Security management tool that's easy to integrate and easy to work with. No issues found with its stability and scalability."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"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."
"It has a good web cache. I used to use a DHCP server and DNS server. For my company, I use pfSense as a load balancing application."
"The VPN is my favorite feature."
"This solution has increased the level of security, given us more control, provided a deep insight into network traffic, and is a great VPN solution."
"The performance and functionality are good."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"The scalability is very good, where you can do an HA configuration and then bring in another box, if necessary."
"Stability has been excellent. We have experienced no issues; it never fails."
"It has its own logging system. You can go to monitoring and check the logs to see if a connection is getting blocked. You can use multiple types of logs to check if a file or a port is getting blocked or if there are any TCP resets from the source or destination. It's easy to troubleshoot with the monitoring and logging it provides."
"The cloud-based aspect helps significantly. It integrates seamlessly with other Palo products like Prisma Cloud, offers robust VPN protection, and it's all in one convenient package."
"It offers application-based policy enforcement. Palo Alto Networks firewalls help us recognize protocol anomalies, contrasting with other vendors that may require policies based on port numbers. With Palo Alto Networks, the port number isn't a constraint because their devices handle protocol traffic at Layer 7, allowing for accurate identification of protocol usage and port numbers. They can identify which protocol actually uses which port."
"The documentation is great."
"The direct profiles is a valuable feature."
"The solution is easy to manage."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It offers a seamless transition from one option to another, making it exceptionally versatile and user-friendly in an enterprise setting."
"The central management for the FortiGate Fortinet Firewall needs improvement. They have the manager to do the essential management for both SD-WAN and for the security policy. They should also improve the SD-WAN function."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"The setup is pretty complex and not easy to implement."
"The support costs and licensing are sometimes so expensive."
"I would like Fortinet to add more automation to FortiGate."
"They should improve the interface to make it more user-friendly."
"As an open-source solution, there are so many loopholes happening within the product. By design, no one is taking ownership of it, and that is worrisome to me."
"The solution requires a lot of administration."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"I would like to see different graphs available in the reporting."
"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."
"The security could be improved."
"The integration should be improved."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"Pricing flexibility could be an aspect worth considering, as it has been a concern for some of our clients."
"Palo Alto should integrate artificial intelligence for security purposes in the background for well-known threats and new risks coming to the market."
"There are constant updates for the operating system. It is a nice thing also, but it has its own disadvantages. Continuous updates are there. The users face issues like, how often do I need to update that? Within a period of five months, I'm updating it two or three times. It gives them a feeling that they are not confident about their product and have to update it so frequently."
"Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is expensive. We would like to see additional threat hunting features."
"The product's gateway services can be improved."
"The UI definitely needs work. In my opinion, the UI could be simpler and more user-friendly for the average user."
"There is room for improvement in streamlining this process for smoother transitions."
"The interface is complex."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 28 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks PA-Series writes "Offers trained customer support, stability and ease of use ". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks PA-Series is most compared with OPNsense, SonicWall NSa, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Sophos XG and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Palo Alto Networks PA-Series report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls 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.
