We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Palo Alto Networks VM-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."Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"The tool is a nice product and easy to handle. The software's user interface is also good. You can easily implement remote access in the solution."
"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."
"It is a very good solution for enterprises that need a VPN for their employees. It is the best way to provide a remote work facility to employees at a very low cost. Other solutions that I have had in the past were very expensive. Enterprises don't always have that kind of money to invest."
"It is much simpler than other solutions such as Fortinet."
"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."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"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."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"Its scalability is a strong point."
"I like the UI. Most things are accessible from the user interface and it is quite user-friendly. With respect to both VM-based firewalls and physical firewalls, it's easy to create updates."
"The VM-Series reports how much bandwidth a particular IP is using. You don't need to regularly log into a website, like a Cisco command, to see what kind of ACL it's getting. There isn't an ACL use portal event. You can go there and see how much my ACL has been getting me."
"With the improved visibility we now have, the traffic is being properly monitored, which means that we are better able to manage it. These are improvements that we saw very quickly."
"We can monitor the traffic manually and detect threats. Additionally, we can block different IP addresses and URLs."
"It is an easy-to-scale product."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series's most valuable feature is the visibility of the environment."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series has everything centralized. You have the VPN solution, firewall, routing, UDR, flexibility, updates, and full visibility of your traffic."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is easy to maintain...From a security point of view, I find Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to be a better product compared to the other solutions in the market."
"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."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding FortiAnalyzer to its solution, we should not have to use another solution. FortiAnalyzer can provide more detailed information."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"There could be a way to remote to it through a mobile app. You can always browse through your browser on your mobile phone or tablet, but it would be good to have a dedicated app. I understand that iOS and Android developers are expensive, but there should be a mobile app."
"The integration could be improved."
"The product must provide integration with other solutions."
"It was difficult to configure our web printer through the solution. This process could be easier. Additionally, integration with SD-WAN solution."
"It's just not listed as FIPS compliant for where we're at now in government, which is an issue."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"We feel that the setup was complex. So, we asked the tech team about the setup process. They explained how to deploy it in the right way, which made it very simple."
"The utilization monitoring and GUI have room for improvement."
"Recently, they introduced their Prisma Cloud solution. Compared to the previous technologies, like Panorama, which is used for centralized firewall management, or even the individual firewalls, it's a bit challenging to integrate the traditional firewall policies into Prisma Cloud."
"Palo Alto should update their documentation to make it more readable and provide easier-to-follow instructions through videos."
"There are some delays that I have observed when my company communicates with Palo Alto's support engineers."
"With Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, it is hard for me to manage its network configuration part."
"The product could be better in terms of performance than one of its competitors."
"There's room for improvement in terms of integration with the load balancer. It isn't like Fortinet, which has a load balancer built into its firewall. It is effortless to integrate within the load balancer-plus-firewall solution."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 16 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 13 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.2, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, Untangle NG Firewall and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Check Point NGFW. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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