We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Palo Alto Networks WildFire based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls."The flexibility and ease of configuration are the most valuable features."
"Its user interface is good, and it is always working fine."
"It is easy to manage, and it doesn't need much knowledge from the team. It is a stable device, and there are many features that are included out of the box."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"It is a good source for firewall protection."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The most valuable features are that it is very simple to configure and to manage."
"Is good at blocking IP addresses."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"The intrusion detection feature is the most valuable. It is an open-source firewall, so there is a lot of material on it. I also find the open VPN capability very nice. It is pretty customizable. The clustering and the high availability are the two biggest things to be able to get out of a firewall."
"It is a stable solution."
"For everyday tasks, we just get alerts. It's anything that's suspicious, including from our Netgate. So, it's part of how we maintain cybersecurity in our school. This is working alongside our endpoint security solution."
"The product’s documentation is good."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"I give the initial setup an eight out of ten."
"The solution is scalable."
"The solution has plenty of features."
"The most effective feature of WildFire for threat analysis is its collaboration with other security profiles on our Palo Alto firewall."
"I like the analysis they apply to the unknown files, and I think they have good technology to use as a sandboxing tool. I didn't find something similar to WildFire in the marketplace."
"What I like about Palo Alto is that it is a complete product, with everything in it."
"WildFire has been instrumental in blocking a number of new threats, before common desktop anti-virus tools were able to detect them."
"It is stable and pretty much scalable."
"It does not have key authentication for admin access."
"There are SD-WAN network monitoring, SD-WAN features, Industrial Databases, Internet of Things, Detection, etc., however, we do have not licenses for those features. We thought that if you bought a product, you should have all of the features it offers. Why should you need to make so many extra purchases to enable features? They should have one price for the entire offering."
"Currently, without the additional reporting module, we only have access to basic reporting."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"I think the only issue that needs improvement is the interface."
"I haven't had a single issue since using Fortinet."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"I would like to see SD1 integration into the software. That would be fantastic."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"I have been using WireGuard VPN because it is a lot faster and more secure than an open VPN. However, in the latest version of pfSense, they have removed this feature, which is one of the main features that I need. They should include this feature."
"There are several levels of firewall configuration such as beginner, advanced, and expert configurations. At each level, it becomes more complex and more tricky to set up the firewall. For example, if you want to install the firewall on your computer system, it would be a lot easier if it just tells you that this is the internet NIC and this is the Wi-Fi NIC."
"Web interface could be enhanced and more user friendly."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"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 product fails to offer protection when dealing with high-severity vulnerabilities, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The size of Palo Alto's cloud is big but it could be easier to use from a product management perspective."
"I don't think it needs to improve anything, except maybe the speed to deploy the changes."
"The global product feature needs improvement, the VPN, and we need some enhanced features."
"The technical support response needs improvement."
"Other vendors have some sort of bandwidth management built into the firewall itself and Palo Alto is missing that."
"The price could be better."
"The support is good but they could be faster."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 58 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is rated 8.4. 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 WildFire writes "Good technical support and provides automatic analysis that saves us time in filtering email". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Fortinet FortiSandbox and Microsoft Defender for Office 365.
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