We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and SonicWall NSa 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 reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"The CLI and GUI do a good job of putting a lot at your fingertips."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"Fortigate's most valuable feature is that it doesn't need a push policy when writing rules."
"The most valuable features are the policies, filtering, and configuration."
"Fortinet FortiGate appears to be scalable."
"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 product’s documentation is good."
"It's a good solution for end-users. It's pretty easy to work with."
"The most valuable features of pfSense are security, user-friendliness, and helpful online management."
"The ability to perform packet captures on the command line and via the GUI is useful for diagnosing problems."
"I'm the expert when it comes to Linux systems, however, with the pfSense, due to the web interface, the rest of the staff can actually make changes to it as required without me worrying about whether they've opened up ports incorrectly or not. The ease of use for non-expert staff is very good."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"It is a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"The most valuable features are flexibility, ease of setup, and it's a good product cost-wise."
"The most valuable features are the VPN, SSL VPN, and IPSec VPN."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the firewalling, which is very good and the GUI which is very intuitive. It is easy to use, and provides great security."
"The basic firewall rules of the solution are great."
"We have utilized all the features. The most valuable are the URL filtering by category, DMZ zoning, load balancing and site-to-site VPN."
"It has good reporting, the reporting is marvelous."
"The functionality is the same whether it is on hardware or a virtual appliance. The interface is the same. It's nice that it's standardized."
"Support is usually good when it comes to helping with issues."
"It's my understanding that more of the current generation features could be brought in. There could be more integration with EDRs, for example."
"Security is a continuous process. In every product, there is a requirement for improvement. Its pricing should also be improved according to Indian market requirements. They must also improve on the reporting part. Its reporting can be more precise. If we can get a real-time report in a specific format, it will be helpful for customers to know about the current status of their security."
"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
"There are some cloud-based features that could be much more flexible than they currently are."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"FortiOS is not simple."
"I would like to see improvements in the product's application rules."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"This solution is good for small businesses but it is not as stable as other competitors such as Fortinet."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"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."
"The security could be improved."
"The stability could be improved."
"The product must provide integration with other solutions."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"We also use the Sophos Firewall for web configuration, which we don't have in SonicWall. Only Sophos has those options. If SonicWall included that feature, that would be a benefit for us."
"Some of the configurations could be better."
"The security standards for space and point of view should be improved so that the solution deploys in critical areas."
"The implementation for VLANs is a little bit cumbersome. It would be good to make that a little bit easier."
"After-sales support and hands-on training facilities are not available in my country."
"The scalability is something that should be improved."
"One area for improvement in SonicWall NSa is the GUI. It isn't easy to understand. The support for SonicWall NSa is mediocre, which is another area for improvement."
"I'd like to see integration with Microsoft 365 for authentication."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while SonicWall NSa is ranked 20th in Firewalls with 77 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while SonicWall NSa is rated 7.8. 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 SonicWall NSa writes "Great performance and security with reasonable pricing". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas SonicWall NSa is most compared with SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Netgate pfSense vs. SonicWall NSa report.
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