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Netgate pfSense vs Trellix Network Detection and Response comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Fortinet FortiGate offers favorable ROI with cost savings, efficiency, and ease of deployment, enhancing productivity and reducing ownership costs.
Sentiment score
7.9
Netgate pfSense offers cost-effective, high-performance solutions, replacing pricier options and improving network stability, efficiency, and security.
Sentiment score
8.5
Trellix Network Detection and Response exceeded expectations by improving threat prevention and detection, boosting productivity and reducing response times.
Clients are now comfortable and not wasting productive hours on IT support.
The automation part is giving us a cost benefit and speed; we can react faster.
It's a very useful tool to mitigate and protect your enterprise.
If they can save their data from attackers then it would save them at least two days of not working plus the cost of recovery, which would be much more than the cost of the system and maintenance.
Since the memory leak fixes, it's been incredibly stable and requires minimal maintenance.
In four years of using it, that payment of 189 dollars per year has already paid off.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Fortinet's support is generally responsive and helpful, though some users experience slow response times and complex issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
Netgate pfSense offers reliable community resources and praised paid support, despite occasional inconsistencies with complex technical issues.
Sentiment score
6.8
Trellix's support is praised for responsiveness, but improvements in expertise and incident response promptness are suggested by some.
They offer very accurate solutions.
The quick resolution of issues with Fortinet FortiGate is due to the support of the company and the fact that the equipment is easy to work with.
I would rate the technical support for Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.
When I provide detailed information about the problem, they've been able to reply quickly with a solution or go research the problem and get back to us quickly with a fix.
They are highly responsive.
I couldn't imagine having better support.
Technical support needs improvement as sometimes engineers are not available promptly, especially during high-severity incidents.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Fortinet FortiGate is praised for scalability, effective in both large and small businesses, but hardware scaling can be challenging.
Sentiment score
7.0
Netgate pfSense is scalable and cost-effective, managing large networks efficiently with adaptable hardware and seamless expansion capabilities.
Sentiment score
7.8
Trellix Network Detection and Response scales effectively in various industries, performing well in large enterprises without latency issues.
They scale up really well from smaller models like the FortiGate 40 and 50 to bigger sites with the FortiGate 100 for more throughput - up to enterprise datacenters.
The variation comes in terms of the interfaces and throughputs, but from a security perspective, you get the same benefit, irrespective of whether you have an entry-level unit or an enterprise.
We determine sizing based on multiple factors: number of users, available links, traffic types, server count, services in use, and whether services will be published.
If I put things into a certain context and say that we have a network that has around 100 people, then you don't put up a device that can manage 100 people. Instead, you need to get a device that can manage 150 to 200 people, and then you can create room for growth.
I don't think Netgate pfSense can offer much scalability for big enterprises.
Even with a jump from a 50 megabit to a 500 megabit internet connection and approximately 65 active VPN clients, our firewall operates smoothly without any strain.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Fortinet FortiGate is praised for reliability, with stability enhancements through updates, despite some firmware bugs and performance challenges.
Sentiment score
6.9
Users highly rate Netgate pfSense's stability, attributing rare issues mainly to hardware rather than the software itself.
Sentiment score
7.7
Trellix Network Detection and Response is stable and reliable, with consistent performance and high user satisfaction despite occasional minor issues.
We're experiencing 99.999% availability consistently.
I would rate the stability of Fortinet FortiGate a ten out of ten.
Currently, we are experiencing a general outage of one of the main internet service providers of the Dominican Republic, and we have not been impacted in our operations because with SD-WAN, we have another internet service provider and we are working with the second WAN connection without any disruption.
I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten.
I've noticed a substantial improvement in stability and ease of use for upgrades and patching over the past year or two.
When I replace consumer routers with pfSense for small businesses with two or three employees, they are often amazed to discover the router can run for a year without a reboot.
 

Room For Improvement

Fortinet FortiGate needs improved stability, intuitive support, cost-effective licensing, and better compatibility with fewer bugs and enhanced reporting.
Netgate pfSense needs better GUI usability, management, consistent updates, improved performance, intuitive interfaces, and strategic communication.
Trellix Network Detection needs improved customization, integration, AI capabilities, support services, and a more user-friendly interface at reduced pricing.
Investing in a solution that can accommodate such growth would be more cost-effective than repeatedly purchasing new hardware.
The constant daily revisions necessitate meticulous identification of the relevant documents to prevent the use of outdated information that could jeopardize our environment.
While Fortinet claims to offer a comprehensive network solution, it falls short in addressing computer application issues, particularly server security.
There is some trade-off between having a certain level of security and maintaining acceptable performance.
If I need to go between different VLANs, I have VLAN 19.1 and VLAN 19.2, and I strictly use Netgate pfSense, but it doesn't route very efficiently and works quite slowly.
They should support the idea of configuration management as code from source code and provide a more robust API for managing the pfSense configuration.
There should be improvements in AI intelligence, faster decision-making, and a more responsive technical support team.
 

Setup Cost

Fortinet FortiGate offers cost-effective enterprise-level features with competitive long-term pricing, affordable licensing, and valuable support packages.
Netgate pfSense is cost-effective, open-source, integrates key functions, and offers affordable subscriptions, appealing to budget-focused enterprises.
Trellix Network Detection is costly but effective, with yearly licensing, discounts, and competitive pricing against some competitors like Palo Alto.
FortiGate is priced lower than Palo Alto.
Last year, I renewed the support for three years, which can sometimes be expensive but depends on the security benefits and how it helps us.
It is about 20% cheaper.
The price of setup is approximately €500 to €800, which also includes the initial monitoring.
You can acquire a decent embedded PC for around a hundred dollars and install pfSense on it, effectively creating a robust firewall solution.
The product is free of cost.
 

Valuable Features

Fortinet FortiGate is praised for its VPN, firewall, ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and versatile network management features.
Netgate pfSense is praised for its performance, flexibility, robust features, and user-friendly interface, enhancing security and scalability.
Trellix excels in threat protection with AI-driven analysis, automation, and enhanced visibility, benefiting security operations and incident management.
In terms of security, we have not experienced any security flaws or loopholes, and it has proven to be quite stable.
FortiGate has helped reduce the risk of cyberattacks that might disrupt our client's production.
These features help reduce our downtime, manage the ISPs, and deploy SLAs for all the website traffic.
With pfSense, network configurations adhere to standard practices, facilitating troubleshooting without the need for complex overlays or policies.
The price point is the most valuable aspect of the solution.
I like the tool's flexibility in the sense that you do not have to buy an appliance. You can put it on your own hardware, and it can be very simplistic hardware with simple configurations.
Trellix NDR provides an essential defense by automatically responding to network incidents that firewalls may not catch.
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
380
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Netgate pfSense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (1st)
Trellix Network Detection a...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (12th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Firewalls
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service
I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.
Vincent Hamm - PeerSpot reviewer
I appreciate the depth of what the solution can do and the simplicity of the initial setup
We do a lot of managed services and are currently trying to get people off of L2TP VPN. Apparently, we can download a mobile config file from a configured NetGate device, and we're primarily Apple. We've experimented with it on a device that's not a production device, and we can't seem to get the phase one IPSec set correctly so that the Apple config will accept it. We've tried looking at the documentation but haven't found anything. While it's not the highest priority, it is rather frustrating. We'd like to do this, and the feature is right there, but we can't get it configured. We certainly don't want to try it on a production machine because it will break the current VPN. I would like to download the Apple mobile config so that I can tell it to configure my VPN connection to do that. We have some cross-platform things. So there's also a Windows VPN. You can download a script or a PowerShell, put it on a Windows machine, and it can connect to the VPN. It would be nice if I could say I want Mac only, Windows only, or both. I wish it could configure the IPSec phase one and phase two, or at least give me solid instructions on how to configure that. It doesn't supply out-of-the-box visibility to drive decisions. You get 75 log lines, so if you're trying to troubleshoot something, you have to look at one log and then another. It integrates with SysLog systems, but our customers are not at the level where they want to pay for some third-party SysLog system. Usually, we can get things taken care of fairly quickly. I would like to have the ability to control all my devices from one place. With Ubiquiti, you can get a controller that allows you to control all of your Wi-Fi devices, switches, and routers. From one area, you can switch to that customer and see what's happening in their environment. That's not part of pfSense. I understand why it's not because pfSense is open source and community supported. That's something that someone in the community needs to pick up and run with. It's not something the pfSense can easily implement. If they could, that'd be great.
BiswabhanuPanda - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers in-depth investigation capabilities, integrates well and smoothly transitioned from a lower-capacity appliance to a higher one
The in-depth investigation capabilities are a major advantage. When the system flags something as malicious, it provides a packet capture of that activity within the environment. That helps my team quickly identify additional context that most other tools wouldn't offer – like source IP or base64 encoded data. We can also see DNS requests and other details that aren't readily available in solutions like Check Point or others that we've tried. The detection itself is solid, and their sandboxing is powerful. There's a learning curve – you need a strong grasp of OS-level changes, process forking, registry changes, and the potential impact of those. But with that knowledge, the level of information Trellix provides is far greater than what we've seen elsewhere. The real-time response capability of Trellix has been quite effective, although it's not very fast. The key is this solution's concept of 'preference zero.' They don't immediately act on a zero-day. For example, the solution has seen a piece of malware for the first time. It'll let it in, then do sandboxing. Maybe after four or five minutes, it identifies that specific file's DNX Secure Store as malicious. At that point, they update the static analysis engine, and it gets detected if anything else tries to download the same file. There is that initial 'preference zero' concept, like with Panda. You may not hold traffic in the network. That's standard in the industry; we don't do much about it. To address that, we also have endpoint solutions. We use SentinelOne in our environment, which helps us identify threats like Western Bureaus and others.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Educational Organization
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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The Trellix solution could be improved by enhancing the Central Management Console for faster visibility, which would...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
No data available
FireEye Network Security, FireEye
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
Nerds On Site Inc., RKC Development Inc., Expertech, Fisher's Technology, Ncisive, Consulting, CPURX, Vaughn's Computer House Calls, Imeretech LLC, Digital Crisis, Carolina Digital Phone, Technigogo Technology Services, The Simple Solution, SwiftecITInc, Rocky Mountain Tech Team, Free Range Geeks, Alaska Computer Geeks, Lark Information Technology, Renaissance Systems Inc., Cutting Edge Computers, Caretech LLC, GoVanguard, Network Touch Ltd, P.C. Solutions.Net, Vision Voice and Data Systems LLC, Montgomery Technologies, Techforce, Concero Networks, ASONInc, CPS Electronics and Consulting, Darkwire.net LLC, IT Specialists, MBS-Net Inc., VOICE1 LLC, Advantage Networking Inc., Powerhouse Systems, Doxa Multimedia Inc., Pro Computer Service, Virtual IT Services, A&J Computers Inc., Envision IT LLC, CommunicaONE Inc., Bone Computer Inc., Amax Engineering Corporation, QPG Ltd. Co., IT 101 Inc., Perfect Cloud Solutions, Applied Technology Group Inc., The Digital Sun Group LLC, Firespring
FFRDC, Finansbank, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Investis, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Bank of Thailand, City of Miramar, Citizens National Bank, D-Wave Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate, Fortinet, OPNsense and others in Firewalls. Updated: July 2025.
861,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.