We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Zscaler Cloud Firewall 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 interface is very good."
"FortiGate firewalls are user-friendly, and I like the security profiling features."
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"It's very easy to configure."
"The solution is stable."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"The integration with Active Directory is one of the good features. Most of the customers are now looking for the Single Sign-on feature. So, being able to integrate Active Directory with the firewall is useful. It is also easy."
"We use the filtering feature the most. It has filtering and inbuilt securities. We can create customized rules to define which users can access a particular type of site. We can create policies inside the firewall."
"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."
"I can manage it easily by myself."
"It works. I put pfSense in, and it works. I can't think of any trouble I ever had with it. It runs on heat-sensitive appliances. They don't need a fan, so they don't overheat. It is affordable, fast, and very high-speed. It is built on BSD Unix, and it pretty much runs on any Intel processor."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"pfSense is a nice product, and I find that there's a lot of information out there. There are some good tutorials on YouTube and other websites with helpful information."
"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."
"Includes advanced tech protection."
"It provides in-depth visibility into your network, ensuring that traffic flowing into your organization, be it from offices or individual users, is effectively filtered and secured through multiple layers of protection."
"The solution is scalable."
"Zscaler Cloud Firewall understands the applications in the current generation and adapts to the present generation cloud applications."
"The product’s firewall and VPN package are fantastic compared to any other solution."
"Most of the features that Zscaler has to offer, we will deploy."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The solution offers good sandboxing."
"We would like to see a better training platform implemented."
"One area for improvement is the performance on bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"Some of the features in the graphical user interface do not work, which requires that we used the command-line-interface."
"Its reporting can be improved. Sometimes, I don't get proper reports."
"The user interface could be improved."
"With the reports, you can see it, and you can get good feelings so upper management can go, "Oh, wow. That looks pretty." However, it's very basic."
"The solution is very expensive."
"They sometimes hide some features and if you want to enable them, you have to go in the CLI, enable the feature and configure it through the CLI. Customers, typically, like everything to be done by the GUI."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"The GUI could use more “bells and whistles”. It's got plenty of info for a Sysadmin but some people like shiny things."
"The solution requires a lot of administration."
"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."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions."
"I would like to see SD1 integration into the software. That would be fantastic."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"Instead of the standard license, they should certainly provide customers with the visibility to access and view the logs."
"Data Leak Prevention is only for web filtering and there is no protection for email."
"Because it's on cloud, it doesn't allow application of extra settings."
"It would be better if they improved their policy, package visibility, and flexibility while we're creating rules for inspection. It could also be cheaper or more things could be included in the basic package. In the next release, I would like better coverage in the Asia Pacific region and better quality of service."
"When it comes to customer support, there is room for improvement in Zscaler's service."
"They do not provide a few components that are fundamental to differentiate the products"
"There are some areas it could improve when it comes to blocking, we have to block some things manually. For example, if we block a top-level domain we have seen that the new IPs come through, the IPs are not blocked. There should be some more granular way of doing it. My only request is if you're blocking something at a top level, the sub-level sub-domains and all those other IPs should be blocked too automatically."
"Its technical support services could be better."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Zscaler Cloud Firewall is ranked 24th in Firewalls with 15 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Zscaler Cloud Firewall 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 Zscaler Cloud Firewall writes "A highly stable and comprehensive cloud security and access solution". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Zscaler Cloud Firewall is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, OPNsense, Cisco Secure Firewall and Juniper vSRX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Zscaler Cloud Firewall report.
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