We performed a comparison between OPNsense 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."Overall, the pricing of the solution is very good. The product offers good value."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"The product offers very good security."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the ability to work in proxy mode, which other solutions, such as Palo Alto cannot. There are some features that are better that come at no extra license or subscriptions cost, such as basic SD-WAN. The DLT is useful, other solutions have the same feature too, such as Palo Alto."
"It's very fast and easy to configure."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"The Fortinet FortiGate local partners were good. I did not have direct contact with Fortinet support."
"Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"It is a very good solution. I like the dashboard. I can see what is going on and manage it as I like it."
"The most valuable feature is the Dual WAN in OPNSense, which offers advanced capabilities."
"The solution has high availability."
"What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control."
"The solution is good for a basic firewall for a small business or for home use."
"The most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility."
"I find the solution to be user-friendly. It has a lot of reports and easy settings."
"What I like about the VM-Series is that you can launch them in a very short time."
"The feature that I have found the most useful is that it meets all our requirements technically."
"The technical support for the solution is very good."
"It is an easy-to-scale product."
"The most valuable features are security and support."
"It gives us the ease that we are secure. We have set up the proper things that help make our data safe."
"In the newer version, there are 3850s, all of them are scalable. They fit better into the medium or small businesses."
"App-ID and User-ID have repeatedly shown value in securing business critical systems."
"Application management can be improved."
"There could be more integration between the logging and analytical platforms to make it more seamless and integrated."
"Backup can be improved."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"Technical support needs to be improved."
"From a reporting perspective, there's room for improvement. They're providing FortiAnalyzer through which one can get some enhancements, but the visibility and reporting still need slight improvement."
"The reports are very basic."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"In terms of improvement, the performance could be enhanced."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"The interface of the solution is an area with shortcomings."
"The ability to set the VPN IP address would be a welcome addition."
"I would like to see better SD-WAN performance."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"It'll help if Palo Alto Networks provided better documentation."
"We don't know how it will scale once we start putting more load on it."
"The product could provide protection above Layer 3, which gets into the application layer and provides better visibility into those aspects of application security."
"All areas need improvement: manufacturing, education, financial, etc."
"The solution's licensing could be improved, and training should be included before installation."
"It can definitely improve on the performance."
"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."
"It would be good if the common features work consistently in physical and virtual environments. There was an integration issue in the virtual deployment where it didn't report the interface counters, and we had to upgrade to the latest version, whereas the same thing has been working in the physical deployment for ages now. It seems that it was because of Azure. We were using VMware before, and we didn't have any such issues. We do see such small issues where we expect things to work, but they don't because of some incompatibilities. There also seems to be a limitation on how to do high availability in a virtualized environment. All features should be consistently available in physical and virtual environments. It is not always easy to integrate Palo Alto in the network management system. We would like to be able to compare two network management systems. They can maybe allow monitoring an interface through the GUI to create a reference or do a baseline check about whether your network monitoring system is actually giving you the correct traffic figures. You need traffic figures to be able to recognize the trends and plan the capacity."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 10th in Firewalls with 52 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". 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". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Juniper SRX Series Firewall. See our OPNsense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
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