OPNsense vs Palo Alto Networks VM-Series comparison

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Fortinet Logo
123,063 views|89,961 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
OPNsense Logo
108,675 views|95,621 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Palo Alto Networks Logo
7,471 views|4,810 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

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.
To learn more, read our detailed OPNsense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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Cons
"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."

More Fortinet FortiGate Cons →

"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."

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"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."

More Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Fortinet has one or two license types, and the VPN numbers are only limited by the hardware chassis make."
  • "These boxes are not that expensive compared to what they can do, their functionality, and the reporting you receive. Fortinet licensing is straightforward and less confusing compared to Cisco."
  • "Go for long term pricing negotiated at the time of purchase."
  • "Work through partners for the best pricing."
  • "The value is the capability of having multiple services with one unique license, not having the limitation per user licensing schema, like other vendors."
  • "Easy to understand licensing requirements."
  • "​We saved a bundle by not needing all the past appliances from an NGFW.​"
  • "The cost is too high... They have to focus on more features with less cost for the customer. If you see the market, where it's going, there are a lot of players offering more features for less cost."
  • More Fortinet FortiGate Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We are not paying any licensing fees. OPNsense is completely free for us."
  • "It costs about $1000."
  • "There are no licensing costs for OPNsence."
  • "OPNsense is open source software so at this time it is free for us to use."
  • "OPNsense is a well known open-source tool."
  • "It is not an expensive product. Basically, I deployed it because it was the fastest solution to satisfy our needs in open source."
  • "OPNsense is an open-source solution and it is free to use."
  • "The solution is not expensive."
  • More OPNsense Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "For what you get, it does do what it says. It is a good value for an enterprise firewall.​"
  • "​The licensing is pretty much like everyone else."
  • "When you have a client compare box against box, a lot of times Palo Alto is a bit more expensive, but its network firewalls have a very rich ratio."
  • "Do not buy larges box if you do not need them. Rightsizing is a great task to do before​hand."
  • "I know Palo Alto is not cheap. They have been telling me, the members of the finance team, it is not a cheap solution. It is a solution whose target is that no matter how big your organization is, small, medium, or large, it is about the maturity of your security team or infrastructure team whom you want to work with."
  • "It is a little bit of crazy if you compare it to Vanguard, Sophos, or even Cisco. The newest version of Cisco, the Next-Generation Firewall of Cisco, is less expensive than Palo Alto. It is more comparable to Check Point."
  • "For licensing, It depends how they want to use the firewall. The firewall can be used only for IPS purposes. If you only want that firewall IPSs, you will only need a license that is called threat prevention. That license, threat prevention, includes vulnerabilities, antivirus signatures and one additional measure (that I can't remember), but it includes three measures and security updates."
  • "The box, if you do not want to buy the threat prevention license in the box, you can buy it only with the support license. It is for the support of the hardware. It works like a simple firewall. It integrates what it calls user IDs and application IDs. If you do not buy any other license, only the firewall, Palo Alto will also help you improve a lot of your security."
  • More Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage at… more »
    Top Answer:From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know… more »
    Top Answer:As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite… more »
    Top Answer:Two of the most common and well recognized firewalls, PfSense and OPNsense both support site-to-site IPsec VPN and… more »
    Top Answer:It is a very good solution. I like the dashboard. I can see what is going on and manage it as I like it.
    Top Answer:In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it… more »
    Top Answer:Both products are very stable and easily scalable The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the… more »
    Top Answer:The technical support for the solution is very good.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate
    Learn More
    Overview

    Fortinet FortiGate enhances network security, prevents unauthorized access, and offers robust firewall protection. Valued features include advanced threat protection, reliable performance, and a user-friendly interface. It improves efficiency, streamlines processes, and boosts collaboration, providing valuable insights for informed decision-making and growth.

    OPNsense is a user-friendly, fast-track, open-source FreeBSD-based firewall and routing platform. This software offers features that are generally available from costly commercial firewalls, with the added benefit of open and verifiable sources. The firewall provides users, developers, and organizations with an advantageous environment through transparency. The development of this project is driven by a strong focus on security and code quality.

    The solution offers a variety of components, such as:

    • Weekly security updates. These updates provide the user with the ability to reach new emerging threats in a timely manner through small increments.

    • Two major releases every year. These yearly releases are on a fixed release cycle and provide organizations with the ability to plan ahead of an upcoming upgrade.

    • A roadmap of instructions. Each major release provides a guide and a set of clear goals.

    A team of professionals developed OPNsense. Other professional and experienced software architects, engineers, and developers are encouraged to join in the development of the solution to make it as successful as possible. OPNsense offers a variety of rich features with each release. Each upgrade is based on FreeBSD for continual, long-term support and utilizes a freshly advanced MVC framework based on Phalcon. OPNsense is committed to helping businesses, school networks, remote offices, hotels, and other markets in keeping their data protected.

    OPNsense Core Features

    OPNsense continually offers a free, complete, high-end security platform with new releases and features. With each release, OPNsense focuses on providing more unique and better security features in a timely manner. These features include:

    • Captive Portal
    • Built-in reporting and monitoring tools including RRD Graphs
    • Network Flow Monitoring
    • Traffic Shaper
    • Support for Plugins
    • Granular Control Over State Table
    • Dynamic DNS
    • Two-factor authentication throughout the system
    • Netflow Exporter
    • Encrypted Configuration Backup to Google Drive
    • Forward Caching Proxy (transparent) with Blacklist Support
    • Stateful inspection firewall
    • DNS Server & DNS Forwarder
    • High Availability & Hardware Failover (with configuration synchronization & synchronized state tables)
    • DHCP Server and Relay
    • Virtual Private Network (site to site & road warrior, IPsec, OpenVPN & legacy PPTP support)
    • Intrusion Detection and Prevention
    • 802.1Q VLAN support

    Reviews from Real Users

    OPNsense is a favorite security solution among reviewers for a number of reasons. Two of those reasons include the user-friendliness of the solution, which makes it easy to use, and its ability to easily scale.

    For many, a user-friendly solution is essential. FiorindoDi A., a system administration specialist at a tech vendor, says, "The graphic user interface is very good and it is user-friendly, which makes the product easy-to-use."

    Peerspot reviewers speak of the scalability of the solution. For example, an anonymous cloud and infrastructure manager at a venture capital and private equity firm reviewer notes, "OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."

    Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a highly effective advanced threat protection (ATP) solution and firewall that can be hosted on cloud computing technologies designed by many different companies. It decreases the amount of time that it will take administrators to respond to threats. Users that deploy VM-series have 70% less downtime than those who use similar firewalls. Neither protection nor efficiency are concerns when this next-generation firewall is in play.

    VM-Series is being deployed to protect both public and private cloud environments. This level of flexibility empowers organizations to run the environment or environments that best meet their needs without worrying that they are going to be exposed to digital threats due to the environment that they choose.

    In the public cloud, users of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series can automate their deployment and dynamically scale up their environment while experiencing a consistent level of protection. This dynamic scalability means that they also integrate their security into their DevOps workflows so that their security can keep up with their activities and requirements. Users of private cloud environments can set up security policies that can be automated to be provisioned as the need arises. Organizations don’t need to slow down when they deploy VM-Series because it makes the task of defending them so simple that they can set their defenses and forget that they are even there.

    Users gain a deep level of visibility when they deploy Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. App-ID technology enables organizations to see their network traffic on the application level and spot threats that might be trying to sneak in through vulnerable points in their defenses. It also leverages Palo Alto Networks WildFire and advanced threat protection to block the threats before they can escalate.

      Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Features:

      • Central management system - It has a central management system that enables users to set up and control their security operations from one location. Users don’t need to search for the tools that they need. This system allows for security consistency and complete control without requiring businesses to spend large periods of time to do so.
      • Blacklisting and whitelisting - Organizations can utilize blacklisting and whitelisting tools to ensure that their network traffic only contains the type of traffic that they want to be present. These tools make it possible for them to set specific web traffic sources as being either undesirable and thus blocked from entering their network or desirable and thus allowed to enter. 
      • Automation feature - The product’s automation feature can automate many critical functions that users would otherwise have to handle manually. Security policy updates are an example of a function that users can automate.

      Reviews from Real Users:

      Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a solution that stands out when compared to other similar solutions. Two major advantages that it offers are its ability to protect users without degrading the efficiency with which their networks perform and its centralized management system. 

      Jason H., the director of information technology at Tavoca Inc, writes, “There is no noticeable trade-off between security and network performance. In fact, so far, we've not seen any negative network performance with it. We're very impressed in that regard.”

      An information technology manager at a tech services company says, “We use Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system. We have an on-prem firewall where Panorama is very good for pulling logs in from the cloud so we can see what is going on. It gives us visibility into that as well as shows us what attacks are coming in. Palo Alto’s Panorama centralized management system simplifies our security posture based on our requirements. Instead of manually pulling logs, then generating them into readable formats, it gives us the console in a readable format to view.”

      Sample Customers
      1. Amazon Web Services 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Cisco 5. Dell 6. HP 7. Oracle 8. Verizon 9. AT&T 10. T-Mobile 11. Sprint 12. Vodafone 13. Orange 14. BT Group 15. Telstra 16. Deutsche Telekom 17. Comcast 18. Time Warner Cable 19. CenturyLink 20. NTT Communications 21. Tata Communications 22. SoftBank 23. China Mobile 24. Singtel 25. Telus 26. Rogers Communications 27. Bell Canada 28. Telkom Indonesia 29. Telkom South Africa 30. Telmex 31. Telia Company 32. Telkom Kenya
      1. Deciso B.V. 2. iXsystems, Inc.  3. EuroBSDCon  4. Netgate  5. Claranet  6. Voleatech  7. Open Systems AG  8. Securebit AG  9. Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH  10. AVM Computersysteme Vertriebs GmbH  Additional customers include: T-Systems International GmbH, Deutsche Telekom AG, Vodafone GmbH, 1&1 IONOS SE, OVHcloud, Hetzner Online GmbH, Strato AG, PlusServer GmbH, Host Europe GmbH, United Internet AG, 1&1 Versatel Deutschland GmbH, QSC AG, Bechtle AG, Cancom SE, Computacenter AG & Co. oHG, T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, Atos SE, Capgemini SE, Accenture plc, IBM Corporation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Cisco Systems, Inc.
      Warren Rogers Associates
      Top Industries
      REVIEWERS
      Comms Service Provider16%
      Computer Software Company9%
      Financial Services Firm8%
      Manufacturing Company7%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Educational Organization20%
      Computer Software Company15%
      Comms Service Provider8%
      Manufacturing Company6%
      REVIEWERS
      Comms Service Provider24%
      Financial Services Firm18%
      Logistics Company12%
      Aerospace/Defense Firm6%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Comms Service Provider16%
      Computer Software Company15%
      Government8%
      Educational Organization6%
      REVIEWERS
      Computer Software Company23%
      Manufacturing Company17%
      Financial Services Firm13%
      Government10%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Computer Software Company15%
      Financial Services Firm11%
      Manufacturing Company7%
      Government6%
      Company Size
      REVIEWERS
      Small Business48%
      Midsize Enterprise23%
      Large Enterprise30%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Small Business27%
      Midsize Enterprise32%
      Large Enterprise41%
      REVIEWERS
      Small Business71%
      Midsize Enterprise12%
      Large Enterprise18%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Small Business33%
      Midsize Enterprise18%
      Large Enterprise49%
      REVIEWERS
      Small Business40%
      Midsize Enterprise26%
      Large Enterprise33%
      VISITORS READING REVIEWS
      Small Business23%
      Midsize Enterprise16%
      Large Enterprise61%
      Buyer's Guide
      OPNsense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
      March 2024
      Find out what your peers are saying about OPNsense vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
      768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.

      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.

      See our list of best Firewalls vendors.

      We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.