We performed a comparison between OPNsense and SonicWall TZ 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 TAC is always very helpful. We pay for Tier 1 support, so we get whatever we need from them. They always give us a solution. If they can't give us an answer that day, they get back to us within at least 24 hours with a solution or fix. I have never had a problem with the TAC. I would rate them as 10 out of 10."
"I have access to the web version of Cisco Talos to see the reputation of IP addresses. I find this very helpful. It provides important information for my company to obtain the reputation of IP addresses. The information in Talos is quite complete."
"The most important feature is the intensive way you can troubleshoot Cisco Firepower Firewalls. You can go to the bit level to see why traffic is not handled in the correct way, and the majority of the time it's a networking issue and not a firewall issue. You can solve any problem without Cisco TAC help, because you can go very deeply under the hood to find out how traffic is flowing and whether it is not flowing as expected. That is something I have never seen with other brands."
"The most valuable feature would be ASDM. The ability to go in, visualize and see the world base in a clear and consistent manner is very powerful."
"It has definitely improved our organization. It gives us remote connectivity, helps workers connect remotely, and also gives us good connectivity to our other branches."
"The CLI is the most valuable feature. This solution is very flexible and offers different functionality including firewalls and VPN connectivity."
"One of the most valuable features of Firepower 7.0 is the "live log" type feature called Unified Event Viewer. That view has been really good in helping me get to data faster, decreasing the amount of time it takes to find information, and allowing me to fix problems faster. I've found that to be incredibly valuable because it's a lot easier to get to some points of data now."
"The fact that we can use Firepower Management Center gives us visibility. It allows us to see and manage the traffic that is going through the network."
"The initial implementation process is simple."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
"The technical support is very good."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"I have found the solution has some great features overall, such as guest access capabilities, dashboards, and ease of use. There is plenty of documentation and support and it has the plugins that I needed."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"We like their interface very much. It's pretty easy to use."
"It does what it says it is going to do."
"SonicWall TZ think it's a good, solid, and stable product."
"We like the unified threat management for defense-in-depth. We can terminate our site-to-site and remote access VPNs with it."
"The most valuable features are unified threat management which provides security intelligence and the VPN for both site-to-site and remote access."
"With the main firewall routing there, we can do connectivity point-to-point. On the low bandwidth we can connect in all the branches with my corporate office."
"It does exactly what it says on the tin. It is good for protecting the business from being compromised. Its port protection is very good."
"The site-to-site VPN connections, content filtering, and in our current remote working situation, SSL VPN remote desktop connectivity are the most valuable features."
"I have used Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point previously and I prefer the process of everything working together."
"One thing that we really would have loved to have was policy-based routing. We had a lot of connections, and sometimes, we would have liked to change the routing depending on the policies, but it was lacking this capability. We also wanted application filtering and DNS filtering."
"It needs to provide the next-generation firewall features that other vendors provide, like data analytics, telemetry, and deep packet inspection."
"I think they need to review their whole UI because it feels like it was created by a whole bunch of different teams of developers who didn't fully talk to each other. The net policy screen is just a mess. It should look like the firewall policy screen, and they should both act the same, but they don't. I feel like it's two different buildings or programming, who don't talk to each other, and that really annoys me."
"The ease of use needs improvement. It is complex to operate the solution. The user interface is not friendly."
"Nowadays, nobody is in the office, so I need to figure out how to put the firewall outside. If I could have a centralized firewall that also receives information from external locations, like peoples' home offices, that would help us consolidate everything into one appliance."
"The user interface is a little clunky and difficult to work with. Some things aren't as easy as they should be."
"When we first got it, we were doing individual configuring. Now, there is a way to manage from one location."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"The interface needs to be simplified. It is not user-friendly."
"They should improve IPEs for security in the future."
"The solution could be more secure."
"An area for improvement in OPNsense is the hardware, which needs to be updated more frequently. DNS blocking is another good feature I want to be added to the solution. pfSense has a peer-blocking feature that I also want to see in OPNsense."
"The support for OPNsense is good because we have documents available on the internet. The support could improve a little."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"GUI interface could be improved."
"Although the pricing is good, it could always be lower. If we get to pay less, we're happier."
"Needs more robust self-help documentation along with examples and things to watch out for."
"Sometimes there is a glitch between the network connection. Last time, something happened on our IP phone, the SonicWall team did some updates to fix the issue. However, glitches happen very rarely. I did not experience any other types of problems."
"I think content filtering is the area this product should improve. It's a little tricky to get put in correctly."
"The interface and technical support are probably the two most important things that I would like SonicWall to improve."
"The log sections could be done more clearly."
"In terms of what needs to be improved, I would say better load balancing and data filtering."
OPNsense is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 12 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 13th in Firewalls with 38 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.2, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Unbeatable pricing and easy to configure and use, but it can be configured only through the GUI, and the integration with Azure cloud is difficult". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Multifeatured firewall solution with a user-friendly interface, high availability, scalability, and stability". OPNsense is most compared with pfSense, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos XG, Fortinet FortiGate and Zyxel Unified Security Gateway, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, pfSense, SonicWall NSa and Zyxel Unified Security Gateway. See our OPNsense vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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