We performed a comparison between OPNsense and Sophos UTM 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 grouping of the solutions helps save time. If you have a problem and you have a high-level overview of the system, you can easily dig deeper into the problem. For example, I can check to see why ASA isn't working but the reason for the outage is actually because of Duo. I can spend a lot of time working in the wrong direction because I didn't have an overview."
"With Cisco, there are a lot of features such as the network map. Cisco builds the whole network map of the machines you have behind your firewall and gives you insight into the vulnerabilities and attributes that the host has. Checkpoint and Fortinet don't have that functionality directly on the firewall."
"The most valuable feature is the anti-malware protection. It protects the endpoints on my network."
"So far, it has been very stable."
"The security features are the most valuable. My customers find the security products very useful because nowadays there are many threats from the internet and other malicious users. The security products really help."
"The most valuable Cisco Secure Firewall features are options, features, and ease of deployment because it's an appliance."
"The features I've found most valuable are the packet captures and packet traces because they help me debug connections. I like the logs because they help me see what's going on."
"It has a good security level. It is a next-generation firewall. It can protect from different types of attacks. We have enabled IPS and IDS."
"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 initial implementation process is simple."
"The most valuable features of OPNsense are the GUI and frequent updates."
"The technical support is very good."
"URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"The firewall itself is very strong and provides great security."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature is ransomware protection."
"What I like about Sophos UTM is that it improves my company's security. The solution is easy to set up, which I like, and it's very stable."
"An easy solution to learn because the graphics are very intuitive."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The cost of the solution is very reasonable."
"Sophos UTM has a good user interface and granular security controls."
"The integration between different tools could be improved. For example, with SecureX, I am yet to find out how to forward security events to different tools such as Microsoft Sentinel, which is what we use for log detection."
"I would like it if they made the newer generation a bit simpler. You can do ASA code and FXOS. It is just a bit confusing with the newer generational equipment on what it can do."
"The access layer of this solution could be improved in terms of the way the devices interconnect with our network. We need to be able to analyze the traffic between the different interconnection in these areas."
"Firepower's user experience should be a little bit better."
"There is room for improvement in the stability or software quality of the product. There were a few things in the past where we had a little bit of a problem with the product, so there is room for improvement."
"I would like it if there was a centralized way to manage policies, then sticking with the network functions on the actual devices. That is probably the thing that frustrates me the most. I want a way that you can manage multiple policies at several different locations, all at one site. You then don't have to worry about the connectivity piece, in case you are troubleshooting because connectivity is down."
"The most valuable features of the product are the VPN and the NextGen firewall features such as application control, URL filtering, etc."
"The only drawback of the user interface is when it comes to policies. When you open it and click on the policies, you have to move manually left and right if you want to see the whole field within the cell. Checkpoint has a very detailed user interface."
"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."
"They should improve IPEs for security in the future."
"The support for OPNsense is good because we have documents available on the internet. The support could improve a little."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in SSL inspection."
"While they do have paid options that actually gives better features, for most of the clients, if they tend to take a paid option will instead opt for Fortinet."
"Its interface should be a little bit better."
"The interface isn't so friendly user. But we have some technicians here who are quite confident with this tool. OPNSense could maybe add sets of rules so it's simpler to manage different groups with particular needs."
"The solution needs better integration with captive portals and XGs."
"I didn't like it much. It suits only small businesses. It isn't scalable and reliable. There is a very critical issue with the power supply."
"Email spam filtering only works if you have an on-prem Exchange server. It doesn't interface with Office 365 like the XG model. That would be one feature that they could improve. They're not going to do it because they're trying to push us all to XG."
"In Sophos UTM there is always a problem with the routing tables. If you want to see the routing table, you have to use the UI. You can't do it via a web browser. The routing table is better in Fortinet."
"When we call support, we get put on hold for a long time."
"They could use more SSL VPN support."
"There can be a delay when it comes to reaching out to technical support."
"We'd like to see them offer their services on mobile devices like tablets. I'm not sure if that's an option or not."
OPNsense is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 15 reviews while Sophos UTM is ranked 1st in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 42 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.2, while Sophos UTM is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of OPNsense writes "There are lots of capabilities built-in: Few would be High Availability, Proxy, DNS, Intrusion detection/prevention, content filtering, traffic and bandwidth management with 2factor autn. ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos UTM writes "It's a highly stable platform with very few hardware issues". OPNsense is most compared with pfSense, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos XG, Fortinet FortiGate and Check Point NGFW, whereas Sophos UTM is most compared with pfSense, Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our OPNsense vs. Sophos UTM report.
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