We performed a comparison between OPNsense and WatchGuard Firebox 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."Whenever I need something, Fortinet improves and updates the software for me."
"The stability and scalability of this solution are satisfactory. Its SD-WAN, VPN, and URL filtering features are very useful."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"The initial setup of Fortinet FortiGate was straightforward."
"The network security and cloud security are most valuable."
"The simplicity of the configuration and the stability of the product are most valuable. The VPN concentrator is very useful."
"It does a lot for you for intrusion protection and as an antivirus. The threat management bundle is worth the money. You don't need another company to monitor your web traffic for you. You can do everything yourself on the firewall. You restrict your own black list for people on the firewall. You don't need to pay some other company for another product to do that for you. The firewall can do that for you. So, it's an easy-to-use product for people to be independent. They don't need to rely on other vendors to do what the firewall can do. They can do everything."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"It has an open license. It works very well, and there is an update every month."
"OPNsense is easy to use and open source."
"The initial implementation process is simple."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"It's open source."
"I feel that its valuable features are that it is simple and free."
"The IDS and IPS features are valuable. From the usability perspective, there is a lot of good documentation. As IT professionals, we found it very easy to configure the firewall. It was easy to configure and use."
"I have found the DNS Watch feature for intrusion and prevention response and APT Locker most valuable to me."
"This product offers great protection using the default settings."
"The solution has a useful traffic monitor."
"It is a scalable solution."
"WatchGuard Firebox's two-factor authentication feature is particularly useful and provides an added layer of protection."
"The most valuable feature of WatchGuard Firebox is the VPN. It's easy to connect to the VPN."
"I like intrusion detection the most."
"All of the features have been valuable. There's nothing on my M270 that I'm not using. If you have remote access, you can see how many users are coming from the outside world to be connected to the systems, through the virus systems that we have behind the firewall, in order to gain access to their files and do their work. We can also see how long they stay online and whether these connections are closed forcefully or for any other reasons, such as a glitch or some kind of misbehavior, to see if internet traffic is optimized and if that particular traffic is under company policies, concerning which websites were visited."
"It would be ideal if they had some sort of GUI interface for troubleshooting and diagnostics."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"The stability could be a bit better."
"This product needs to have an analysis feature, rather than having the analysis done through the integration of a different product."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"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."
"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."
"The IPS solution could be more reliable."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in SSL inspection."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"The reporting part could be better."
"They are working on cloud-based options. However, they do not have the options fully functional in their solution at this time."
"The performance of the solution's processor needs to be faster."
"This is a great product and offers great protection but they don't hear the customers' needs. They don't make improvements as per the customers' requests."
"What could use some significant improvement in WatchGuard Firebox would be its interface and policy management. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of WatchGuard Firebox is the ability to modify an existing policy instead of having to recreate a policy when changes are necessary. At the moment, there's no possibility to modify the policy. You have to delete the policy and recreate it."
"The area where I think this product can be improved is the user interface and the reporting. It can be quite difficult to find the correct logs and to actually find out what is going on. The digging can be time-consuming."
"WatchGuard Firebox could improve the speed of updates, such as new features or improvements. However, they are frequently improving the solution in many areas, such as geo-locations, definitions, and web blocking."
"The VPN aspect of the WatchGuard Firebox is an area that could potentially benefit from improvement. We encountered difficulties while attempting to integrate Windows 11 laptops into the system, which resulted in unreliable connections. After some research, we discovered that this was primarily due to compatibility issues with Windows 11 and required a patch. However, it was still a challenge as it seemed that even when we tried to keep the laptops on Windows 10, they still exhibited the same issues as Windows 11 machines. Despite WatchGuard attributing the problem to Microsoft, we were eventually able to find a solution and all the machines are now functioning seamlessly."
"There's always room for improvement, especially if the threats are getting more sophisticated and the IT department cannot sufficiently meet this kind of sophistication with their own knowledge and experience. Knowing that this solution can get up to the level of addressing a lot of these threats is something that everybody wishes for. If we look at the dark web and the lawful web, they are two opposites, and if these two good and bad collide in the world of the internet, you want the best possible product—especially if you cannot get to that point of knowledge. I am just an individual and end user, with limited knowledge of usage. That's why I say there's always room for improvement, from their side and also from mine, because by knowing exactly what they can achieve and the knowledge that they can get on an everyday basis, and the portion that is understandable to me, it's an improvement for them as well."
OPNsense is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 17 reviews while WatchGuard Firebox is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 25 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while WatchGuard Firebox is rated 8.4. 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 WatchGuard Firebox writes "Easy to deploy and it provides useful data on threats ". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and Check Point NGFW, whereas WatchGuard Firebox is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Meraki MX, Cisco Secure Firewall and Sophos UTM. See our OPNsense vs. WatchGuard Firebox report.
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