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OPNsense vs Zyxel Unified Security Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
592
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Firewalls (1st), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
OPNsense
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (4th)
Zyxel Unified Security Gateway
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd
Unified security and sd-wan have improved uptime and cut wan costs for multi-site branches
Users report stability issues in certain versions, which requires regular updates. Real-world attacks have also highlighted the need for urgent patching of vulnerabilities.Fortinet FortiGate, while a powerful and feature-rich web firewall, could improve in areas like firmware stability, documentation, and ease of use. The learning curve can be steep for some users. For beginners, support quality can vary, and frequent updates with occasional vulnerabilities call for careful patch management. However, once Fortinet FortiGate is configured, it remains highly reliable and efficient. Customer support needs improvement, as I find it very slow, with reports from other users reflecting that customer support is inadequate.
Moutaz Sheikh Alard - PeerSpot reviewer
ISO 27001 Lead Implementer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Has helped simulate enterprise security setups and strengthens network segmentation practices
For my capstone, I use OPNsense for my project and its broader benefits for enterprise and cybersecurity context. OPNsense is an open source based firewall and routing platform. It offers enterprise-grade features such as intrusion detection and prevention system, VPN support, traffic shaping, and web filtering, all without license cost. This platform has a modular design, a clean web-based GUI, and frequent updates that prioritize security and usability. It competes with commercial firewalls such as Cisco ASA, FortiGate, and Palo Alto, but stands out because it's community-driven, cost-effective, and transparent. I find OPNsense's feature of acting as a central firewall and gateway most valuable, providing robust point segmentation between the internal network and DMZs in my capstone project, intrusion detection to monitor malicious traffic, VPN services for secure remote access, and logging and monitoring for compliance and auditing. This allows me to simulate a real-world enterprise environment on a smaller scale, demonstrating both security hardening and network efficiency. OPNsense impacts my projects and home network positively because its cost-effectiveness is perfect for lab and enterprise setup without expensive licensing. The flexibility, easy VLAN and DMZ configuration supports different zones such as web servers, mail servers, and log servers. The security-first design for IDS/IPS integration helps me showcase modern defense-in-depth strategies. The user-friendly management through the web GUI makes it possible to manage complex firewall rules clearly, which is critical when documenting and presenting a capstone. Scalability is also an advantage. Although my project is lab-based, OPNsense can scale into production deployments in SMBs and enterprise.
reviewer2399337 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales and technical consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
User has benefited from stable performance and effective completion of security tasks
I use it mostly for VPN and for some firewall solutions When considering my main use case with VPN, I can say that I got the Zyxel Unified Security Gateway, and it works fine. However, we are thinking about using a different solution based on open source because Zyxel Unified Security Gateway…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most useful features are application control, web filtering, and SD-WAN."
"Overall security features and performance routing is good."
"Security solution with a straightforward and quick setup. It's a stable and scalable product."
"The most important features with FortiGate are the web filter and application controls, as we can control our internet usage and use the web filter for application purposes."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"Fortinet's scalability and stability are fine because I have three units across India, and none have gone down so far."
"The most valuable features we found are the SD-WAN, FortiGate SD-WAN, and the standard UTM protection, among others."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"I find the solution to be user-friendly, with a lot of reports and easy settings."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"OPNsense definitely gives me peace of mind and helps my workflow because of the network isolation, as I can have multiple subnets without having to worry about one affecting the other."
"The most valuable thing about this product is that it is very easy to use, the graphic user interface is very good, and it is user-friendly."
"OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
"The most valuable features are reporting, the Sensei plugin, and firewall capabilities."
"One of the most valuable features is the network checking. Additionally, the firewall and web filtering functionalities are highly useful."
"The technical support is very good."
"The Zyxel Unified Security Gateway solution is stable and does its job effectively."
"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus."
"The cost is very low."
"The solution can scale well."
"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."
 

Cons

"Vulnerabilities owing to viruses in the OS need to be reduced in FortiGate Next Generation Firewall from an improvement perspective."
"From a support perspective, I had more issues that I didn't think the person on my case handled the way I was expecting. We called them for a geolocation issue and we didn't get any proper assistance."
"FortiOS is not simple."
"I do not foresee the product being easy to scale. We find it so hard."
"It is difficult as an end-user to setup continuing license contracts."
"We had a minor problem where there was a major system upgrade on the hardware platfrom and the Mac client was not available as soon as it might have been. The PC client was available immediately, but we had to wait a month or so, before there was a mac client. I was slightly irritated that it was not ready on time, but it was eventually resolved."
"It would be helpful to have a better tool for migrating all policy rules using an automatic script."
"The room for improvement is to have more flexibility on the virtual machines of their next-generation platforms."
"It is stable, but for us, it is not yet so reliable."
"I would like to see better SD-WAN performance."
"OPNsense showed me some problems when using it in different environments. The problem is integration with a virtual server."
"SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) is integrated into some restricted service providers for OPNSense."
"When using the solution at the beginning was difficult. There was a steep learning curve."
"To use Intrusion detection and Antivirus Plugin it is necessary to configure proxy; without a proxy, you cannot use the ClamAV antivirus plugin."
"There are a few weaknesses. For example, there is a lack of some features that I have in certain commercial products."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved."
"Sometimes it reboots when you least expect it, and that's the main issue."
"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved. The advanced UI allows me to do whatever I want, but this is where the issue of speed exists."
"The product has some scalability and data management issues where improvements are required."
"I have never seen it in any company that I've worked with before, and I would advise other companies not to buy it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet bundles FortiGate with other products and because of this, the price is a little expensive to some SMB enterprises."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten"
"The solution could be better priced."
"It's very affordable."
"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."
"Fortinet is competitive price-wise."
"The tool's pricing is neither cheap nor expensive. Overall, I find it to be competitive in the market."
"FortiGate's pricing falls within the mid-range when compared to other leading firewall solutions."
"Its pricing is unbeatable in comparison to other firewalls. You can have a small instance that could be €80 a month with the hardware underneath. Azure Firewall and FortiGate are out of the question at this price. If you are on a public cloud, you need the underlying infrastructure. Other than that, there is no additional cost. If you have it on-prem, you have to buy the server or the appliance. The hardware cost is replaced with the infrastructure cost in the cloud. You also have costs for the public IPs and underlying VMs, but that's not related to OPNsense. It would be the same for a FortiGate deployment on Azure. You need a FortiGate license, and you need the underlying infrastructure that scales up depending on your needs."
"As an appliance, it's in the medium price range."
"OPNsense is an open-source solution and it is free to use."
"The solution is not expensive."
"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 open source software so at this time it is free for us to use."
"I would rate the pricing three out of ten."
"It's not expensive."
"This gateway is pretty cheap."
"The price of Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is good compared to other similar products in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Comms Service Provider
20%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business366
Midsize Enterprise136
Large Enterprise193
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise8
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What is the difference between PfSense and OPNsense?
Two of the most common and well recognized firewalls, PfSense and OPNsense both support site-to-site IPsec VPN and cl...
What do you like most about OPNsense?
What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OPNsense?
Setup cost is almost zero as one can simulate the whole environment using open source version. Pricing seems fair eno...
What do you like most about Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
I cannot definitively comment on whether Zyxel Unified Security Gateway is an affordable product as I haven't done co...
What needs improvement with Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
The integration capability is quite challenging. The system is very complicated, and many features are hidden. I'm lo...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, 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.
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Find out what your peers are saying about OPNsense vs. Zyxel Unified Security Gateway and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
891,869 professionals have used our research since 2012.