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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
591
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
6.6
Number of Reviews
47
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) (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

Abhinandan Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
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

"We have received a very good ROI; it has provided significant time savings of almost 20-25%."
"Using this product makes the VPN seamless and almost invisible to me in the sense that I don't have to think about it."
"Fortinet FortiGate has many excellent functions and good security."
"Consolidated our network environment at all locations, but mainly at our datacenter."
"The stability is great; there are no issues with crashing or freezing, and there are no bugs or glitches."
"The solution is more affordable compared to alternatives."
"I like its ability to prevent external intrusion into our database. It's so fun."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features."
"The initial implementation process is simple."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"It's open source."
"OPNsense is easy to use and open source."
"The solution is good for a basic firewall for a small business or for home use."
"OPNsense is very stable, easy to upgrade, and maintain."
"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."
"The cost is very low."
"The Zyxel Unified Security Gateway solution is stable and does its job effectively."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from web filtering, malware protection, and antivirus."
"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."
"The solution can scale well."
"This is a capable appliance and the standard features work well for us."
 

Cons

"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"There are some tiny bugs that sometimes affect the operations."
"The renewal cost is much higher than other firewalls. It is not reasonable."
"It could always be more secure."
"There are problems with the custom reporting of the unique traffic. The data is there, but it is too difficult for us to extract."
"The web process often has a memory leak."
"They are doing good, but they can improve the distributor assignment. The availability of the product and the timeline of delivery are the main things. The distribution should be swift, and the distributor should not reach out to end customers directly. They should work as a distributor. There should also be one more local distributor. Currently, there is only one distributor in Pakistan, and the rest of them are in UAE. It is difficult to work with only one distributor. Sometimes, you don't get along with the same distributor, and that's why they should have one more distributor. Their licensing should also be improved. The activation or renewal of the product should be done from the date of renewal, not from the date on which the license expired."
"FortiGate's logging and reporting could be improved. I would also like to see Fortinet add a guest management portal."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"Its interface should be a little bit better."
"The support for OPNsense is good because we have documents available on the internet. The support could improve a little."
"The only thing that I would like to see improved is the Insight or the NetFlow analysis part. It would be good to have the possibility to dig down on the Insight platform. Right now, we can easily do only a few analyses. If this page becomes more powerful, it surely will be a well-adopted platform."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"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."
"I would like to see better SD-WAN performance."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"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."
"Sometimes it reboots when you least expect it, and that's the main issue."
"The product has some scalability and data management issues where improvements are required."
"Although manageable, the user interface is a little bit slow and could be improved."
"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

"It's one of the more expensive brands. The 100 series costs around $4,000. They are similar in pricing to what you might get from Cisco solutions and probably other similar ones. They're not more expensive than other similar solutions, but they're certainly not cheaper either."
"The price is okay, so far so good."
"Fortinet is competitive price-wise."
"The product pricing is reasonable."
"Fortinet costs are 25% lower than the high-cost provider. There is an equipment cost and a recurring monthly cost for licenses and technical support."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is reasonable for an SME."
"The value is the capability of having multiple services with one unique license, not having the limitation per user licensing schema, like other vendors."
"The price depends on the size of the company. From the beginning, you just want to know the internet bandwidths, speed, and the number of users to be able to offer the right product and model. They have a lot of products in FortiGate according to the size of the company, like 200D and 300D."
"I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten, especially considering the availability of a free community edition."
"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."
"It is not an expensive product. Basically, I deployed it because it was the fastest solution to satisfy our needs in open source."
"There are no licensing costs for OPNsence."
"It costs about $1000."
"It's not expensive."
"I'm using the free version of OPNsense. I didn't check the pricing for the solution because I still need to test it before getting the approval to purchase OPNsense, and it isn't easy to get approval from the higher-ups."
"OPNsense is an open-source solution and it is free to use."
"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
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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 Business367
Midsize Enterprise135
Large Enterprise193
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise8
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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 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 needs improvement with OPNsense?
In my opinion, OPNsense could improve by incorporating either an open side of wireless management or a way that you c...
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...
What is your primary use case for Zyxel Unified Security Gateway?
I use it mostly for VPN and for some firewall solutions. When considering my main use case with VPN, I can say that I...
 

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.
896,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.