We performed a comparison between Palo Alto Networks and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: pfSense has an edge in this comparison as it is a free, open-source solution while Palo Alto Networks is considered expensive by its users.
"The deep packet inspection is useful, but the most useful feature is application awareness. You can filter on the app rather than on a static TCP port."
"It's very scalable. You can go to different models of the ASAs and they scale up to as big as you want to go."
"So far, it has been very stable."
"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."
"The most valuable features of this solution are advanced malware protection, IPS, and IDS."
"It helped us a lot with our VPNs for the home office during COVID. There has been more security and flexibility for VPNs and other applications."
"It just works for us."
"We get the Security Intelligence Feeds refreshed every hour from Talos, which from my understanding is that they're the largest intelligence Security Intelligence Group outside of the government."
"The graphical interface is easy to troubleshoot because it has a drill-down sequence. It is easy to monitor traffic."
"It has a solid network security with some robust tools. We can block unexpected attacks, especially zero-day attacks. Since they use the Pan-OS engine, they can collect attacks from all over the world and analyze them. They can then protect against zero-day attacks and unexpected attacks."
"I like the architecture because it separates the management plan process and the data plan process."
"It's one of the best products I've worked with. It's typically a market leader on Gartner. It's a very respected brand."
"It's very important that Palo Alto NG Firewalls embed machine learning into the core of the firewall to provide inline, real-time attack prevention. That increases our security posture... The firewall is able to capture it and flag it and it is easy to mitigate as soon as we see something like that happening, to secure the environment more, in real time."
"Palo Alto NGFW provides a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities, which is very useful. This prevents us from having to go to a lot of different systems, and in some cases, many different systems in many different regions, because we are a global company with 60 remote offices around the world in 30 different countries. Its centralized platform is really what we look for in all services, whether it be security or otherwise."
"It's quite nice. It's very user-friendly, powerful, and there are barely any bugs."
"The strengths of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are application visibility and application awareness. Their strong point is identifying applications for traffic. So all of the policies that are configured are related to the application and not to a port."
"It is a very good solution for enterprises that need a VPN for their employees. It is the best way to provide a remote work facility to employees at a very low cost. Other solutions that I have had in the past were very expensive. Enterprises don't always have that kind of money to invest."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"I'm the expert when it comes to Linux systems, however, with the pfSense, due to the web interface, the rest of the staff can actually make changes to it as required without me worrying about whether they've opened up ports incorrectly or not. The ease of use for non-expert staff is very good."
"I have found pfSense to be stable."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"It is a better firewall than others and it has better features."
"The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well."
"Cisco should work on ASDM. One of the biggest drawbacks of Cisco ASA is ASDM GUI. Cisco should improve the ASDM GUI. The configuration through ASDM is really difficult as compared to CLI. Sometimes when you are doing the configuration in ASDM, it suddenly crashes. It also crashes while pushing a policy. Cisco should really work on this."
"The maturity needs to be better."
"The solution has not had any layer upgrades. It does not have layer five and upwards, it only has up to layer four. This has caused some problems for us."
"It lacks management. For me, it still doesn't have a proper management tool or GUI for configuration, logging, and visualization. Its management is not that easy. It is also not very flexible and easy to configure. They used to have a product called CSM, but it is no longer being developed. FortiGate is better than this solution in terms of GUI, flexibility, and user-friendliness."
"When you make any changes, irrespective of whether they are big or small, Firepower takes too much time. It is very time-consuming. Even for small changes, you have to wait for 60 seconds or maybe more, which is not good. Similarly, when you have many IPS rules and policies, it slows down, and there is an impact on its performance."
"On the VPN side, Firepower could be better. It needs more monitoring on VPNs. Right now, it's not that good. You can set up a VPN in Firepower, but you can't monitor it."
"The reporting and other features are nice, but there is an issue with applying the configuration. That part needs some improvement."
"Cisco wasn't first-to-market with NGFWs... they should look at what other vendors are doing and try not only to be on the same wavelength but a little bit better."
"They could improve their support and pricing and maybe integration. It's a little more expensive that Check Point but the quality is better. Integration with firewall endpoints could be better. Palo Alto does have very good malware or antivirus protection. I think they could improve on that front."
"We have a lot of the older firewall models, i.e., the PA-220. It seems that with newer operating systems the PA-220 is becoming slower than when I first bought it. It is not really an issue for users who are passing traffic through the firewall, but more from the management access of it."
"The solution could be simplified."
"The solution would benefit from having a dashboard."
"The price could be more friendly, which would be good for Palo Alto and us. If the price were a little lower, then it would be a viable option for mid-level businesses, who may not be able to deploy at the current price point."
"It is a complete product, but the SSL inspection feature requires some improvements. We need to deploy certificates at each end point to completely work out the UTM solutions. If you enable SSL encryption, it is a tedious process. It takes a lot of time to deploy the certificates to all endpoints. Without SSL inspection, UTM features will not work properly. So, we are forced to enable this SSL inspection feature."
"In Mexico, Palo Alto's discounts are significantly lower than Cisco's. They are also more expensive – about 15% or 20% – than Cisco, but their platforms are very similar."
"I think visibility can be improved."
"Other solutions provide more scope for growth. For instance, we can have only 10 to 20 employees on VPN, but other solutions can support more users. We also have more capabilities to increase the performance of the solution."
"In terms of areas of improvement, the interface seemed like it had a lot. The GUI interface that I had gotten into was rather elaborate. I don't know if they could zero in on some markets and potentially for small, medium businesses specifically, give them a stripped-down version of the GUI for pfSense."
"Ease of use is a problem for a user who is unfamiliar with this product because, in the interface, everything has to be set manually."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult."
"The product could offer more integrated plugins."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"We are at the moment looking to use it as a proxy service so that we can limit what websites people go and view and that sort of thing. That's an area I've struggled with a little bit at the moment and it could be a bit easier to set up."
More Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls Pricing and Cost Advice →
Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 5th in Firewalls with 74 reviews while pfSense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 46 reviews. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6, while pfSense is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "Provides zero trust implementation, more visibility, and eliminated security holes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Azure Firewall, Check Point NGFW, Fortinet FortiGate, Meraki MX and Sophos UTM, whereas pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall and SonicWall TZ. See our Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls vs. pfSense report.
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