We performed a comparison between pfSense and SonicWall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: pfSense offers valuable features such as IP address blocking, user-friendly dashboards, scanning and filtering capabilities, stability, customization abilities, and cost-effectiveness. SonicWall TZ provides unified threat management, VPN capabilities, web security, a user-friendly interface, simplicity, stability, performance, content filtering, and additional features.
pfSense users have suggested the need for instructional videos for beginners, a clearer web interface, improved stability, a mobile application, enhanced reporting, and better integration with other solutions. Users of SonicWall TZ have pointed out improvements that are needed in rated throughput, secondary DNS hosting, cloud management, user interface, integration and flexibility, marketing and branding, reporting and licensing, additional ports, affordability and competition, UI application and policy synchronization, technical support and VPN connections, and pricing.
Service and Support: Some users of pfSense have appreciated the technical support, while others have sought help from the online community. SonicWall TZ has garnered both positive and negative feedback. While some customers have found the support to be satisfactory, others have encountered delays and language barriers.
Ease of Deployment: Users generally find the initial setup of pfSense to be straightforward and easy, with a simple installation process. However, they express the need for clearer guidance or a configuration wizard. The initial setup for SonicWall TZ is considered intuitive and not overly complex, with a smooth out-of-the-box process.
Pricing: The cost of setting up pfSense is affordable and requires no extra charges for firmware updates. Opinions on SonicWall TZ's pricing are divided, with some deeming it cost-effective for medium-sized businesses, while others perceive it as pricey and lacking competitiveness.
ROI: pfSense provides a budget-friendly option with a low yearly cost and substantial hardware savings, leading to a considerable ROI. SonicWall TZ is suggested for improved efficacy and is seen as an essential element for safeguarding the network.
Comparison Results: pfSense is the preferred option when comparing it to SonicWall TZ. Users appreciate pfSense's easy-to-use dashboards, its open-source nature, and its capability to block IP addresses. They find it affordable, customizable, and effective in preventing attacks.
"The payment function for applications is good."
"The most valuable features are the enterprise modeling and the simple interface."
"Good load balancing feature."
"Customers want to load balance more than eight lines or six internet lines. FortiGate is the only solution that can accomplish this."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"The features that we have found most valuable are the SSL VPN and the User Portal."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"The initial setup was simple and fast."
"Stability has been excellent. We have experienced no issues; it never fails."
"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."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"The VPN is my favorite feature."
"The VPN is quite useful for us, as well as the ATP."
"The feature with SonicWall that I have found most valuable is that all the models have the same interface. We don't need to learn different interfaces in the smaller or bigger models."
"User-friendly firewall solution which scales well, is stable, and has high availability."
"We like their interface very much. It's pretty easy to use."
"We like the central interface and we like the security features. Additionally, we use SonicWall with VPN connectivity and we have had no problems with SonicWall all these years."
"We are very much happy with the support."
"The performance has been very good. Overall, the solution is quite stable."
"The feature we found most valuable in SonicWall TZ is that it is user-friendly for an administrator."
"Fortinet needs to overhaul its documentation."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"Fortigate's hardware capacities could be improved."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"The customization could be improved. Cisco, for example, is much better at this. They need to work to be at least as good as they are."
"One area for improvement is the performance on the bandwidth demands for smaller devices, as well as better web filtering."
"In terms of what could be improved, the SD-WAN is quite difficult, because if you install the new box, 15 is okay, but if you change from an old configuration, if there is already configuration and a policy when you change to SD-WAN, you must change the whole policy that you see in the interface."
"We have an issue with hotel guest vouchers."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
"Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting."
"The integration should be improved."
"It requires more attention to provide a better alternative for open source to small government or educational institutions with reduced budgets in terms of technology."
"pfSense has some limitations in detecting site sessions. We want to control internet usage based on sites and their content, and pfSense doesn't perform this function."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"There is a point I don't like about SonicWall in the past and now. Most of the destinations we look at when we're detecting some user using too much bandwidth or something like that, SonicWall just gave us destination IP address, instead of the full qualified domain name. I think that's the most important part that is still missing. I think that's the most important for us."
"The price could be better for us in Bolivia."
"We have experienced some issues with SonicWall TZ and they are lacking some advanced features other vendors have."
"Sometimes there is a glitch between the network connection. Last time, something happened on our IP phone, the SonicWall team did some updates to fix the issue. However, glitches happen very rarely. I did not experience any other types of problems."
"The solution should provide some additional ports."
"The reporting analytics could be improved, it is very unstable."
"The dashboard needs to be improved."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, KerioControl and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Netgate pfSense vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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Just purchase an anti-spam license and activate it at the SonicWall license portal.
I would like to recommend you SONICWALL HOSTED EMAIL SECURITY ADVANCED. It is more helpful and if you are using Office365 or GSuite, go for SonicWall Cloud App Security.
It is more powerful.
Hi, for SonicWall you buy a license and on the same firewall you can activate the antispam only in the ingress mode.
But there is a catch, at the moment they don't support TLS for SMTP so I would recommend their other solution, that has email security for appliance and virtualized on VMware or Hyper-V.