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Netgate pfSense vs Stormshield Network Security 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
7.1
Number of Reviews
373
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Netgate pfSense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (1st)
Stormshield Network Security
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service
I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.
Vincent Hamm - PeerSpot reviewer
I appreciate the depth of what the solution can do and the simplicity of the initial setup
We do a lot of managed services and are currently trying to get people off of L2TP VPN. Apparently, we can download a mobile config file from a configured NetGate device, and we're primarily Apple. We've experimented with it on a device that's not a production device, and we can't seem to get the phase one IPSec set correctly so that the Apple config will accept it. We've tried looking at the documentation but haven't found anything. While it's not the highest priority, it is rather frustrating. We'd like to do this, and the feature is right there, but we can't get it configured. We certainly don't want to try it on a production machine because it will break the current VPN. I would like to download the Apple mobile config so that I can tell it to configure my VPN connection to do that. We have some cross-platform things. So there's also a Windows VPN. You can download a script or a PowerShell, put it on a Windows machine, and it can connect to the VPN. It would be nice if I could say I want Mac only, Windows only, or both. I wish it could configure the IPSec phase one and phase two, or at least give me solid instructions on how to configure that. It doesn't supply out-of-the-box visibility to drive decisions. You get 75 log lines, so if you're trying to troubleshoot something, you have to look at one log and then another. It integrates with SysLog systems, but our customers are not at the level where they want to pay for some third-party SysLog system. Usually, we can get things taken care of fairly quickly. I would like to have the ability to control all my devices from one place. With Ubiquiti, you can get a controller that allows you to control all of your Wi-Fi devices, switches, and routers. From one area, you can switch to that customer and see what's happening in their environment. That's not part of pfSense. I understand why it's not because pfSense is open source and community supported. That's something that someone in the community needs to pick up and run with. It's not something the pfSense can easily implement. If they could, that'd be great.
Benjamin - PeerSpot reviewer
The intrusion detection system helps our organization by automatically detecting and responding to potential threats
The tool's most valuable feature is its dashboard, which helps you manage different aspects of a single page. The intrusion detection system helps our organization by automatically detecting and responding to potential threats. It operates similarly to Darktrace, which detects and responds automatically based on the security rules you apply. Initially, you configure everything to block, and then you can whitelist specific items as needed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The security features are valuable, particularly the ransomware attack protection features. Fortinet FortiGate provides excellent security against ransomware attacks."
"The payment function for applications is good."
"Easy to use support and licensing portal as well as activation process."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"This is a quality product with ok support, and it is better than the competition we've tried."
"The initial setup is easy."
"We've never gone down using the solution."
"My company mainly works in the health and educational domain, schools and universities. I prevent the improper use of content from schools and universities. I defend the medical records for the patients in our hospitals. That is the main use case for me for the firewall."
"From my perspective, the best feature of Netgate pfSense is the load balancer, as I usually take multiple internet connections. I can use both internet providers' bandwidth as a single network bandwidth, which helps in a very smooth network traffic flow."
"There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support."
"I like that there's a community edition that I can install on my own virtual machines or hardware. I can test things without messing with them in production, which is incredibly useful. If you have a Juniper or Cisco, you can typically only afford one. You're forced to make changes in production and hope they don't break anything because there's no easy way to have a testing environment. The free version of pfSense offers load balancing or failover WAN, which is also helpful. Most commercial firewalls don't have that in the cheapest iteration of the hardware."
"Centralized administration with multiple services, which allows for execution in several important functionalities of information security."
"The solution provides visibility that enables data-driven decisions."
"It's an easy, straightforward management platform to use."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"The solution has improved my organization because I can see what traffic is happening and I can use it to block and prevent attacks."
"The most valuable features are the IPS, the firewall function, and the price."
"I can see what traffic is going on. I can easily block any programs from attacks."
"A very robust product."
"I like that it works fine. Stormshield is a very good solution."
"Easily manageable in a variety of environments."
 

Cons

"The SD-WAN functionality is a bit overly complicated and not fully documented."
"Fortinet should improve its software, as we are seeing lots of firmware versions generated for each vulnerability issue. It becomes difficult for us to keep updating the firmware frequently due to bugs."
"I find the management console not very straightforward, so that's an area where Fortinet FortiGate can improve. They should simplify it and make it more user-friendly."
"The solution could be more evenly structured."
"Areas of improvement for Fortinet FortiGate include the need for more training and certification, especially when dealing with distributors globally, which presents challenges in product availability and delivery timelines."
"Their support can be better, and there should be better policies for immediate replacement in critical situations."
"There are too many updates coming for VPN, and the VPN keeps disconnecting frequently, which I find problematic. It does what it's supposed to do, but I practically face reconnection issues with the VPN."
"Their support's response time can be better. In the past six months, they took quite a long time to respond to the support tickets."
"The hotspot and the portal feature in this solution are not stable for WiFi access. We use it at least once or twice every day and it crashes. Some modules can be better by improving detection and having new updates. Additionally, we have some issues with clustering and load balancing that could improve."
"I like the plugin systems, even though I feel like I'm playing roulette. I'm not sure if it does what I want it to do or if it will break the original capability of pfSense."
"Some of the features I am looking for are still not there in pfSense, like, for example, content control. Because I have kids, I want to control the content or what they watch. There is a feature in pfSense called pfBlocker, but it is limited."
"I believe improving integration with various antivirus vendors could be beneficial."
"Strategy and vision of the product are the areas with shortcomings where improvements can be made so that Netgate pfSense can figure out where the product should go in the future."
"I want pfSense to add some next-generation firewall features."
"Snort or Suricata don't block things they should out of the box. It's always been a pain point of pfSense. If you turn on Snort or Suricata for IPS or IDS, no setting is effectively set and forget. Turning any commercial firewall to the lowest setting will provide you with a decent amount of security with almost zero false positives, but pfSense is not that way. You've got a babysit Snort and Suricata to the point where sometimes you turn it off."
"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 biggest issue was their support department was not able to help us, then everything stops. This is a no-go area for me."
"This solution has a big problem with web filtering and it needs to be improved."
"It could be better if it were more user-friendly. It's too complicated for us to use it. The price could be better as well."
"This is not a next-generation firewall."
"The product must improve its pricing."
"With Stormshield, there are difficulties joining things, and it can be complex depending on the architecture."
"Improvement is needed in terms of the technical support of the manufacturer."
"A more user-friendly interface would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is good."
"Fortinet FortiGate is cheaper than Palo Alto. It is about 20% cheaper."
"It has a competitive price."
"The pricing is justified. It's a little pricey, but what you pay for is what you get."
"Each feature costs money, so it is important to study your needs."
"For our organization, the licensing costs are approximately $7,000 per year."
"Fortinet FortiGate is cost-efficient. Palo Alto is expensive, but Fortinet FortiGate is not."
"The price is really low. It's cheap in comparison to the cost of Cisco or CheckPoint, for example."
"I will not call it a cheap tool, but it is very cost-efficient."
"It's not too expensive considering all of the features on offer. It's about $1700 a year."
"pfSense Plus is cost-effective for what we're getting."
"I use the free version."
"When it comes to Netgate pfSense, I use the basic TAC Lite license, which comes for about 100 USD."
"I buy the appliance and accept whatever comes with it, but I am not bought into paid support. When it comes to the pricing of the appliances, they are pretty competitive. The price is pretty competitive."
"I am using the community version of the solution which is free."
"We are using the open-source version which is free. We are testing the solution to see if we are going to go to the enterprise version which requires a license and is not free."
"The SN200 series costs between $500 USD and $600 USD per year, whereas the SN700 series costs approximately $1,000 annually."
"The pricing could be better."
"The price of this solution and the price of support are ok."
"For mid-sized companies, they sell their appliances for good prices."
"We chose Stormshield for its price, as the Azure firewall was too expensive."
"We bought a three-year license, and we renew it whenever it expires. The price could be better. It's always very expensive."
"I think the price is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Educational Organization
6%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
No data available
NETASQ Firewalls
 

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
Nerds On Site Inc., RKC Development Inc., Expertech, Fisher's Technology, Ncisive, Consulting, CPURX, Vaughn's Computer House Calls, Imeretech LLC, Digital Crisis, Carolina Digital Phone, Technigogo Technology Services, The Simple Solution, SwiftecITInc, Rocky Mountain Tech Team, Free Range Geeks, Alaska Computer Geeks, Lark Information Technology, Renaissance Systems Inc., Cutting Edge Computers, Caretech LLC, GoVanguard, Network Touch Ltd, P.C. Solutions.Net, Vision Voice and Data Systems LLC, Montgomery Technologies, Techforce, Concero Networks, ASONInc, CPS Electronics and Consulting, Darkwire.net LLC, IT Specialists, MBS-Net Inc., VOICE1 LLC, Advantage Networking Inc., Powerhouse Systems, Doxa Multimedia Inc., Pro Computer Service, Virtual IT Services, A&J Computers Inc., Envision IT LLC, CommunicaONE Inc., Bone Computer Inc., Amax Engineering Corporation, QPG Ltd. Co., IT 101 Inc., Perfect Cloud Solutions, Applied Technology Group Inc., The Digital Sun Group LLC, Firespring
ACESUR group, Ministry of Education Oman, Anios Laboratories, Zain, DLM Location
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate pfSense vs. Stormshield Network Security and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,034 professionals have used our research since 2012.