We performed a comparison between pfSense and Untangle NG Firewall based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both products received high marks from reviewers, but Untangle NG Firewall ultimately won out in this comparison. It is easy to set up, user-friendly and secure. In addition it has excellent customer support and is fairly priced.
"Cisco ASA works very nicely from an administration perspective. The management of the device is very nice. The ASDM (Adaptive Security Device Manager) is the software that we use and it is very easy to configure using the GUI."
"AnyConnect has been very helpful, along with the ability to use LDAP for authentication."
"The content filtering is good."
"The fact that we can use Firepower Management Center gives us visibility. It allows us to see and manage the traffic that is going through the network."
"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."
"One of the best features is the ease of use. It's also easy to teach new engineers to use the ASA CLI."
"The main thing that I love the most is its policy and objects. Whenever I try to give access to a user, I can create an object via group creation in the object fields. This way, I am not able to enter a user in the policy repeatedly."
"The configuration capabilities and the integration with other tools are the most valuable features. I really like this product. Cisco is one of my favorite brands, and I always think Cisco solutions are very reliable, easy to configure, and very secure."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"The plugins or add-ons are most valuable. Sometimes, they are free of charge, and sometimes, you have to pay for them, but you can purchase or download very valuable plugins or add-ons to perform internal testing of your network and simulate a denial-of-service attack or whichever attack you want to simulate. You can also remote and monitor your network and see where the gap is. Did you forget a printer port? Most attacks at the moment are happening through printers, and they can tell you immediately that you forgot to close the port of the printer. There are more than one million printers that are in danger, and everybody knows that hackers are using them to enter the network. So, you can download plugins to protect your network."
"We've found the stability to be very good overall."
"pfSense allows us to spread the hours of connection and do the filtering on the pfSense site."
"I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal."
"It is a stable solution. It is also easy to install and can be deployed and maintained by one team member."
"The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets."
"The flexibility of adding new kinds of services without spending any money can't be beaten."
"The web blocking for my clients and the application control are valuable."
"The majority of our clients are very small businesses, and Untangle devices have been fantastic for these small clients. We've basically standardized our stack to just simply use Untangle. We include the hardware and the service option, which makes it very easy and affordable for us to just simply push that into the monthly per-user costing that we provide as a managed services provider. It's really a no-brainer. They're easy to use, and they're easy to set up and configure. Support is generally good about resolving any issues that we have. We haven't had any real complaints."
"Its detection, antivirus, and filtering features are the most valuable. The facility to connect by using the VPN connection is also a very valuable feature. It is very strong, secure, and reliable. We have implemented the Untangle solution in all hardware. It is also a user-friendly solution. It is easy to learn and easy to configure."
"They have a command center that makes it easy to log into and see all of your appliances nationwide."
"All features are useful. We are using premium features such as bandwidth sharing, failover, web filters, SSL controls, antivirus, and VPN. We use these features to the fullest. These features are available in the paid firewall license, not the free one."
"What I like about this product, which is the reason that we continue to use it, is that you can install the software version on your own hardware. In case there is a problem with the hardware, we can just install the firewall in another machine and restore the configuration."
"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."
"I would like to see the inclusion of a protocol that can be used to protect databases."
"Most of the features don't work well, and some features are missing as well."
"The operation of the ASA is good but the problem is that whenever you require an upgrade, there are multiple pieces of software that you have to upgrade. Extensive planning is required, because if you upgrade one piece of the software it has to be compatible with the others as well. You always need to check the compatibility metrics."
"The ability to better integrate with other tools would be an improvement."
"The price can be better."
"It's mainly the UI and the management parts that need improvement. The most impactful feature when you're using it is the user interface and the user experience."
"The only drawback of the user interface is when it comes to policies. When you open it and click on the policies, you have to move manually left and right if you want to see the whole field within the cell. Checkpoint has a very detailed user interface."
"The main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection."
"I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side."
"Could be simplified for new users."
"In an upcoming release, the reporting could be more user-friendly. For example, the reporting in graphs and charts for the host can be cumbersome."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"ClamAV AntiVirus can cause some crashes. That service should be improved."
"They don't have any feature that allows you to drop the session."
"The common center facility that Untangle provides should be available on-premises. There are great corporations here in Mexico that like the Untangle solution, but they don't like the fact that the monitoring and access to the appliance are in the cloud. They request for the common center facility to be available and installed on-premises."
"It does have multi-factor authentication in some areas, but I would love to see a more widely implemented version of that on the devices themselves."
"We seek the availability of the hardware in our region. The hardware-based firewall from Untangle is currently not available in our region. It should have threat protection on a real-time basis. This feature, available in Check Point and Sandstorm kind of scenario, is currently missing in Untangle NG Firewall."
"On their low-end appliance, they could have more memory and the largest storage space. The low-end appliance comes with a too-small hard drive, and it could use a little extra room. It only comes with about 4 gigs or 8 gigs of memory, and the hardware space is only 40 gigs, which is really small."
"The biggest challenge that we have with this solution is local support. The local support is a problem in our area."
pfSense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 52 reviews while Untangle NG Firewall is ranked 22nd in Firewalls with 6 reviews. pfSense is rated 8.4, while Untangle NG Firewall is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Untangle NG Firewall writes "Its simplicity, variety of features, and low pricing have enabled us to improve the security for our small business clients at a price that they are happy to pay for". pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Untangle NG Firewall is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, Fortinet FortiGate and Meraki MX. See our Untangle NG Firewall vs. pfSense report.
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