We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiGate-VM and OPNsense based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Fortinet FortiGate-VM is highly regarded for its robust security features, including geofencing, firewalling, IPS, and antivirus. Users also appreciate its user-friendly interface. OPNsense is notable for its scalability and ability to accommodate guest access. Its dashboards, IDS and IPS capabilities, and availability of a free version are also highlighted as valuable features.
Fortinet FortiGate-VM could benefit from enhancements in key activation, log management, IPsec failover, monitoring tools, hardening, availability, VPN connectivity, operating system stability, data center clustering, throughput, web application firewall integration, pricing model, troubleshooting forum, and guidance. OPNsense requires improvements in interface simplification, integration, DNS blocking, peer-blocking, installation, deployment, reporting, SSL inspection, and learning curve.
Service and Support: Fortinet FortiGate-VM's customer service has received both positive and negative feedback. Some customers appreciate the support team's quick response times and expertise. However, others have faced challenges in obtaining prompt assistance and finding information easily. OPNsense has been commended for its exceptional support, rapid response times, and helpful guidance. Nonetheless, a few users have noted the lack of easy accessibility to the support service and have recommended the addition of an associated support service.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Fortinet FortiGate-VM is typically simple. OPNsense is not overly complicated or difficult. FortiGate-VM may take more time for larger deployments, however, it provides a user-friendly installation and configuration experience. Clients can perform the OPNsense setup themselves, and it can be completed within a few hours.
Pricing: Fortinet FortiGate-VM requires licensing fees with no extra expenses. OPNsense, being open-source, doesn't require a license, however, hardware costs are involved.
ROI: Fortinet FortiGate-VM offers enhanced security and stability. Users consider its ROI to be highly satisfactory. OPNsense delivers a quick return on investment, typically within three months, and eliminates the need for ongoing fees.
Comparison Results: The analysis of user feedback indicates that Fortinet FortiGate-VM outperforms OPNsense in various aspects. Users highly value Fortinet FortiGate-VM for its robust security capabilities, user-friendly interface, effortless deployment, scalability, and extensive filtering options. Moreover, users appreciate the availability of support from Fortinet.
"The solution is scalable."
"User-friendly and affordable security solution that's recommended for SMB customers. This solution has good technical support."
"It's great for capturing the traffic and troubleshooting it."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is very user friendly. We are utilizing most of the features, like content filtering. The firewall is powerful."
"It is very flexible to use."
"The inspection and web security features are most valuable."
"The CLI is robust and powerful, enabling rapid, consistent changes via SSH."
"Good anti-malware and web filtering features."
"The most valuable features are the web proxy for protection and web gateway for deployment."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The tool improved the security in our company's virtualized environment, as it was helpful in creating an additional layer of security for the organization and for the use of the internet."
"Fortinet FortiGate-VM is very easy to create the user of VPN, allowing them to use it quickly. Additionally, the integration and interface are good."
"In spite of the solution being inexpensive, it has everything one would need."
"The initial setup was quite straightforward."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate-VM are its flexibility and scalability. This solution is available as a license, which allows us to activate it based on the specific needs of the customer. This gives us and the customer a great deal of versatility and customization options."
"The solution integrates well with other Fortinet products."
"What I like best about OPNsense is that, as a firewall, it's pretty good. I'm quite impressed with it. I had an excellent experience with OPNsense, which helped me achieve the targets I wanted."
"The VPN server feature is the most valuable. It is integrated with Radius and AAA for doing accounting and authentication. Insight view is also an important feature for me at this time. It allows me to assess our network traffic. I also like the firewall feature. The BSD kernel has a packet filter. It is one of the most solid frameworks for firewalls. Its user interface is one of the best interfaces I have used."
"The graphic user interface is very good and it is user-friendly which makes the product easy-to-use."
"I feel that its valuable features are that it is simple and free."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"It is a very good solution. I like the dashboard. I can see what is going on and manage it as I like it."
"The feature I find most valuable, is that the program helped me to realize all the requested functionality that was needed."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"With the addition of some features, it is possible that FortiGate can be used in all verticals."
"Some features of Fortinet FortiGate are actually fee enabled that are inconvenient for deploying in production. Other issues relate to isolation with Cisco products and your server."
"The reports are very basic."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"The support system could be improved."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"It needs to improve its ISP load balancing."
"There were challenges during setup, and many of them were self-inflicted."
"The performance could be better. Some features need to have quality control when the switch is working. The dedicated bandwidth for some users is not reliable."
"It is difficult to size the VM in terms of machine resources, and for this reason, clients prefer the appliance."
"The product does not have a good graphical interface."
"The product has issues with integration. I would like to see better integration in future releases of the product."
"Improvements are needed for the responsive UI and JIT traffic reporting."
"I have worked on some of the largest and smallest solutions that Fortinet sells and they all scale really well."
"FortiGate should be more customer friendly and budgeted better."
"The scalability needs improvement."
"I would like to see better SD-WAN performance."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"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."
"Its interface should be a little bit better."
"Given that OPNsense plays a pivotal role as a firewall, safeguarding against various threats, having a reliable backup ensures uninterrupted protection even if unforeseen events impact the primary virtual machine."
"The user interface could be improved, and the DNS section should be more intuitive."
"There is room for improvement in SSL inspection."
Fortinet FortiGate-VM is ranked 9th in Firewalls with 113 reviews while OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate-VM is rated 8.4, while OPNsense is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate-VM writes "An easy-to-manage and configure tool that provides ample documentation to help with the setup phase". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Robust network security and management offering a user-friendly interface, open-source flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, with challenges regarding initial setup and the absence of official support". Fortinet FortiGate-VM is most compared with Azure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series, Fortinet FortiOS, Cisco Secure Firewall and Netgate pfSense, whereas OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and IPFire. See our Fortinet FortiGate-VM vs. OPNsense report.
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