We performed a comparison between Kerio Control 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 the winning edge in this comparison because it received higher marks in the features, pricing, and service and support categories.
"This solution has helped our organization by having strong functions and a reliable firewall."
"The technical support is great."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the different types of profiling. It has been the most effective for me. The WAF and the antivirus profile are the most effective in network protection."
"It is simple to manage, and there are a lot of functionalities in the same box."
"There is an easy process for configuring it, and it is straightforward to implement the device from scratch."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"The flexibility of the system, the capacity to provide the right level of security, and the ability to be integrated into different kinds of infrastructures are the most valuable features."
"The solution provides feasibility regarding cyber privacy."
"In terms of the comprehensiveness of the security features, it does a great job of laying out what it does. It's fairly easy to edit and research. Some of the features were turned on by our IT company and I was able to easily find other features on my own by searching for videos on the internet. I've been able to block certain websites, and content filter, as well as manage some of our bandwidth because we live stream on Sunday. I'm able to dedicate bandwidth for the encoder that goes to the internet. It always has enough bandwidth, no matter how many people are on the network. That's really helpful."
"The top features are ones that we're not using yet but we soon will be because we've just had broadband upgraded in Australia. We've got something called the National Broadband Network, which is forced onto you, so you have to take it when it arrives. We'll be trying the high availability out soon. We tried that with some load balancing, it didn't quite work as we expected, but I think that was more of a configuration thing rather than a product thing."
"I like intrusion detection and prevention and bandwidth management. The routing part is also awesome. It is a good firewall. We never had a major breach from outside. We've never been impacted by ransomware, and our systems have never been infiltrated."
"One very good thing about the Kerio device is its authentication. I don't have a Windows domain for authentication. Instead, I use the Kerio product because it can separate users by Mac addresses and give them IP addresses based on their usernames, automatically logging them in. This makes for a very simple authentication system."
"The statistic feature enables us to better use bandwidth management. We monitored the use by mobile, type of application, department, and by users. The bandwidth was solid. Our internet speed is optimized for our research."
"The firewall and the content filtering options are valuable."
"Its scalability is a strong point."
"The features I have found best are ease of use, GUI, and performance."
"One of the advantages of pfSense is that it is very easy to work with. It is a very good open-source solution, and it works really well. pfSense provides a complete package. For some features, it could be the first solution in the world. It is a very good alternative in the market for a firewall solution. You don't need to go to Cisco or other brands with expensive firewalls. pfSense also allows us to offer some support services."
"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."
"Super easy to manage. Anyone who has been working with firewalls can handle it."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant."
"The most valuable feature, for instance, is the ease of migrating configurations between different Netgate devices housed in the same box."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The logs need to be better. They need to be more visible and easier to access."
"I would like reporting to be improved and should offer a lot more tools to monitor the products."
"We were not able to build a full-mesh VPN; however, I am not sure if this was the fault of Fortinet FortiGate."
"The feedback that I have received is that the performance could be better, and the user experience is not as good compared to a previous solution we used. It could be more user-friendly. Of course, it still works fine for our operations."
"The support we receive when we need to upgrade is not satisfactory and has room for improvement."
"Usually, we sell the bundle with the UTM or threat management piece with IPS, IDS. Other providers, such as Palo Alto, are ahead in terms of safe functionality. So, for me, delivering truly safe service is probably something that still needs to be improved."
"It has a VPN back to our data center but I don't think it has increased the number of VPN clients extended to those outside our environment"
"There isn't a lot to be improved. It works well as it is, but they can maybe improve the reporting side."
"The trial duration of the product should be extended."
"KerioControl should add more options in VPN features, such as IPsec VPNs, SSL VPNs, and L2TP VPNs, because KerioControl uses a special VPN for their products."
"I would like to see them develop a bit more flexibility creating VLANs."
"They should improve the remote connectivity feature for users."
"I would like to be able to inspect https packets for the purpose of virus scanning."
"I would like to be able to automatically send email from Kerio Control and have it tell me what my external IPs are, because on one of my lines I have a fixed IP address and on the other it is variable. If there were a permanent way for me to figure out, "Okay, my current external VPN and my firm IP is this," it would help. I need to know the IP address to connect with the VPN and, at the moment, one of the lines sometimes changes its IP address without me knowing it. It's a hassle to figure out what it is."
"It should integrate with LDAP, Active Directory, etc, to improve the way in which the traces and connections of each IP, or user connected through the firewall, are shown."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"The GUI could use improvements, though it is manageable."
"I expect a better interface with more log analysis because I create my own interface."
"It is not centrally managed, where you log into the website and can see all your services there. We would like to be able to see is all the configurations from a central interface on all our pfSenses."
"I would like to see different graphs available in the reporting."
"It could use a little bit of improvement in the reporting."
"The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall."
KerioControl is ranked 29th in Firewalls with 54 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. KerioControl is rated 8.0, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of KerioControl writes "With VPN, any of our guys can log in to the system and effectively be on board; helps with our customers all over the world". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". KerioControl is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos UTM, Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, Sophos UTM, Cisco Secure Firewall and WatchGuard Firebox. See our KerioControl vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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