We performed a comparison between Netgate pfSense and Sophos XGS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is good to use, and most importantly, the pricing. The customer especially likes the discount when they trade up or something like that."
"The web filtering facility and application control are the most valuable features from the point of view of our clients. The VPN feature is also quite popular amongst our clients. Two-factor authentication is one of the good features in Fortinet. These features are important for the current scenario of security. Security has become a necessity nowadays. With cyber-attacks becoming more common, protecting an organization's data is one of the major tasks. It is also very stable and scalable, and it is very straightforward to configure. Their technical support is also good."
"Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"Fortinet FortiGate is easy to use. Anyone can easily maintain it."
"Reliability is the best feature. We faced some issues when we were setting it up, but the service, portal, and administration are good."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"The solution is scalable."
"The solution is very robust."
"There is good documentation with a fantastic community and enterprise support."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"Easy to deploy and easy to use."
"It has a good web cache. I used to use a DHCP server and DNS server. For my company, I use pfSense as a load balancing application."
"This solution has increased the level of security, given us more control, provided a deep insight into network traffic, and is a great VPN solution."
"Improved service performance and availability through redundancy."
"Its features rival many of the high cost solutions out there."
"The feature that I find most valuable is the synchronized security option where the endpoint talks to the firewall."
"The most valuable features of Sophos XGS are the ease of use and powerful interface."
"The most valuable features in Sophos XGS are identity and VPN. It is a very good solution that is able to detect and prevent a lot of malicious activity."
"Sophos XGS's most valuable feature is content filtering."
"The threat management system and VPN are most valuable."
"It is very stable. I have not heard of any issue where clients would have to replace hardware. It's been really stable for a long while."
"It's easy to use and user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos XGS is its ease of use."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."
"They should improve high CPU and memory usage that occurs."
"Palo Alto has a feature called WildFire Analysis that is unavailable in FortiGate. WildFire is better than a sandbox because it can address zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. It can immediately identify zero-day threats from the cloud."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"You do need some IT knowledge in order to effectively work with the solution."
"Fortinet FortiGate should improve the VPN tokens."
"The UI could be improved."
"We would like to see an upgrade to the VPN feature, we are using the VPN from outside of our office and there is a limitation to 10 connections, more connections would be suitable."
"I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"It was difficult to configure our web printer through the solution. This process could be easier. Additionally, integration with SD-WAN solution."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"The product must provide integration with other solutions."
"The integration should be improved."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"Also, the GUI is helpful, but it's not user-friendly. It's complicated. It should be more intuitive for the average user and have an excellent graphical view. Of course, the user will typically know about network administration, but it still should be easy to understand."
"Sophos' technical support has degraded in the last couple of years. They seem to need to ask a lot of questions, even with simple problems, and take a long time to provide solutions."
"Sophos XGS could improve by having better integration with Active Directory."
"Reporting could be improved. The structure could be better because most of the reports aren't detailed."
"There can be lag time when updating an operating policy."
"I would like to see a history of the monthly bandwidth utilization, the bandwidth consumption for a period of time."
"Sophos XGS would benefit from further development in the SD-WAN area."
"The SD-WAN feature isn't very good. It's there, but it doesn't work properly."
"Sophos XGS could improve the price."
Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews while Sophos XGS is ranked 17th in Firewalls with 60 reviews. Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6, while Sophos XGS is rated 7.8. 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 Sophos XGS writes "Easy to use, simple to learn, and offers great reporting". Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall, whereas Sophos XGS is most compared with Sophos XG, OPNsense, WatchGuard Firebox, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Meraki MX. See our Netgate pfSense vs. Sophos XGS report.
See our list of best Firewalls vendors.
We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
