We performed a comparison between OPNsense and Sophos XG based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Sophos XG’s single pane of glass makes it easy for users to manage the entire solution from anywhere. The solution is very light, stable, and provides excellent real-time control. Users feel OPNsense is not a good product for medium to large businesses, as it has some very limited features and needs better reporting and documentation.
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"It's an easy solution to set up."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Unified Threat Management (UTM) features."
"The email protection and VPN features are the most valuable."
"Centralized monitoring, policy management, and virtualized appliances allow us to take control over our public and private infrastructure."
"I only deal with it from a security analyst's point of view. I don't really get into the features of the actual FortiGate. From the security point of view, it works, and it does its job."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"OPNsense is highly stable."
"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 IDS and IPS features are valuable. From the usability perspective, there is a lot of good documentation. As IT professionals, we found it very easy to configure the firewall. It was easy to configure and use."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"The initial implementation process is simple."
"The DNS-level filtering is impressive for thwarting time scanners."
"We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience."
"It is very user friendly and easy to manage from the administrative point of view. It is good, reliable, and easy to implement."
"I like it for its simplicity. It is very simple to configure and implement. It is a very good product for medium-sized organizations."
"The solution is more cost-effective than FortiGate, Cisco and Palo Alto, which have very expensive licenses."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"Sophos offers great disk encryption, anti protection, and the interface is very user-friendly."
"The solution has very good security features, is easy to use for administrators and users, and has informative reports."
"The most valuable feature, according to the setup we have at our work place here, is the flexibility of the system or the firmware that's running the appliance. It's so flexible, performing multiple rules with different configurations. According to the set up here, we need to implement several firewalls with different access levels, because we have a variety of users. For this requirement, it's very flexible and very easy to use."
"The interface is very user-friendly and it's easy to manage."
"The pricing could be a bit better, especially when you consider how they have the most basic offering priced."
"Tunnel flapping was one of the major things I had seen wherein your internet link remains but your VPN tunnel is down. However, since I got a fix from the TAC team, I have not noticed it, but the customer complained a few times that they couldn't access the internet because of this problem."
"The reports are very basic."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding enhancements to FortiMail, FortiSOAR, and FortiDeceptor."
"Some of the software stability could improve."
"The debugging and troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"Fortinet FortiGate could improve by adding FortiAnalyzer to its solution, we should not have to use another solution. FortiAnalyzer can provide more detailed information."
"I think they need to improve more in order to be a competitor with the leaders of the field."
"They should improve IPEs for security in the future."
"An area for improvement in OPNsense is the hardware, which needs to be updated more frequently. DNS blocking is another good feature I want to be added to the solution. pfSense has a peer-blocking feature that I also want to see in OPNsense."
"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."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"Its interface should be a little bit better."
"In terms of improvement, the performance could be enhanced."
"The reporting part could be better."
"There are some add-ons that need enhancements to make management easier for users, especially the reporting features. Some reports don't show the level of detail I'm looking for, and I've had trouble installing certain add-ons, especially for Internet bandwidth shaping within my company."
"They need to allow their solution to integrate with other products and not just other Sophos solutions."
"Fortinet surpasses Sophos in terms of support, particularly with its comprehensive five-one feature console."
"I would like to see the performance improved."
"SD-WAN can be improved."
"Technical support is difficult to access."
"The user interface could be improved and more bandwidth management would be helpful."
"The installation could be faster and is longer than that of other solutions, lasting more than a month instead of five minutes."
"I'd like to see better reporting. While the logs are great, the reports are not."
OPNsense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 36 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. OPNsense is rated 8.4, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". OPNsense is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM, IPFire and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ, Meraki MX and Sophos UTM. See our OPNsense vs. Sophos XG report.
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