We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall 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 comes out on top in this comparison. It is high performing and, according to reviews, it is a more comprehensive solution than Azure Firewall. pfSense also received higher marks in the support category.
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"I like Fortinet FortiGate's antispam filter, SPN, and clustering features."
"FortiGate's web and URL filtering are unlike any other firewall I've used. The functionality of URL filtering in those solutions is problematic because everything is encrypted, and firewalls can't break that encryption protocol. Fortinet has an SSL proxy, so the encryption is done before the packet ever leaves the FortiGate. The URL filter is definitely one of the most helpful features."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of FortiGate is FortiView which provides proactive monitoring."
"Advanced routing (RIP, OSPF, BGP, PBR). It gives you a seamless and simple integration into a large network."
"The web tutor and automatic rules by schedule are good features."
"The solution can scale well."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"The firewall policy control, URL content control, and antivirus are all the most valuable aspects. Threat prevention is as well quite good."
"The solution has many useful features. For example, the solution allows users to create virtual IP addresses."
"The initial setup is straightforward; Azure Firewall does not have a complex implementation process. It is very simple; you just need to enable the service within Azure. It does not require any maintenance because it is managed by Microsoft, that is, it is a fully managed service."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"One of the notable advantages of Azure Firewall is its user-friendly interface, which closely resembles or shares similarities with other Azure components."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features are the VPN and the capture photo."
"Content protection, content inspection, and the application level firewall."
"For everyday tasks, we just get alerts. It's anything that's suspicious, including from our Netgate. So, it's part of how we maintain cybersecurity in our school. This is working alongside our endpoint security solution."
"The documentation is very good."
"The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use."
"The "OpenVPN Client Export" package is really helpful in exporting the VPN client software on most popular devices: iOS/Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and a handful of SIP handsets."
"We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve by integrating the web application firewall and the DDoS protection part of the solution. Having a WAF feature, web application firewall, and proxy together would be a good benefit."
"If I had any criticism that I would give FortiGate, it would be that they need to stop changing their logging format. Every time we do a firmware upgrade, it is a massive issue on the SIM. Parsers have to be rebuilt. Even the FortiGate guys came in and said that they don't play well in the sandbox."
"It would be nice if FortiGate incorporated some built-in endpoint protection features. I would also like a built-in SOC dashboard for managing multiple Fortinet firewalls."
"The solution lacks multi-language support."
"The command line is complicated, and the interface could be better."
"I would like to see improvements made to the dashboard and UI, as well as to the reporting."
"NGN, reporting and controls."
"I would like to see more advanced developments of a wireless controller in the future."
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly."
"It is a cloud service, but the lending speed for each region is not always the same. For example, in China, the speed is slow. They need to think about how to make sure that the service pace or speed is always the same in all regions. It would be a great improvement if they can provide the same pace worldwide."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"The threat intelligence aspect of this particular firewall is not at par with other providers."
"Azure Firewall definitely needs a broader feature base. It should be able to go all the way up to layer 7 when looking at applications and things like that."
"The integration could be improved."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"Perhaps the documentation is not clear and because it is supported in the community there is no basic documentation."
"The hotspot and the portal feature in this solution are not stable for WiFi access. We use it at least once or twice every day and it crashes. Some modules can be better by improving detection and having new updates. Additionally, we have some issues with clustering and load balancing that could improve."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"There's a bit of a learning curve during the initial implementation."
"A malware blocker should be included. I do not know if it is included yet. However, until now, we have not experienced a large malware invasion."
"For the third-party packages, I'd rather have it built-in, like a core feature of pfSense, part of the core model."
Azure Firewall is ranked 21st in Firewalls with 33 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Azure Front Door, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Cisco Secure Firewall. See our Azure Firewall vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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