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FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) vs OPNsense comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
317
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
FortiGate Next Generation F...
Ranking in Firewalls
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA (4th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (9th)
OPNsense
Ranking in Firewalls
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 20.5%, up from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OPNsense is 14.6%, down from 17.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

DineshKumar28 - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective threat prevention with responsive customer support
We are using Fortinet FortiGate as a firewall Fortinet FortiGate has been invaluable. It has helped save costs due to its various features, reliable performance, very good UI, low latency, and stability. The Threat Intel engine in Fortinet FortiGate is highly rated for its effectiveness in…
Anish Bheekoo - PeerSpot reviewer
Good support and highly scalable solution
In terms of support, they are very responsive. If you reach out to them, they will contact you within 15 minutes. Managing FortiGate is easy and simple compared to other products. It's not too complex. Even if we miss renewing our licenses, FortiGate provides a grace period of 90 days, which is exceptional. Most products only offer 30 days. That's the best part, in my opinion. The support is excellent. I've had very positive experiences with FortiGate's support team. They are friendly and always available. Their support is available 24/7 via phone, email, or chat. They even offer remote access if we need help with configuration or auditing logs. Their support is reliable both locally and internationally.
Eddy Ramirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Good interface and firewall capabilities and overall easy to use
The security has improved as we can isolate the network. We can do attrition prevention via a tool that comes with the solution. We can have a VPN solution in place for those that work from home, outside the network, in a secure manner. We also like that it offers good authentication. It offers radius-based authentication, which has been useful for the company. The main platform is under the Open VPN firewall. The solution has high availability. When we have different ISPs, we can actually load balance those links or actually put some priority or even classify the traffic that might go into one ISP or another.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The performance is good."
"Some of the valuable features are the firewall, IPS, web filter, and gateway capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to use and flexible."
"The Intrusion Prevention System and the web filtering are both working well."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are the rules and quality of service."
"You can create multiple Virtual Domains (VDOMs), which are treated as separate firewall instances."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"It has very easy management and an amazing ETM configuration."
"FortiGate NGF is simple compared to other firewalls. It is easy to use and you don't need any training. Any person with basic firewall knowledge can use it."
"The most valuable aspects of FortiGate NGFW are its top-notch reputation in peer reviews, user-friendly interface, and excellent support."
"It is easy to install. There is not much complexity involved."
"Routing and reporting are two areas where the product has an added advantage compared to any other product."
"User identification and application identification are valuable features."
"The firewall and VPN features are the most valuable in protecting our customers' networks."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The firewall and VPN features are the most valuable in protecting our customers' networks."
"I mostly rely on the solution's network intrusion detection and prevention system, along with other systems, CMs, and log management."
"OPNsense is very stable, easy to upgrade, and maintain."
"We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience."
"OPNsense could improve by making the configuration more web-based rather than shell or command-line-based."
"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."
"It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features."
"The solution is good for a basic firewall for a small business or for home use."
 

Cons

"The cloud features can be improved."
"Its reporting capabilities can be improved. It should have some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and some degree of customization. The basic reporting that it currently has is not sufficient to create more usable reports. It needs some sort of out-of-the-box reporting. They try to make customers purchase FortiAnalyzer for this kind of reporting, which is an additional cost. Other firewall vendors, such as SonicWall and Sophos, provide this sort of reporting without any additional cost."
"They need faster serviceability and more security features."
"Technical support is good but the response time could be faster."
"The pricing could always be better."
"The monitor and the visibility, in this proxy, is very weak."
"They should make the rule sets more understandable for the end user. When you're trying to explain to somebody how a computer network is secured, sometimes it's difficult for an end user or customer to understand. If there was a way to make the terminology more accessible to the end user, the set up could be easier. They should translate the technical jargon to an easily relatable and understandable conversation for the end user, the customer, that would be brilliant. Particularly in an environment where the IT structure is audited regularly, there's always pressure from the auditor to up the standards and up the security and you get your USCERT's that come out and there's a warning about this and the customer will want to lock out so much and when you apply it they run into issue where they can't search the internet or print to their remote office. Of course they can't print to your remote office, they just locked it up. They should make the language more understandable for the customer. If there's a product out there that made the jargon understandable to John Q. Public, I would buy that."
"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 product keeps hanging."
"There's a limitation wherein you can only have about 30 virtual or secondary IPs on a particular interface."
"FortiGate may include AI capabilities and integrate external threat intelligence. However, version management and backup/restore operations could be improved."
"The solution's stability should be improved because it is extremely unstable."
"The solution needs to integrate VPN features."
"The product's data guard feature should support a USB port when the internet connection is unavailable."
"The licensing model and pricing need improvement."
"Its load balancing feature could be easy to configure."
"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."
"There are issues with stability and reliability."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"The interface needs to be simplified. It is not user-friendly."
"OPNsense struggles to handle large volumes of voice traffic, indicating scalability issues in that specific use case."
"OPNsense showed me some problems when using it in different environments. The problem is integration with a virtual server."
"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."
"The IPS solution could be more reliable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."
"The beauty is the price performance ratio is great with FortiGate. It provides all the features we needed and the price is comparable with others' firewalls. The price is quite competitive with the firewalls with similar features."
"The price of FortiGate is good."
"The pricing is perfect."
"It is not a very costly product if you compare it with other products. The return on investment is also good. If you compare the return of investment and money that you are spending on this product with Palo Alto, Cisco, Check Point, and other solutions, the investment is very less. We are happy with this solution. The optional licenses are there, and you can choose which one you want and which one to avoid."
"Pricing for this product is comparatively lower than other products. It's an affordable solution, but when expanding the number of users, they'll ask you to replace the model, so that's an added cost."
"The price of Fortinet FortiGate is the lowest in the market."
"The license is too expensive to renew. The license renewal process is also complex."
"I would rate pricing to be about four or five out of ten, it is reasonable."
"FortiGate Next Generation Firewall is an expensive solution."
"Although the solution's pricing is high, compared with other products, it may be cheap."
"We pay $500 per year for the license."
"It's an expensive solution"
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall is cheaper than Cisco or CheckPoint."
"In my opinion, the pricing of the product is reasonable."
"Its pricing is unbeatable in comparison to other firewalls. You can have a small instance that could be €80 a month with the hardware underneath. Azure Firewall and FortiGate are out of the question at this price. If you are on a public cloud, you need the underlying infrastructure. Other than that, there is no additional cost. If you have it on-prem, you have to buy the server or the appliance. The hardware cost is replaced with the infrastructure cost in the cloud. You also have costs for the public IPs and underlying VMs, but that's not related to OPNsense. It would be the same for a FortiGate deployment on Azure. You need a FortiGate license, and you need the underlying infrastructure that scales up depending on your needs."
"OPNsense is an open-source solution and it is free to use."
"It is not an expensive product. Basically, I deployed it because it was the fastest solution to satisfy our needs in open source."
"I would rate the pricing three out of ten."
"We are not paying any licensing fees. OPNsense is completely free for us."
"It is free."
"We are using the paid version."
"OPNsense is a well known open-source tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What do you like most about FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW)?
The tool's most valuable feature is IPS. In my experience, I haven't encountered any issues with integration. It easi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW)?
The price is very aggressive in India as India is a rapidly growing market, the original equipment manufacturer offer...
What needs improvement with FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW)?
I would like to see improvements in some of the hard drive features on FortiGate so that we can generate reporting wi...
What is the difference between PfSense and OPNsense?
Two of the most common and well recognized firewalls, PfSense and OPNsense both support site-to-site IPsec VPN and cl...
What do you like most about OPNsense?
What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OPNsense?
I consider the pricing of OPNsense to be high when compared with other market products. However, as a free firewall p...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
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Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone, Orange, BT Group, Telstra, Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, NTT Communications, Tata Communications, SoftBank, China Mobile, Singtel, Telus, Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telkom Indonesia, Telkom South Africa, Telmex, Telia Company, Telkom Kenya
Information Not Available
1. Deciso B.V. 2. iXsystems, Inc.  3. EuroBSDCon  4. Netgate  5. Claranet  6. Voleatech  7. Open Systems AG  8. Securebit AG  9. Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH  10. AVM Computersysteme Vertriebs GmbH  Additional customers include: T-Systems International GmbH, Deutsche Telekom AG, Vodafone GmbH, 1&1 IONOS SE, OVHcloud, Hetzner Online GmbH, Strato AG, PlusServer GmbH, Host Europe GmbH, United Internet AG, 1&1 Versatel Deutschland GmbH, QSC AG, Bechtle AG, Cancom SE, Computacenter AG & Co. oHG, T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, Atos SE, Capgemini SE, Accenture plc, IBM Corporation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) vs. OPNsense and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.