We performed a comparison between Meraki MX 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: The main difference between the two solutions is that Meraki MX is expensive, while pfSense is an open-source solution and is free of charge. In addition, Meraki’s monitoring capabilities could use improvement.
"The user interface (UI) is very, very good."
"I like that they have given me a solution at a fair price."
"Fortinet FortiGate's reliability is valuable."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"We use a southern institution that's audited for IT security and the reporting that automatically comes off the unit makes it much easier to meet compliance standards and makes it easier as far as the amount of time that has to be spent to compile that information. If you get your reporting set up correctly when you initially set it up, you just select the one you want and hit print. The auditing trail on it is the best feature."
"It's quite comfortable to handle the FortiGate firewall."
"The license management is very valuable. You can get a new license each year, or you can enroll every two to four years. You can get the logs, and you will get the information on the risk in your network and the entire organization. With this information, you can take action on your actives, computers, or devices. You can bring your own device as an SSE."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"We switched to Meraki because it lets you see what's happening in your LAN and WAN in a graphic and web environment."
"Since it has an integrated dashboard for all the products, customers can get complete network analytics regarding what the user is doing, monitoring, and observing."
"It is a robust SD-WAN solution."
"The internet traffic shaping has been very valuable."
"Intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IPS): The best feature. It can detect malware, even a virus, and warn you by email about the device that has it. When the Meraki detects that something is wrong, it automatically blocks the connection or the intrusion, delivering a graphic report with all the necessary content."
"The simplicity of configuration is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"Point-to-point VPNs can dynamically follow IP changes with no need for static IPs."
"I like the automatic firmware updates. We use the Active Directory to authenticate VPN users."
"Good basic firewall features."
"It is much simpler than other solutions such as Fortinet."
"I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"I like pfSense's reports and how I can control access to the policies on the firewall."
"The ability to create a VPN allows me to monitor branch offices from a central location."
"I handle the scanning for the finance department. I recently encountered an issue with the PCL bills, our company bills. I resolved the matter, cleared the bill, and received calls regarding it using pfsense.The user interface is extremely user-friendly, which is why we use it across various plant sites. Our IT representatives at the plants find it easy to use and manage because of its straightforward interface."
"Firewall system for small, medium, and large data networks. It allows you to provide security to your environment: DMZ networks, LAN, WAN, etc."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"Fortinet needs more memory to save the log files. We need it to save the logs on the hardware and not in the cloud. I know this feature is available in FortiCloud, but if we need this log locally, it is not available."
"I'm not sure if it's something that they already have or are developing something, however, we need some dedicated features for container security."
"The updates Fortinet provides are sometimes unstable."
"FortiGate should have a better way of detecting and managing the system memory because otherwise if the memory is too low, a system restart is required."
"The solution can have more features in a single box that can be multi-applied to integrate everything."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"I feel that the reporting needs to be improved."
"As far as what needs to be improved — nothing really comes to mind. It does what we need it to do."
"Meraki MX can come across as an expensive solution."
"We have been having a problem with the VPN. When the energy goes down and is back again, the VPN link doesn't get established. We have to manually turn off the modems and other pieces of equipment and manually establish the VPN. It has been around one month since we have been having this problem, and we don't have enough support from Meraki to solve the problem."
"The product doesn't support route summarization and BGP dynamic routing protocol."
"More detail needed for configuration of the VPN."
"It is very expensive."
"It would be great if the Meraki devices let us see, in real time, the internet demand on a single device."
"We can’t access GUI management and CLI opening features when the Internet is unavailable."
"Needs services on additional features, such as managing inventory and generating reports."
"Adjustment in the interfaces: I had to adjust those interfaces manually and of course that is a great feature that you can restore it but it is immediately also one point for improvement. If you don't have to adjust, if it's just stamped and it works, that's great."
"User interface is a little clumsy."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"A way to clean squid cache from the GUI."
"The technical support needs to be improved."
"It requires more attention to provide a better alternative for open source to small government or educational institutions with reduced budgets in terms of technology."
"The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely."
Meraki MX is ranked 2nd in Unified Threat Management (UTM) with 58 reviews while Netgate pfSense is ranked 1st in Firewalls with 128 reviews. Meraki MX is rated 8.2, while Netgate pfSense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Meraki MX writes "Cost-effective, simplified, easy to manage, and reliable with advanced security features and granular visibility". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netgate pfSense writes "User-friendly, easy to manage the firewall, rule-wise and interface-wise". Meraki MX is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Cisco Secure Firewall, Sophos XG, SonicWall TZ and SonicWall NSa, whereas Netgate pfSense is most compared with OPNsense, Sophos XG, KerioControl, Sophos UTM and Stormshield Network Security. See our Meraki MX vs. Netgate pfSense report.
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