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Netgate pfSense vs Sophos Cyberoam UTM comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Fortinet FortiGate's customer service is praised for problem-solving but criticized for inconsistent response times and language barriers.
Sentiment score
8.3
Netgate pfSense users often rely on community resources over customer service, though paid support is highly rated but sometimes slow.
Sentiment score
7.2
Sophos Cyberoam UTM's support is generally responsive and knowledgeable, though customer experiences vary in speed and solution effectiveness.
The response time for a critical priority one issue was over four hours and they only responded because we threatened legal action for them violating our support contract.
They say they will respond in 24 hours, but I have received responses in a maximum of one hour, which is impressive.
The technical support from Fortinet FortiGate is 24 hours a day seven days a week, and 365 days a year.
When I provide detailed information about the problem, they've been able to reply quickly with a solution or go research the problem and get back to us quickly with a fix.
They are highly responsive.
I couldn't imagine having better support.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
4.6
Fortinet FortiGate needs improvements in stability, usability, integration, cost-effectiveness, and documentation for enhanced user satisfaction and performance.
Sentiment score
4.5
Netgate pfSense needs interface improvements, better integration, VPN support, and enhanced reporting due to user concerns and limitations.
Sentiment score
4.4
Sophos Cyberoam UTM users highlight performance, pricing, software, configuration issues, requiring improvements in security features, support, and management.
FortiWAN supports OSPF but does not support the BGP protocol.
Fortinet VPN and DDoS capabilities are great, yet we need to provide a solution that enables CASB and integration to the cloud.
The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate.
If the WLAN functions work properly, pfSense makes a perfect 'repeater' or controlled and robust accessed point with built-in QoS and firewall.
They need to make it easier to understand and give users the ability to customize them.
There is some trade-off between having a certain level of security and maintaining acceptable performance.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Fortinet FortiGate is scalable, flexible, and adaptable, though some face hardware upgrades and licensing challenges during deployment sizes.
Sentiment score
7.1
Netgate pfSense is scalable from small to large enterprises, with performance influenced by hardware, offering flexibility and manageability.
Sentiment score
6.8
Sophos Cyberoam UTM is praised for scalability, supporting thousands of users, though some note hardware limitations for expansions.
The devices will usually fail way before reaching the capacity advertised in the data sheets, especially when you activate several of the features the device can handle.
The solution is working and it is still stable even across all of these devices and servers.
We have over 10,000 users behind it.
It will run on anything and maintain its high performance.
If I put things into a certain context and say that we have a network that has around 100 people, then you don't put up a device that can manage 100 people. Instead, you need to get a device that can manage 150 to 200 people, and then you can create room for growth.
I don't think Netgate pfSense can offer much scalability for big enterprises.
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
7.4
Fortinet FortiGate offers competitive pricing with varied costs; affordable long-term licenses, though renewal complexity can accumulate costs.
Sentiment score
8.0
Netgate pfSense offers affordable, flexible firewall solutions with free and paid versions, minimizing costs with optional support.
Sentiment score
5.0
Sophos Cyberoam UTM offers competitive pricing, though renewal costs are high; licensing provides flexible subscriptions based on needs.
The cost of the original deployment fell below £5,000, and licenses are priced at around £3,000.
Every time you upgrade your license, you also get insurance for the equipment.
Overall, FortiGate is affordable.
Maybe not more than 200 Euros per machine.
It's absolutely free, no pricing and no licensing.
pfSense is free and open source software.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Fortinet FortiGate is praised for its stability and reliability, with occasional issues improved by updates and configurations.
Sentiment score
7.3
Netgate pfSense is highly stable and reliable, with rare issues usually tied to hardware or power-related glitches.
Sentiment score
8.5
Sophos Cyberoam UTM is praised for stability, reliable performance, and high user ratings, with occasional minor issues resolved.
All of these issues were resolved in v5.2.
Stability has dramatically improved over the previous main version branch of FortiOS; 5.2.x and 5.4.x are stable enough for critical environments.
Overall, the devices have been very stable.
It doesn't crash or freeze.
I've had no issues with stability whatsoever.
It doesn't crash or freeze.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.0
Fortinet FortiGate offers advanced security features, user-friendly configuration, and comprehensive management tools, valued for robust protection and flexibility.
Sentiment score
8.0
Netgate pfSense offers cost-effective, flexible, open-source network solutions with customizable features and robust community support for security and monitoring.
Sentiment score
8.0
Sophos Cyberoam UTM provides comprehensive security, user identity-based policies, and network resilience with easy management and advanced protection features.
The two most valuable features are VPN and firewalling.
WiFi network for visitors isolated from our corporate WiFi network using only one unit
Allows for firewall rules to be programmed and named in a way that makes it 'readable'
Strong community support
Firewall
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
317
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (2nd), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Netgate pfSense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
206
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (1st)
Sophos Cyberoam UTM
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (10th)
 

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…
Vincent Hamm - PeerSpot reviewer
I appreciate the depth of what the solution can do and the simplicity of the initial setup
We do a lot of managed services and are currently trying to get people off of L2TP VPN. Apparently, we can download a mobile config file from a configured NetGate device, and we're primarily Apple. We've experimented with it on a device that's not a production device, and we can't seem to get the phase one IPSec set correctly so that the Apple config will accept it. We've tried looking at the documentation but haven't found anything. While it's not the highest priority, it is rather frustrating. We'd like to do this, and the feature is right there, but we can't get it configured. We certainly don't want to try it on a production machine because it will break the current VPN. I would like to download the Apple mobile config so that I can tell it to configure my VPN connection to do that. We have some cross-platform things. So there's also a Windows VPN. You can download a script or a PowerShell, put it on a Windows machine, and it can connect to the VPN. It would be nice if I could say I want Mac only, Windows only, or both. I wish it could configure the IPSec phase one and phase two, or at least give me solid instructions on how to configure that. It doesn't supply out-of-the-box visibility to drive decisions. You get 75 log lines, so if you're trying to troubleshoot something, you have to look at one log and then another. It integrates with SysLog systems, but our customers are not at the level where they want to pay for some third-party SysLog system. Usually, we can get things taken care of fairly quickly. I would like to have the ability to control all my devices from one place. With Ubiquiti, you can get a controller that allows you to control all of your Wi-Fi devices, switches, and routers. From one area, you can switch to that customer and see what's happening in their environment. That's not part of pfSense. I understand why it's not because pfSense is open source and community supported. That's something that someone in the community needs to pick up and run with. It's not something the pfSense can easily implement. If they could, that'd be great.
Kiarash Heydari - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable and has a straightforward setup; reporting is fast and easy
Sophos Cyberoam UTM has room for improvement in specific rules-based objects and redesign. The solution also needs to improve in adding rules and policies, including renewing and finding policies. The Sophos team should make Sophos Cyberoam UTM policies and rules better and more useful than the old ones because that can be difficult and confusing sometimes. For example, adding policies or rules can be confusing, and that can be risky. To improve Sophos Cyberoam UTM, Sophos should add an IPS or IDS signature feature in the current plans offered to customers. Upgrading or patching the solution can be slow, so that's another area for improvement. In the next version of Sophos Cyberoam UTM, I want it to have an appliance management feature, similar to what's in FortiManager, where you can connect all appliances and manage the devices because that would be easier in terms of reporting.
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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
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Computer Software Company
28%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Media Company
10%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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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 ...
Help me find the best open source router
You don't really specify what type of router you are looking for but if you are talking about a gateway router I reco...
How do I choose between Fortinet FortiGate and pfSense?
Fortinet’s Fortigate is a firewall solution we use and are very much satisfied with its performance. We find Fortigat...
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 Sophos Cyberoam UTM?
The solution works perfectly without any users.
What needs improvement with Sophos Cyberoam UTM?
They could improve the product by enhancing hardware reliability, addressing occasional memory overflow issues, and i...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate, Fortinet Firewall
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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
Nerds On Site Inc., RKC Development Inc., Expertech, Fisher's Technology, Ncisive, Consulting, CPURX, Vaughn's Computer House Calls, Imeretech LLC, Digital Crisis, Carolina Digital Phone, Technigogo Technology Services, The Simple Solution, SwiftecITInc, Rocky Mountain Tech Team, Free Range Geeks, Alaska Computer Geeks, Lark Information Technology, Renaissance Systems Inc., Cutting Edge Computers, Caretech LLC, GoVanguard, Network Touch Ltd, P.C. Solutions.Net, Vision Voice and Data Systems LLC, Montgomery Technologies, Techforce, Concero Networks, ASONInc, CPS Electronics and Consulting, Darkwire.net LLC, IT Specialists, MBS-Net Inc., VOICE1 LLC, Advantage Networking Inc., Powerhouse Systems, Doxa Multimedia Inc., Pro Computer Service, Virtual IT Services, A&J Computers Inc., Envision IT LLC, CommunicaONE Inc., Bone Computer Inc., Amax Engineering Corporation, QPG Ltd. Co., IT 101 Inc., Perfect Cloud Solutions, Applied Technology Group Inc., The Digital Sun Group LLC, Firespring
Gulf Corporation for Technology, Maridive & Oil Services, Fidelity Bank, Petra University, Capital FM Kenya, Safari Park Hotel and Casino, Mayfair Casino, Pacific International Lines, Mozambique Ministry of Education, University of Namibia, Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability, University of Hawai, New Delhi Municipal Council
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate pfSense vs. Sophos Cyberoam UTM and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.