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Netgate pfSense vs Untangle NG Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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
7.0
Fortinet FortiGate's customer service is responsive and helpful, though technical support experiences vary and can be inconsistent.
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
4.9
Customer service for Untangle NG Firewall is mixed, with both praise for US-based engineers and complaints about limited support resources.
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 better documentation, UI, integration, troubleshooting tools, scalability, reporting, and reduced impact on performance and fees.
Sentiment score
4.5
Netgate pfSense needs interface improvements, better integration, VPN support, and enhanced reporting due to user concerns and limitations.
Sentiment score
4.9
Untangle NG Firewall needs better filtering, SSL decryption, real-time protection, enhanced hardware, reporting, connectivity, and improved support.
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 provides effective scalability and adaptability, though careful budgeting and upgrades are needed for high-demand scenarios.
Sentiment score
7.1
Netgate pfSense is scalable from small to large enterprises, with performance influenced by hardware, offering flexibility and manageability.
Sentiment score
6.6
Untangle NG Firewall scales flexibly from small to large deployments, typically supporting 100-150 users without hardware changes.
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
7.6
Fortinet FortiGate's initial costs are high, but offers competitive pricing and value compared to Cisco and Palo Alto.
Sentiment score
8.0
Netgate pfSense offers affordable, flexible firewall solutions with free and paid versions, minimizing costs with optional support.
No sentiment score available
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 highly stable and reliable, with improved performance in newer versions, praised for its consistent robustness.
Sentiment score
7.3
Netgate pfSense is highly stable and reliable, with rare issues usually tied to hardware or power-related glitches.
Sentiment score
8.2
Untangle NG Firewall is praised for its stability and reliability, with minimal issues and consistent performance rated highly by users.
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 is valued for its robust security, ease of use, scalability, and comprehensive threat management features.
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
8.2
Untangle NG Firewall offers flexibility, ease of use, strong VPN, reliable performance, premium features, and is ideal for small businesses.
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
Ranking in Firewalls
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
316
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st)
Netgate pfSense
Ranking in Firewalls
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
206
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Untangle NG Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
25th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 19.8%, up from 17.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netgate pfSense is 19.5%, down from 23.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Untangle NG Firewall is 1.2%, down from 1.8% 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…
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.
Josh Evans - PeerSpot reviewer
Its simplicity, variety of features, and low pricing have enabled us to improve the security for our small business clients at a price that they are happy to pay for
I've heard other people saying that other firewalls have better detection rates, so better security. If they can improve the security of the device, I'm always for that, but at the moment, we've been happy with the service that we're getting out of them. It does have multi-factor authentication in some areas, but I would love to see a more widely implemented version of that on the devices themselves. It could use some improvement for Azure Active Directory Connections. It does exist, and it is available, but it needs work to be able to fully authenticate. I know there are some advanced features that other firewalls have that aren't present in Untangle, but we've never noticed any feature that we need but isn't there. I also know a lot of people have complained about the cost per device because they license by device counts. So, once you get over a certain number of devices, it is not really a cost-effective solution.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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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 Untangle NG Firewall?
The product helps small and medium enterprises secure their networks from intrusions. It also has features like DNS b...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Untangle NG Firewall?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with Untangle NG Firewall?
I would recommend getting 2FA with an SSL VPN type of setup without having to go through a lot of hoops. The solution...
 

Also Known As

FortiGate 60b, FortiGate 60c, FortiGate 80c, FortiGate 50b, FortiGate 200b, FortiGate 110c, FortiGate
No data available
No data available
 

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
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
North American Stamping Group, Cerebral Palsy of North Jersey (CPNJ), Brown County Schools, IN, City of Bridgeton, MO, Lancaster County, SC, Vision Charter School, Clay County Sheriff’s Department, NC, Breakwater School, Boys & Girls Club of Manchester, NH, Admiral Farragut Academy, Flow Companies, No Ordinary Hotel, KECdesign,
Find out what your peers are saying about Netgate pfSense vs. Untangle NG Firewall and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,636 professionals have used our research since 2012.