Untangle NG Firewall Reviews

I am the owner of our company and we are resellers and users of this solution. 

It has made day to day management simple. you set it up and forget about it. The occasional email alerts and reporting remind you that untangle does exists in the organisation and is happily secretly doing it's job.

I think this is a great product, it's easy to set up if you need to do group policies on it and it's easy to integrate with active directory and a simple interface. From a small business perspective, it's a very good product because you don't really have to be that technical in order to use it. It works 100% of the time and never crashes or fails. 

At this stage, I think the SSL decryption option can be streamlined.

I think decryption transparency could be improved because you basically click a button and then you set up one rule-set and that's about it. I've noticed there's a problem on some sites where it doesn't do the proper decryption. I actually had to go through the application control module, and logs to see what was happening, and why some sites could not function, before I could decipher that it was the SSL decryption that was blocking the sites. I would like to see more hands-on configuration in that respect.

Update:- 10/26/2020

Untangle now supports TLS v1.3. So far testing has yielded positive results and I have not really had to bypass most of the sites we browse to, after resetting the policies to default.

I've been using this solution for about one year two months. 

It's been a pretty stable solution. It hasn't crashed much, only when I've really put it through its paces. From an end-user perspective, I wouldn't have known that anything was wrong - it was only when I did something bad and was blocked that I got a pop-up window saying I'd been blocked by the firewall. From a user perspective, you don't even see anything. I never had any performance degradation, no lagging, no internet browsing, speech slow downs, nothing like that.

I would guess the solution is scalable. We haven't yet got to that stage with it so it hasn't been tested. For now, my whole family of 10 people have been using it in our home environment, but I have one other client that's interested in installing it and he has around 15 office users and about 25 remote users. We'll know after I've put it through its paces whether it's capable or not.

I initially had difficulty getting device license to appear in command center and had to log a support call. The issue was literally sorted the same day with no hassle. I have not had any other issues since.

I'm aware of some of the other solutions and I think the only other firewall that comes closest to it is Sophos, which is very easy to use and to set up. If you then compare it to things like SonicWall, a solution that requires a high degree of technical know-how, it makes for a more difficult product.

The initial setup took me roughly an hour because basically what happened is once you set up all the conflicts, it still had to connect to the command interface on the internet and only then did it actually work 100%. So if it doesn't activate via the command centre, it doesn't go through during setup. It took me a while to realise that and the whole thing took about an hour and a half and everything was sorted out. It only takes one person to deploy.

My deployment was in-house. I never needed to contact their support team.

The reporting is the best I've ever seen so far and you do really get to understand your environment in a short time, and begin to see the cracks that were hidden in plain sight. This has helped me in making new strategic choices and what I've spent so far has really been worth it.

If you an SMB or NGO, then the setup and price model is relatively cheap and you can either go for the 1year or 3year subscription model, provided you chose the complete package. Individual modules licensing is ok if you only using few options like Firewall, Web Filtering or Intrusion prevention, but costs can quickly scale up.

I am still actively supporting an configuring SonicWALL firewalls for my clients, and have evaluated Sophos, Seqrite, Endian, Fortinet, Kerio Control and the open-source PfSense.

If you're a small SMB, I would say go for Untangle because it's less hassle, less overheads to set up or maintain. You set it up and leave it in the background and forget about it. But if you're an enterprise company, I think you might end up having issues with the performance because most of it is sold as a package under software virtualization. I haven't tested the big hardware devices as yet because I don't really need to buy the device. It's only when a client buys it that I'll be able to set it up. But from a virtual perspective, you might end up having something that's over utilized for your environment if you're a big organisation.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10 simply because I haven't tested all aspects of it as yet. What I've tested so far I like.

We use it for security purposes. We have got multiple BPO sites, and we have about 15 to 20 deployments.

All features are useful. We are using premium features such as bandwidth sharing, failover, web filters, SSL controls, antivirus, and VPN. We use these features to the fullest. These features are available in the paid firewall license, not the free one.

We seek the availability of the hardware in our region. The hardware-based firewall from Untangle is currently not available in our region.

It should have threat protection on a real-time basis. This feature, available in Check Point and Sandstorm kind of scenario, is currently missing in Untangle NG Firewall.

I have been using this solution for 16 years.

We did this installation approximately six years ago, and nothing has crashed. It is very stable. We are getting the updates on a regular basis. We are very happy with it.

A single person can handle the entire installation at multiple locations.

We have scaled it from 10 users to 1,000 users without any issues. 

We have multiple installations at multiple offices in the organization. One deployment has 500 users. The other deployment has multiple sites with 50 to 100 users.

We never had many issues, and whenever we had issues, their support was good enough to give us good feedback. They were able to help us out in solving the problems.

It is very straightforward. 

It is not expensive. The best part is that it is based on the pay-per-use kind of scenario. An increase or decrease in the number of people doesn't make any difference. We are really happy about using this particular scenario.

We did evaluate other options. When we started using Untangle, the available options were very limited and not very cost-efficient.

I would recommend this product. It is easy to use for a maximum security scenario. It is very easy to do any kind of installation.

I would rate Untangle NG Firewall a nine out of ten. It is a really good product.

I primarily use the solution for internet and email filtering.

Right now the network is well maintained. Initially, we were blacklisted because of spamming, but that was by our ISP and that is now corrected.

The features I have found the most useful are the web filter, the captive portal, the SSL inspector, and the ad-blocker. They're awesome.

There quite a number of modules I've not used. For the web filter, I think they can do better especially on the free model. They have a free and a licensed model. If you use the free model, is not that effective. You have to use the commercial module for you to get effective results.

Functionality wise, they should try to put more options on some of the modules like web filtering capability. I know it has the capability to block specific IPs but I have not seen the capability to block a specific range of IPs. For example, you want to block a range of between 50 and 100 of an IP, I haven't seen that capability. I believe there are more functionalities which they can improve and prevent for security and management of internet within a corporate environment.

For example, I've seen firewalls where, let's say for example there's an infected machine within your network, they give you an alert or automatically block it from your network or mailing system. There're a number of functionalities missing in Untangle. It needs improvement but I believe every solution needs improvement.

The solution is very stable. I've never had issues with it.

The solution is pretty scalable. We have about 50 people using the solution.

In terms of customer support, so far I've not needed to contact them because I've not had any issues with the solution.

Previously, I didn't use a different solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

I can't remember how long the deployment originally took. It was less than an hour, most likely. I downloaded then contacted Untangled NG directly. I did it myself with the help of support.

We actually have 30 staff, that's why I have 50 licenses. The modules are licensed on a yearly basis, and it's not really expensive. But the only problem is they sell it in a modular form. If you want the web filter, it has its own cost. If you want the captive portal, they sell that too. If you want the active directory connector, it has its own cost. So, if you were to bundle all the modules, it will end up being very expensive.

Before choosing, I just did a bit of research on the internet to try to figure out how I can be able to use some of these products to sort out my issues and I bumped into Untangle. I know about other products, like Check Point, but I chose Untangle in particular to solve the problem and the issues I was having at the moment.

For the NG firewall, it works better for just filtering and managing the internet, but it will not work on other security areas. It will not act like a perimeter firewall. For the users who are looking for that kind of solution, I think there are different solutions out there for every security issue you're looking at. It has worked perfectly for the need I was looking for. But I wouldn't use it as the main firewall for the network.

I would rate the solution a 7 out of 10.

We primarily used the solution for filtering features. 

The Untangle firewall is a software firewall, so it runs on generic hardware. We found that was probably the best feature, and it's why we chose it when we started using it three years ago.

The web content filtering needs improvement.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability is a bit limited.

We never had to use technical support. We had engineers in-house who could keep it running without needing external help. As we've never used support for Untangle, I would not be able to comment on any general experience with them.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I can't remember the cost because I'm not in finance. I know my company's very cost-conscious, and therefore the cost must have been very reasonable. Otherwise, my organization would not have taken that product.

We stopped using the solution in April 2019. The web content filtering feature of Untangle was not giving us what we wanted. The reason we moved away from Untangle is that it was not giving us the features we needed for our internal use.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten. I would recommend the solution for small or medium-sized enterprises.

We are using this product internally, for intrusion prevention.

The most valuable features are IPS, MAPI, NAT, and VPN. These features are simply awesome.

This product has some unique features that are very good.

The pricing should be reduced because it is expensive.

I have been using Untangle for about one year.

Untangle is quite a stable product.

We use the software-based version, which is scalable. I am not sure about the hardware-based version so I cannot comment on it.

We have about 100 users.

We have not had a problem for the past couple of years so we have not been in contact with technical support.

We are also using FortiGate and Check Point.

The initial setup is very simple. Any layperson can set it up within an hour.

You can configure it and forget it.

One person part-time is more than enough for maintenance.

This is an expensive product.

This is a product that I can recommend and if anybody implements it and wants support, we would be open to providing technical support for it. This is something that we would be happy to do.

In summary, this is a good product and my only real complaint is about the pricing.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

My company, Kaizen Internetworking, has been deployed multiple types of firewalls, and we have found Untangle to suit SMB and some enterprise deployments.

It has improved and secured multiple clients. We have very good retention on maintaining our clients who run Untangle.

It is not attached to an appliance, meaning if you get a good PC/server, then you can already run a firewall.

The product needs to have a better support group for its online support, specifically for its help desk. 

The management console for partners is a bit tricky (buggy).

It is very easy to deploy and monitor. 

It is up-to-date and can compete even with the more expensive firewalls.

• Effective Web Filter
• Easy VPN setup
• Load balancing
• SD-WAN
• Antivirus, etc.
  

We have had incredibly good results with all of its features. Web Cache has saved us a lot of bandwidth and Web Filter can block all Windows 10 updates.

• Web Filter for its effectiveness
• Web Cache for its bandwidth savings
• Easy VPN setup (including OpenVPN) takes just a few clicks.

In general, this solution is easy to learn.

The ability to setup a DDNS for each WAN independently would be a very handy feature.