FortiClient vs. pfSense

Overall, my experience with the client is good, and because of its performance and lightweight, I recommend this software to my colleagues. Before this, I also used other apps for the same purpose, but my search ended when I came to Forticlient.

Incentivized

I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

• Virtually a one-click action connection to my work network while remote. I just enter my network username & Password, click connect, and I can access all the fileshares as if I were on-site.
• Speed - I have used other virtual network clients in the past, and the speed while working remote with one of them (even on a high speed connection) was easily 10x slower than if I were physically on the network. FortiClient is different, where the speed degradation is on the magnitude of only 2-3x slower - A significant and noticeable difference compared to other clients on the market.
• On MacOS, FortiClient has a little toolbar icon that gives me a status, as well as actions to quickly connect or disconnect from my work network. It is a small thing, but a super handy feature!

Incentivized

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

• font way too small on login, unable to select an option, for example, to see each letter of password as typed promotes errors at login
• login errors and failure rate extremely high as [reported] by all our physicians and other providers: not infrequently one will have to return to office after hours in order to complete charts or access charts to answer patient after hours questions
• frequent disconnects in spite of excellent internet signal
• unacceptable interruptions in patient care

• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

Incentivized

Because the software is very simple and easy to use, very efficient, and has a stable connection that allows the user to perform tasks without problems. Also, this software does not need to be configured by IT technicians, since it comes with a very developed and understandable set up guide.

Incentivized

We have used Forticlient for a number of years now and have found only minor faults with the application. The fact that our end users request little to no training to be able to utilize our VPN says a lot compared to the product we previously used to use for similar tasks. The Forticlient shield is a quick way to 'demonstrate confidence in security' at a glance among our end users - if you see the shield, you are protected. The only downside we've experienced is a few false positive AV detections, but this is more linked to Fortiguard labs/signatures.

Incentivized

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

Incentivized

FortiClient is a security suite with which we can keep our equipment well-protected. And it is that in a system like Windows, which is always the target of all kinds of attacks, it is not enough to have a simple antivirus.

Incentivized

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

My current organization is using FortiClient and they decided to use it since longer period. The main advantages is we are using it for connect RDP and and access private URL. But main reason is one time configuration is help us to connect it any time from anywhere. It's sending OTP to the work mail and helps us to validate it. While Cisco or other VPN ask mobile OTP auth or authenticator app which is much complex process. Hence FortiClient is best!

Incentivized

Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

• The free version of FortiClient VPN works great.
• The fact that we have to pay for any version beyond 6.0.3 to connect to our firewalls that we already pay for licensing on is a little silly.
• There is some support overhead with our clients and users to keep the software updated since it doesn't upgrade to new major versions automatically.

Incentivized

• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

Incentivized