Fortinet FortiGate vs. pfSense

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
FortiGate
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
FortiNet FortiGate is a firewall option with high integrability. It offers a variety of deployment options and next-gen firewall capabilities, including integration with IaaS cloud platforms and public cloud environments.N/A
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs. As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent…
$179
per appliance
Pricing
Fortinet FortiGatepfSense
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
SG-1100
$179
per appliance
SG-2100
$229
per appliance
SG-3100
$399
per appliance
SG-5100
$699
per appliance
XG-7100-DT
$899
per appliance
XG-7100-1U
$999
per appliance
XG-1537
$1,949
per appliance
XG-1541
$2,649
per appliance
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FortiGatepfSense
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFortiGate pricing starts at $250 for home office use, up to $300,000 for large enterprise appliances. Must contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Fortinet FortiGatepfSense
Considered Both Products
FortiGate
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
Juniper, Cisco ASA, pfSense, WatchGuard, are strong competitor for Fortinet FortiGate units, sometimes the IT budget and requirements have specific sights over features that are in several cases quite different from the most seen on the market, also FortiGate units gives you a …
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
FortiGates are cheaper than most alternatives (except solutions like pfSense, of course.). They are also very easy to configure and have affordable security subscription options.
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
The Fortinet products have been chosen because of our previous experience with them. The FortiClient is always used with our roaming users together theRedHAt authentications services and the IPS and Web Filtering addons are used, together the WAF, to strengthen our network …
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
I stick with this program because of many reasons like it is extremely robust and scalable, as well as simple to set up. Protecting an organization's data is one
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
The UI is great, the features are great, it is reliable, Fortigate awesome for the price.
Chose Fortinet FortiGate
The solution was selected by our parent company, but the idea of changing platforms is still daunting. Fortigate offers an ability to convert your ASA, Checkpoint, JunOS, etc. configs to Fortigate for a small cost. This product works like a champ and eliminated the reasons why …
pfSense
Chose pfSense
It's an open source solution can support from 50 to 700 user without sweating and with the half of the standard bundle investment that will take to deploy a FortiGate UTM, or a Cisco ASA, also a Sophos UTM that are quite remarkable units but to pFSense saves you money and will …
Chose pfSense
FortiGate offers an extensive set of features including the Unified Threat Management and a lot of FortiGuard services . pfSense is extremely modular, probably because of its open source "flavour"m but relies on community support. Fortinet ROI depends on the reduced …
Chose pfSense
pfSense always wins in the licensing realm. It requires little or no licensing to run and run forever. No ids/ips licensing, no advanced feature license, no remote access licensing. Download the community edition or buy the Netgate hardware and you are set going forward. There …
Chose pfSense
PFSense is not a fully featured and supported enterprise-grade solution; however, it does offer a lot of similar functionality at a fraction of the cost for more minor requirements.
Chose pfSense
pfSense does almost all what the other brands do and the CE Edition is free even if complete.
Features
Fortinet FortiGatepfSense
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Fortinet FortiGate
8.7
53 Ratings
1% above category average
pfSense
8.4
16 Ratings
3% below category average
Identification Technologies8.951 Ratings8.113 Ratings
Visualization Tools8.351 Ratings8.513 Ratings
Content Inspection8.952 Ratings8.115 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.953 Ratings8.516 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.750 Ratings6.712 Ratings
Firewall Management Console7.852 Ratings9.415 Ratings
Reporting and Logging8.253 Ratings8.316 Ratings
VPN9.152 Ratings9.016 Ratings
High Availability9.448 Ratings9.415 Ratings
Stateful Inspection9.251 Ratings9.314 Ratings
Proxy Server8.639 Ratings7.514 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Fortinet FortiGatepfSense
Small Businesses
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
Sophos UTM
Sophos UTM
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Fortinet FortiGatepfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(79 ratings)
9.6
(27 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(20 ratings)
9.8
(6 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(27 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Fortinet FortiGatepfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
Fortinet
Fortinet FortiGate addressed an immediate security issue we had a few years ago. The device gave us a much clearer picture of the activities on our network and also more importantly, increased our awareness of threats from the internet as a whole. Fortinet FortiGate helps us to mitigate these threats with regular signature updates from Fortiguard labs, identifying certain characteristics which, once recognised by Fortinet FortiGate, can be harnessed to deploy powerful 'playbooks'.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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.
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Pros
Fortinet
  • SD-WAN - Load balancing of Internet traffic is a USP of Fortigate and makes it stand tall in the competition. Be it 3 or more Internet Links, multiple Subnets/segments of users to distribute and bandwidth load balancing for links and users. SLA based monitoring of Internet Links / MPLS links, makes it even better to choose the links on the basis of performance (Latency, packet loss, Jitter etc).
  • SSL VPN configuration - As we all have WFH force (to some extend or all employee) during Covid-19, it is impossible to plan BCP without having a SSL VPN. In Fortigate, the SSL VPN configuration is very easy with the help of wizard. The deep CLI-level debugging is also very helpful in troubleshooting. Type of tunnel can be easily configured - Full Tunnel or Split Tunnel for SSL.
  • Explicit Proxy - This is also a great feature to shape and re-route the traffic, configuring the Proxy on the Firewall itself. We are using this feature in Pilot for now, and planned to rollout in few weeks looking at the success rate of the POC.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • 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.
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Cons
Fortinet
  • Documentation is missing a great deal of detail and assumes the customer and just guess and fill in the blanks themselves
  • Fortinet has lots and lots of video guides on topics that only a small percentage of customers would ever need
  • The documentation and video guides do not get updated so most is only relevant to older software versions
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Fortinet
Fortinet's products have kept improving with new software releases and they continue to deliver great value. Their support is also very good. I believe that as a small enterprise, their products have given us competitive advantage delivering features and functionality that enable us to innovate and do things better. They also continue to be a leader in the markets they serve.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Usability
Fortinet
The firewall runs very well, firmware updates are fairly quick but you must follow the upgrade path. Neglecting this step will cause a lot of pain. If you decide to go with Fortinet FortiGate switches and/or access points, they can be managed within the firewall which is great. We're also using the FortiAnalyzer which easily plugs into the firewall for any reporting you may require.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Fortinet
We had didn't any hardware failures at our two main office locations and upgraded our units last year after using them for about 5-6 years
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Performance
Fortinet
Good performance and really good integration. We have integration with Microsoft AD.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Fortinet
The Support team at Fortinet is excellent. They can not only help you configure the device for what you are trying to do, they offer suggestions on improving rules, and troubleshooting issues. Their response time is fast, ensuring you are up and running immediately with no questions asked. We had a hard drive failure in one of our Fortinet Fortigate appliances. The tech answered immediately, and started rebuilding the drive after some preliminary investigations. After rebuilding, there were still errors and issues, so they dispatched a brand new Fortinet Fortigate appliance. The tech then backed up the configurations for when the new device came in, which showed up in a few hours. A restore of the configuration took less than a minute, and there were no more errors or issues.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.
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In-Person Training
Fortinet
I received it a couple years afters use it and it was just to confirm my knowledge about the tool.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Fortinet
Make sure that you have the most current version of FortiOS. Make sure all Fortigates are on the same version
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Fortinet
[Fortinet] FortiGate is not only cost effective but it gives the comprehensive security against the APT attacks and gives the complete traffic visibility and granular control. You can easily create the VDOMs (Virtual firewall) within a Fortigate firewall and customize the dashboard as per your requirement if you have multiple VDOMs within a single firewall.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Fortinet
No changes needed to terms and conditions.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Fortinet
My environments are pretty small (less than 100 users per location) so no issues here.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Fortinet
  • The pricing given to us for our firewall was well within what we were already spending for other vendors solutions and had the added value of eliminating a separate expense for a dedicated web filtering appliance.
  • We have also adopted Fortinet's security fabric approach and thus changed vendors for our switch and AP devices. These devices have come at reduced prices as compared to another previous vendor we were using, particularly in relation to ongoing annual maintenance costs.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • 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.
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