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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Untangle NG Firewall

    Score7 out of 10
    N/AUntangle NG Firewall is an open-source firewall and gateway security platform. It offers a free core firewall platform with paid add-ons, and a cloud-based management platform with a variety of deployment options for smaller teams.

    $25

    per month

    VMware ESXi

    Score7.5 out of 10
    N/AA bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.N/A
    Pricing
    Untangle NG FirewallVMware ESXi
    Editions & Modules
    Open Source Firewall
    $0.00
    free under the GNU General Public License (GPL)
    NG Firewall Complete
    $25.00
    per month
    z4 appliance
    $299
    one-time purchase
    z4w appliance
    $329
    one-time purchase
    z4 Plus appliance
    $399.00
    one-time purchase
    z6 appliance
    $1199.00
    one-time purchase
    z12 appliance
    $1999.00
    one-time purchase
    z20 appliance
    $3499.00
    one-time purchase
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Untangle NG FirewallVMware ESXi
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Untangle NG FirewallVMware ESXi
    Considered Both Products
    Untangle
    No answer on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    93 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    86 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    99%
    Happy with the feature set
    94 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    99%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    91 Answers
    Features
    Untangle NG FirewallVMware ESXi
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Untangle NG Firewall and VMware ESXi
    Feature
    Untangle NG Firewall
    8.2
    6 Ratings
    5% below category average
    VMware ESXi
    -
    Ratings
    Identification Technologies8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Visualization Tools7.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Inspection8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP9.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console9.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging7.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    VPN9.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    High Availability9.05 Ratings00 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Proxy Server8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Untangle NG Firewall and VMware ESXi
    Feature
    Untangle NG Firewall
    -
    Ratings
    VMware ESXi
    8.2
    128 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings8.0116 Ratings
    Management console00 Ratings9.0128 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings8.0112 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings8.0116 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings8.0117 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Untangle NG FirewallVMware ESXi
    Small Businesses
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Untangle NG FirewallVMware ESXi
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (9 ratings)
    9.0
    (129 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (6 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (55 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.1
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Untangle NG FirewallVMware ESXi
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Untangle
    Untangle is very strong in the "traditional" sense of security. That means an edge appliance that either works with an existing router or is the router itself (recommended). This approach has also been adapted well to cloud environments in order to protect virtual servers and VDI workstations. As mentioned earlier, many schools are using cloud-based filtering for their 1:1 solutions for their students. This is an area where Untangle is unable to serve. Some have used an instance of Untangle in the cloud with VPN to serve their remote needs, but it is not the same as solutions that are designed for cloud-based filtering of devices without VPN.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Untangle
    • Web Filtering is strong, and can also do application fingerprinting to allow Facebook, but not Facebook games. Secondly, a separate partition called a "rack" can be set up to give one subnet or group of users different web filtering policies than another. For example, teachers would get more freedom to browse the web than students at a school.
    • Built-in SD-WAN connectivity as part of your license. IPSEC tunnel creation is also amazingly easy.
    • Will install on any x86 hardware created in the last 5-10 years. Ram and processor requirements per user are very low.
    • Reporting is phenomenal, however you can get death by details very easily.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others.
    • Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined.
    • VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Untangle
    • The full suite can be expensive for business but will be powerful enough.
    • The full suite for home or small office isn't that bad of a price but may be out of reach for most home users but remember the basics are FREE so anyone can get started with it.
    • I would like to see it promoted for mid to large businesses as I think it can handle it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items.
    • VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi.
    • I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Untangle
    Service renewal is in Feb 2021. We will be renewing!
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Untangle
    Generally works well but seeing more and more bugs with the OpenVPN app.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Untangle
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Untangle
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Untangle
    The phone support reps are highly competent and native-English speakers. big plus vs some other vendors with difficult to understand or less knowledgable support engineers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Untangle
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Untangle
    Untangle NG Firewall has a partnership with third parties to provide an amazing suite of applications. You pay for those. With free software, you have to wait for it to be updated. With Unifi, the hardware was too underpowered to do anything meaningful. I don't mind the monthly fees because these companies update quickly; they have a reputation to maintain.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    As long as you're using Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Untangle
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Untangle
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Untangle
    • It's allowed us to be PCI compliant which we need to do business.
    • It's allowed us to not only be PCI compliant but follow best practice to be actually as secure as we can be.
    • It's really presented us with a lot of flexibility in terms of how we connect to other services.
    • There is some maintenance, but it's very minimal.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users.
    • VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor.
    • As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots