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IPFire vs KerioControl comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGate
Sponsored
Ranking in Firewalls
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
581
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (1st), WAN Edge (1st), ZTNA (1st), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (1st)
IPFire
Ranking in Firewalls
36th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KerioControl
Ranking in Firewalls
26th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (16th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 18.7%, down from 20.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IPFire is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KerioControl is 1.1%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fortinet FortiGate18.7%
KerioControl1.1%
IPFire1.7%
Other78.5%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Gala - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Information Technology Operation/Presales at TechMonarch
A stable solution with an intuitive interface and quick customer service
I have been working with Fortinet FortiGate, WatchGuard, Sophos, and SonicWall. I'm not as comfortable with SonicWall because of their UI and limitations. I prefer Fortinet above all other options. When it comes to configuration, I am confident in my ability to handle various tasks, including creating policies such as firewall rules, web policies, and application policies. Additionally, I can configure VPNs and implement load balancing, among other tasks. Overall, I feel much more comfortable working with Fortinet. Fortinet has made significant improvements by integrating AI with firewalls for threat analysis and prevention. In the past 2-3 years, they have launched FortiSASE and SIEM, and they also provide SOC services. Both Palo Alto and Fortinet FortiGate are excellent. While Fortinet FortiGate comes at higher prices, the functionality and support justify the cost. They promptly resolve firmware issues and inform all support providers about configuration changes.
DS
Head Competence Team IT at Duktig Brand
Blocking access from specific countries and ensuring robust security have been effortlessly achieved
I use IPFire to protect my home The best feature of IPFire is the location block functionality. It allows me to block certain countries from accessing my site. Additionally, it is a solution that is available for free, which is perfect. The graphical interface could be much better. I have…
MM
Senior Systems Tech/Admin at Samco Software Inc.
Comprehensive Security Features and High Ease of Setup Elevate User Experience
The best features for KerioControl are its proprietary VPN protocol, which does not connect easily with other firewalls unless you enable IPsec. It will only connect to KerioControl. KerioControl is very valuable for business. Key points where KerioControl is valuable include its own anti-spam, intrusion prevention, and antivirus, which is included in the yearly subscription renewals. The VPN capabilities are helpful in managing my remote or distributed workforce, as we create documents and set up a location for clients to download. Clients can download KerioControl's VPN client online, and they just have to log in from the VPN client, which connects easily. I assess the firewall function in filtering both incoming and outgoing network traffic with KerioControl as excellent. Everything is logged, and any intrusion, antivirus, virus, or anything foreign to the system trying to hack in gets logged, and we can easily block those IPs.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN, as it allows us to connect and it separates this product from other firewalls."
"The most useful feature of FortiGate IPS for me is Application Control."
"Fortinet has a very good solution for Secure SD-WAN. One very good feature is that they have robust and simple FortiOS through which they provide all solutions. That's their strength. There's not much complexity involved with the Secure SD-WAN solution of Fortinet as compared to Cisco's solution, which has a lot of flexibility but complexity also comes with that flexibility."
"The best features of Fortinet FortiGate are that it does the job effectively and protects our environment."
"Provides good firewall security and has great VPN features."
"The ability to set up remote systems is the most valuable feature."
"The solution can scale."
"FortiGate is on the cheaper end, and it offers good value."
"I would rate the stability as ten out of ten for IPFire."
"IPFire has prevented any kind of hacking and enables us to comply with customer requirements."
"I am impressed with the tool's firewall filtering capacity."
"Kerio Control can be scaled easily."
"The most valuable feature is the reliability of VPN capabilities. The VPN has been very reliable and secure. The security has been very good and the VPN connections are reliable in that they stay up. We don't have a lot of problems with downtime and that type of thing."
"The flexibility of the system, the capacity to provide the right level of security, and the ability to be integrated into different kinds of infrastructures are the most valuable features."
"Instead of using a cloud-based product for accessing information, and putting my data at risk in the cloud and in someone else's hands, it has allowed me to use a VPN and access my data directly from a laptop when I am out in the field. That has made my life a lot easier, where I'm able to access any information I need to be able access, basically on demand, with an Internet connection. That alone has been great."
"I love the VPN that we set up. A few of us have it on our computers so that if we leave, we can still access the stores. And we can work from home if needed. When I sign into that Kerio VPN, it links me like I'm sitting in the store. It puts me in our secure network so that I can sign on to each individual store and I can run numbers... If I have to work from home, it's so much faster than the way we used to do it."
"Technical support is good. They respond right away."
"The most valuable features include geo-tagging, which blocks all other IPs except for the specified accounts, and web filtering."
 

Cons

"In my opinion, Fortinet FortiGate could be improved by making the appliance smaller than what we have here, as it is pretty big."
"Lacks sufficient security options."
"We can't identify which users are causing challenges when we have issues."
"The support team for Fortinet FortiGate needs to be more customer friendly."
"We would like to have the ability to disable some of the security functionalities."
"There are some license issues. Not every feature must have a separate license. There must be some of kind synergy between the license so we don't have to pay for every individual license that we would like to have."
"Fortinet FortiGate is not very easy to use. The navigation could be improved to make it easier to use."
"The learning curve is a bit higher."
"The graphical interface could be much better."
"Accessing the internet was a bit complicated."
"One area that confused me a bit when I was building my current network. I use VLANs to have separate functionality on the network, and the appliance I got was the WiFi model, but I discovered that you can't assign WiFi channels to the VLAN. So, you can have WiFi, but its own subnet. You can't run that over the VLAN. Effectively, I can't use the WiFi facility in the appliance and had to purchase a separate web that supports VLANs. In the end, I had to go to GFI support. They confirmed this is just a limited functionality of that device, as it is a low-end device. I don't know if any of their high-end models have a better facility or not."
"When it comes to dealing with updates, there are often bugs on the solution. They should do a lot more testing before they release new versions."
"One of the problems we do have causes problems with the VPN. The software slows the throughput down too much. You could have a one-gigabit connection from the internet, and it slows it down to the area of upload and download is extremely slow. There's too much content filtering at that point."
"The VPN features are the ones that we really like, but we are using a VPN client to be able to use them. We would like to have an SSL implementation for this same feature so we don't need to install anything on the client side. That's a feature I really miss and that should really be embedded in the product. We really would love to use it via a web browser."
"Kerio Control could improve by having higher availability and adding a mobile VPN channel. These additions are needed. The VPN is working fine on the Kerio Control but there needs to be a VPN client on the mobile phones, both for iOS and Android. This would be very good for us."
"It has a VPN back to our data center but I don't think it has increased the number of VPN clients extended to those outside our environment"
"Kerio Control has just improved on their biggest problem, which was to introduce better support for high-availability requirements in production."
"I can no longer renew my subscription directly with GFI but we have to go through third-party resellers like CDW. The first time I did it with CDW. I went to CDW and it was almost like they didn't even know anything. They didn't know what package I was supposed to get. Then after I got it, it took almost five days to get everything working."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of FortiGate is average and I would say that based on the top five products available on the market, it is in the affordable range."
"The price is okay, so far so good."
"Here in Brazil, we're going through difficult economic times and the tax on the dollar is high. All the solutions from minor competitors are growing in the market. The prices have come more competitive."
"The beauty is the price performance ratio is great with FortiGate. It provides all the features we needed and the price is comparable with others' firewalls. The price is quite competitive with the firewalls with similar features."
"Pricing for this product is comparatively lower than other products. It's an affordable solution, but when expanding the number of users, they'll ask you to replace the model, so that's an added cost."
"Fortinet FortiGate IPS' licensing is quite simple to understand."
"Fortinet bundles FortiGate with other products and because of this, the price is a little expensive to some SMB enterprises."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
Information not available
"There is a yearly upkeep fee."
"KerioControl's pricing is good."
"The yearly maintenance fee is a bit high for the Kerio Control Boxes. The end of life for the devices is kind of short. It seems like they're making you upgrade within a short period of time. They should at least allow five years, but it seems like they are changing their end of life to be shorter to generate revenue."
"It's too expensive. The license, in the last year or so, has gone up by over a £100. We're almost being out-priced by the annual license at the minute."
"I pay approximately $50 for the solution on an annual basis."
"Its initial cost is less as compared to other products. It becomes a bit costly when you pay for the products that you don't use. We paid for almost all the products through subscription, but we are using only a few products. We use EndPointSecurity, Kerio Connect, WebMonitor, and LanGuard. We don't use the rest of the products."
"Licensing is easier with Kerio Control. With FortiGate, we realized the licensing is really hectic, because if you skip one year, you have to back pay that year. If you skip two years, you have to back pay two years. With Kerio Control, if a license expires, one year later you can just reactivate and go on."
"It is priced low enough for entry-level, but it has the power to grow with a company without them having to replace it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Comms Service Provider
21%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Media Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business357
Midsize Enterprise133
Large Enterprise189
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage a...
What is the biggest difference between Sophos XG and FortiGate?
From my experience regarding both the Sophos and FortiGate firewalls, I personally would rather use FortiGate. I know...
What are the biggest technical differences between Sophos UTM and Fortinet FortiGate?
As a solution, Sophos UTM offers a lot of functionality, it scales well, and the stability and performance are quite ...
What needs improvement with IPFire?
The graphical interface could be much better.
What is your primary use case for IPFire?
I use IPFire ( /products/ipfire-reviews ) to protect my home.
What advice do you have for others considering IPFire?
Sometimes configuring IPFire is challenging. Overall, I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for KerioControl?
KerioControl offers good pricing as one license covers all features needed without extra payment. The price for the p...
What needs improvement with KerioControl?
Regarding KerioControl's application awareness and control feature, I have not used it much.
What is your primary use case for KerioControl?
With KerioControl, we usually use them for site-to-site VPNs for most of our clients. With multiple offices, we use K...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall
No data available
No data available
 

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
1. Siemens 2. IBM 3. Cisco 4. Dell 5. HP 6. Intel 7. Oracle 8. Google 9. Microsoft 10. Amazon 11. Apple 12. Facebook 13. Twitter 14. Netflix 15. Adobe 16. SAP 17. VMware 18. Juniper Networks 19. Ericsson 20. Nokia 21. AT&T 22. Verizon 23. T-Mobile 24. Vodafone 25. Orange 26. Deutsche Telekom 27. British Telecom 28. Comcast 29. Time Warner 30. Sony 31. Samsung 32. LG
Triton Technical, McDonald's
Find out what your peers are saying about IPFire vs. KerioControl and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.