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IPFire vs Untangle NG Firewall 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
592
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
35th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Untangle NG Firewall
Ranking in Firewalls
32nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Unified Threat Management (UTM) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGate is 15.1%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IPFire is 1.1%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Untangle NG Firewall is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiGate15.1%
Untangle NG Firewall1.0%
IPFire1.1%
Other82.8%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

Mageshwaran S - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at airtel
Enables customers to manage security effortlessly with intuitive features and easy integration
In terms of improvements for Fortinet FortiGate, they could offer evaluation licenses, as compared to Meraki, which provides a 90-day evaluation. In Fortinet FortiGate, they do not provide standard evaluation licenses; instead, we need to request them from the OEM through the account manager for POCs. If we want to conduct a demo, we need to work with real hardware. In comparison to Cisco, we have DCloud, which helps with providing demos to customers, but in Meraki, I need to reach out to them, book a lab, and they need to provide all the hardware. I need remote access and L3 engineers to program it; only then can I offer a real-time demo to the customer.
AE
Chief Technology Officer at Agileware Limited
Firewall deployment has secured mission-critical public apps and simplifies Linux-based management
The best features IPFire offers include its very intuitive nature because, even though it has a Linux back-end, in terms of configuration, it has a very rich GUI interface. The GUI and configuration features of IPFire have made my work easier and more efficient because their positioning and the sequence with which I follow is easy. In terms of all the processes, what you need to do at first and the next thing that you need to do is clear. The GUI is well arranged in sequential order, so you can follow that from whatever you want to do until you get the target objective. IPFire includes features with a very robust and rich community that is very much valid in terms of content. IPFire has positively impacted my organization by giving us some mileage. At least, a lot of organizations now know that we have a solution that can deliver the same value.
Gary-Downey - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Has provided built-in VPN tools and reporting features that streamline remote access and monitoring tasks
We do an outside-sourced threat prevention regarding the Threat Prevention features. I haven't run into areas that could be improved or cons versus pros for Untangle NG Firewall. I haven't done anything too advanced when it comes to the filtering, so I'm not sure what can be improved or added. I haven't dug into the advanced features, but I think some of the advanced capabilities are probably where it lacks a little bit, with the filtering and firewall rules. These areas could be improved to make it a nine out of 10 or a 10 out of 10 for overall rating.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The next-generation firewall is great."
"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable; if you are familiar with it, you can work from anywhere and do whatever you want, and it is very easy to scale."
"It is easy to use. We chose this product for the possibility to have virtual domains (VDOMs). We are building another company in the group, and we would like to split the firewalling rules and policies between these two companies. Each company would be able to manage its own policies and security rules, which is an advantage of Fortinet FortiGate. We can define VDOMs, and every company can manage its own VDOM as if it has its own physical firewall, but in fact, we would be using the same physical appliance because we are also using the same internet lines. So, it allows us to reuse the existing resources without the disadvantage of having to compromise on policies and security. Each company can choose its own way of working."
"Fortinet FortiGate works well for me."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a scalable solution."
"With the application and web filters, we were able to block social network websites and any other websites that could lead staff being less productive."
"We can use our devices to check all of the perimeters, and it secures email websites."
"IPFire has prevented any kind of hacking and enables us to comply with customer requirements."
"Regarding IPFire's AI capabilities, I think they are quite focused; in all the deployments I have done, I have not had any incidents or breaches."
"I would rate the stability as ten out of ten for IPFire."
"The flexibility to grow, the user-friendliness of the interface, and the common center facility are the advantages of Untangle NG Firewall."
"The interface is very good."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"The majority of our clients are very small businesses, and Untangle devices have been fantastic for these small clients. We've basically standardized our stack to just simply use Untangle. We include the hardware and the service option, which makes it very easy and affordable for us to just simply push that into the monthly per-user costing that we provide as a managed services provider. It's really a no-brainer. They're easy to use, and they're easy to set up and configure. Support is generally good about resolving any issues that we have. We haven't had any real complaints."
"We use the web sensor, the virus blocker, the spam blocker, bandwidth control, application control, and firewall options, and we're quite happy with all of it."
"The product’s most valuable features are endpoint protection management, load balancing, and connectivity with Active Directory."
"The Untangle firewall is a software firewall, so it runs on generic hardware, and we found that was probably the best feature, and it's why we chose it when we started using it three years ago."
"The most valuable features are IPS, MAPI, NAT, and VPN."
 

Cons

"I wish Fortinet FortiGate's UI updates would be done in a more simplified way to improve it."
"I could not configure sFlow from the FortiGate graphical user interface. I realized that the sFlow configuration is available only from the CLI, and discovered that sFlow is not supported on virtual interfaces, such as VDOM links, IPsec, or GRE."
"If you have the firmware version 6.4.3 and are using FortiLink in VLAN, it has trouble with tunneling networks for a wireless network; it won't give it a route to the internet."
"Some time ago we upgraded to the Fortinet solution of our previous partner and there was a memory leak which created problems."
"Stability and technical support are the two major issues I have found with Fortinet."
"Fortinet FortiGate can improve the integration with Active Directory. Additionally, I would like to have a Cloud Controller, such as they do in the Cisco Meraki solution."
"Monitoring could be improved."
"The pricing of the solution should be more affordable"
"Accessing the internet was a bit complicated."
"The graphical interface could be much better."
"I would rate IPFire 8 out of 10 because I do not think there is any solution anywhere in the world that is 100 percent efficient."
"The pricing should be reduced because it is expensive."
"The product needs to have a better support group for its online support, specifically for its help desk."
"It would be much easier if there was a mobile app."
"The management console for partners is a bit tricky (buggy)."
"On their low-end appliance, they could have more memory and the largest storage space. The low-end appliance comes with a too-small hard drive, and it could use a little extra room. It only comes with about 4 gigs or 8 gigs of memory, and the hardware space is only 40 gigs, which is really small."
"For the web filter, I think they can do better especially on the free model."
"The web content filtering needs improvement."
"The local technical support does not understand the product very well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"By default, they give SD-WAN along with the firewall. They don't have separate licensing for the SD-WAN functionality. However, they have security licenses that are sold separately on a subscription basis. Customers can consume these security features to protect their users from internet traffic."
"The price is really low. It's cheap in comparison to the cost of Cisco or CheckPoint, for example."
"The price for the device and software is high. However, the solution is of good quality and has a lot of features."
"Its price is affordable and lesser than Cisco. Cisco is expensive. In terms of licensing, there is only one issue. If a customer's license has expired a month ago and they do the renewal after one month, Fortinet renews the license from the start of the previous month. The activation of the product is done from the previous month, not from the date of renewal. The customers usually shout and complain that because they are paying today, the renewal should start from today. The support contract renewals or licensing should be renewed from the date of renewal, but Fortinet starts from the day it had expired. It is a loss for customers. They might have had some problems because of which they did not take the license one month before. Fortinet should work on this. Cisco doesn't do this. Cisco always starts from the day they apply for the license."
"I think price-wise, the solution is totally reasonable since it has many products to serve, starting from small homes to massive scale sites."
"The licensing costs are very competitive."
"It is affordable. Palo Alto is much more expensive than Fortinet."
"The cost has increased since the update so I would rate it eight out of ten."
Information not available
"The setup cost is about $2000 to $3000 per year."
"It is not expensive. It is cheaper than Fortinet."
"The pricing model is better than with SonicWall."
"The tool's pricing is moderate, and licensing costs are yearly."
"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."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"Usually, it's about $350 a year for 12 users, and it's about $600 for 50 users. It's very reasonable as compared to the others. One of the reasons is that they're all open-source. You just buy their appliance and put it in until it dies. Because it's run under open platforms, mine seems to always work on older equipment. I've taken old equipment and put a new hard disk in it. I have taken about nine-year-old computers and put their operating system on them, and ran them like a champ. The only thing that changed was the hard drive because I don't trust a hard drive that's more than three to four years old."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
21%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
8%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business370
Midsize Enterprise138
Large Enterprise195
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise1
 

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 needs improvement with Untangle NG Firewall?
I would appreciate improvements to the ad blocker and SSL Inspector of Untangle NG Firewall.
What is your primary use case for Untangle NG Firewall?
My usual use cases for Untangle NG Firewall are just like a firewall and router. The main purpose is for firewall fun...
 

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
North American Stamping Group, Cerebral Palsy of North Jersey (CPNJ), Brown County Schools, IN, City of Bridgeton, MO, Lancaster County, SC, Vision Charter School, Clay County Sheriff’s Department, NC, Breakwater School, Boys & Girls Club of Manchester, NH, Admiral Farragut Academy, Flow Companies, No Ordinary Hotel, KECdesign,
Find out what your peers are saying about IPFire vs. Untangle NG Firewall and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.