Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router Reviews

We use Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router as a high availability BGP solution.

My favorite feature about Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router is the fact that it's open source, so if you go online and look at other people's comments and reviews, you find it's transparent with nothing hidden and no additional charges for software.

Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router is extremely scalable; we chose the highest end product at that time and have greatly expanded its capabilities. We needed to upgrade the RAM in the firewall, and I found compatible RAM on Newegg, receiving it in just 24 hours. Overall, we've been very happy with it being a Supermicro-based server, which we already use in production.

One downside of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router is the need for a better understanding of what hardware it would run on. Right now, we're using Netgate's hardware, but I'm interested in knowing if there are other hardware options available, particularly heavier duty hardware, because the Supermicro 1537 version we have only has a single power supply, which is a shortcoming in an IT environment where dual power supplies are ideal.

The pricing for the hardware of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router is steep, which is one reason I'd explore other options. I'm familiar with the costs of Supermicro servers, and I believe Netgate charges a premium for their server hardware without enough upside to justify it. The pricing is not justified.

I have been using Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router since 2018.

In terms of stability, we've experienced a couple of upgrades that didn't affect functionality, but other smaller issues arose. For the most part, the hardware is rock solid. I haven't faced total failures, which was a significant problem with the Ubiquiti gear that had power supply failures. Overall, the entire Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router product has been reliable, though some of their smaller gear aimed at remote offices hasn't been cost-effective.

We use their technical support services and have been very happy with their online technical support people.

The support is included, and it comes with a four-hour response time, so it's fairly high-end technical support. The quality of their answers is impressive; the support team is humble and knowledgeable. I've dealt with many customer support professionals over the years, and the support group at Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router is by far the best. They identify problems quickly and connect you with the right specialist without hesitation, working diligently to resolve issues, even if it takes hours, which is refreshing compared to many tech support experiences I've had.

I give Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router a 10 out of 10 for support because we have a great deal of confidence that any outage we encounter will be resolved quickly with their help. Overall, I rate Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router a 10 out of 10; they are an impressive company with interconnected teams, making it easy to get consistent answers from both sales and tech support.

Positive

I've used a whole bunch of Ubiquiti gear; we used exclusively Ubiquiti before switching to Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router.

I prefer Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router because it provides regular updates and has longevity, meaning I don't worry about it going obsolete. Many IT products have maybe a three-year lifecycle, and once you stop receiving updates for a product, it becomes practically useless. We've faced problems with Ubiquiti gear that has gone obsolete, where updates would trash our system, requiring us to revert to old versions. Netgate is good about ensuring updates won't disrupt my system.

I saw benefits from Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router after we made the change in 2019, due to power supply issues with our Ubiquiti gear when we couldn't obtain replacements. That prompted our decision to switch to Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router, as it proved to be a more robust product.

The initial deployment of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router was extremely easy thanks to an incredible amount of documentation online, user videos, and a robust user community that quickly helps troubleshoot issues.

The first deployment took about four hours, even though we had a pretty complicated situation, as we were integrating multiple features from the Ubiquiti world into the Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router setup, which I consider quite fast.

Two people were involved in the initial deployment of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router.

We use the Plus version of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router, which comes automatically with any Netgate hardware, so really, I'm paying for it once.

We do all our own maintenance on Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router, reaching back to pfSense only when we encounter issues unfamiliar to our IT people or if it's something highly specialized. Currently, we're using the premium support product for quick callbacks.

My overall rating for Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router is a 10 out of 10.

We are using this solution mainly in the education sector, including universities or engineering colleges.

I have used Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router VLAN support, and I find VLAN support is good. VLAN support provides unlimited VLANs and is well-implemented.

VPN tunneling has also been good, as it provides unlimited VPN tunneling capabilities.

The load balancing capabilities of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router are good.

Regarding the drawbacks or weak points I have noticed, I reviewed all current firewalls and it seems all are on an equal level, including Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router. There are no major differences or drawbacks. You can customize this product and choose your own hardware.

In future releases and updates of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router, the basic feature I would like to see is that it remains open-source with no recurring cost, which is a big feature in a country like India. A captive portal would be an additional feature that would be good to have.

I have been working with this product for nearly 15 to 17 years.

My experience with the product is that it is a stable and good product that is easy to use. It is an open source product.

I would rate stability from one to ten as a nine in comparison to all other firewalls because it is a cheaper option for deployment and price.

I would rate the scalability of the solution from one to ten as an eight. There is another open-source software, OPNSense, where there is major development compared to Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router.

The approximate time deployment for Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router requires only one hour or a maximum of two hours. It is user-friendly.

I am not currently working only with Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router, as we work with other firewalls also. However, it is a good choice for users.

The other firewalls I am using include Fortinet and Sophos.

I would assess the effectiveness of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router's traffic shaping as good, but I would give a six marks only for that compared to others because in the past few years, there has been a stop of improvement or lack of improvement showing in Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router. That is why OPNSense is quite good now.

The benefits of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router VPN services to my remote access strategy are comparatively the same with all others. The basic thing is that all these modules or VPN tunneling or others are unlimited use in Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router, and in other firewalls, you need to purchase additionally.

I do use Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router Multi-WAN capabilities. Basically, it is customized, so you can choose your own hardware. It is scalable, depending on your requirements.

My job position is that I am an owner of a company that is involved in managed networks. I rate this product overall as a nine out of ten.

We work with Netgate products. We are a reseller and consultant. We have been working with Netgate and Fortinet for around two years.

The primary thing I find valuable in Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router is that it is license-free software. Unlike FortiGate, you do not have to do yearly subscription renewals. In pfSense, there is no need for any license renewal. This represents a one-time cost, so customers feel that there is no OPEX, only CAPEX.

For VPN, we primarily recommend Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router to our customers. More packages are available, including IDS and IPS. Whatever features you want, there will be a package readily available. You just have to install it and do the configuration.

VLAN is a basic feature and it is available. Traffic shaping is good enough. Generally, pfSense's traffic shaper is very effective for this. You can prioritize traffic for voice and data.

Load balancing and load failover are valuable. You can have multiple ISPs and do the load balancing effectively. Many customers use load balancing by default and ask for load balancing, VLAN, VPN, and everything.

We have multiple VPN options for our customers' remote access strategy. We have WireGuard, OpenVPN, and IPsec. Usually for customers needing site-to-site VPN, we recommend IPsec. If they want remote VPN access, we recommend OpenVPN.

Multi-WAN allows you to do load balancing and failover.

Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router regularly provides updates. One aspect they can improve is that most people ask whether an antivirus scanning system is available in pfSense. Other companies, such as FortiGate or Cisco, market their product as a next-generation firewall with built-in antivirus applications and zero trust, with everything available in their ecosystem. This needs to be better communicated for pfSense, because the capability already exists, but we have to explain to customers which package to install and configure for those features to be used effectively. If Netgate can pitch their product with antivirus as a clearly available option, it will be more useful.

Their support is good. I would rate their support as nine out of ten.

Netgate could learn more from FortiGate in terms of product marketing. Customers are more satisfied wherever we have delivered the product. For example, one customer previously used SonicWall and replaced it with Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router. They are more satisfied with Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router in terms of its flexibility and customer support.

For metrics to measure its impact, we do not measure in a formal way. We use bandwidth monitoring to check how effective the solution is.

I have not encountered customers asking for additional features beyond the antivirus system. That is the only topic that comes up.

I do not find anything to be improved when it comes to VPN or routing in pfSense.

I would give Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router a rating of eight out of ten.

We use pfSense and Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router to establish a VPN tunnel between our client and our headquarters to transfer data between client and our equipment. It's very simple to use, efficient, up to date, and the hardware is very available; it's very safe.

We use pfSense and Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router to establish a VPN tunnel between our client and our headquarters to transfer data between client and our equipment. It's very simple to use, efficient, up to date, and the hardware is very available; it's very safe.

Everything works well inside pfSense. It's affordable. For our use of pfSense, it meets one hundred percent of our needs. It features easy installation, and we use direct installation on the equipment rather than cloud deployment.

Regarding tuning, it's not really an advantage as we need that functionality.

The most significant drawback in recent years has been the cessation of firmware release downloads. In the past, when we wanted to update our equipment, we simply downloaded the latest firmware. Now pfSense has changed its policies. Instead of providing firmware for download, they require customers to proceed with updates through the cloud, which isn't an optimal solution for us. I prefer the old method of updating where we could download the latest firmware and install it directly. Without an internet connection, we cannot update our equipment, which is problematic.

Everything is very stable for us at the moment; we have encountered no problems.

Adding new equipment is very easy for our organization.

I am not in charge of networking in our company, so I may not be the most appropriate person to answer detailed questions. The solution is used for security to establish private communication.

We use OpenSense for our operations.

I have used the VLAN support of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router. We actually use two types of VPN, OpenVPN and WireGuard, and both of them are working perfectly fine; it is great.

The load balancing capabilities have helped my IT infrastructure. It has helped our network management, as we have a couple of LAN networks and WAN networks.

The effectiveness of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router traffic shaping is quite good, but I am not very satisfied with the interface for control. It needs some upgrading in speed, so I would not say it is too complicated or obsolete.

As a firm, we have been using Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router for a couple of years, and for me, it has been around one year, as long as I have been here.

I do not use the multi-WAN capability of Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router.

I do not have complaints about Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router with Firewall, VPN, and Router; it is really comfortable for use, and it does a pretty good job.

I would rate my experience with Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall_VPN_Router as eight out of ten. Mostly the interface is the reason I rate it eight out of ten, but I do not have anything else I would alter or improve. My overall review rating for this product is eight out of ten.