Netgate pfSense Reviews

- Firewall/router

- OpenVPN server

- DHCP server

- High availability cluster

- It's for FREE!

Before I started working for my present company, they used to use a small (for home use :) ) Linksys router. The main problem of Linksys was the limitation of firewall rules of up to 50 entries. I suggested using a main firewall/router because it has professional functions, has no limitation, and it's for free.

So far, from my point of view everything is working perfect!

I started working with pfSense in 2009.

Deployment is very easy and quite intuitive. Installation is very simple.

No, I didn't have any issues. Every issue I had with pfSense was with hardware (not caused by pfSense).

Never.

I never use customer service.

I never use technical support.

Before pfSense I had in the company an old Cisco router, but it had problems with stability so I was looking for an alternative and I found pfSense.

If you have some knowledge about router and firewall, initial setup won't be a problem for you. Ask google about it and you will find a lot of documentation, instructions and video.

I implemented pfSense by myself, so I can't rate the vendor team level of expertise.

System is totally free. I spent two days to implement it.
As hardware, I used old workstations which were prepared to scrap.
So ROI = use some cheap hardware with 2 NICs and you will get a professional firewall/router.

It's absolutly free, no pricing and no licensing.

I was checking some other alternatives (right now I don't remember which) but pfSense had the best documentation, so the choice was simple.

For professional use, I advise using two computers with three NICs

Why 2 computers???
To create a HA cluster.

You will need 3 WAN IP addresses, 3 LAN IP addresses, and a quite simple NIC configuration:

1st NIC use to WAN connection (CARP)

2nd NIC use to heartbeat and sync between two pfSense

3rd NIC use to LAN connection (CARP)

For more details ask Google :)

We primarily use the solution to help our customers with firewall integration. 

I like the solution's stability and ease of use. 

There is a need to increase the technology on the area of WAF, the web application firewall. I would like to be more knowledgeable about the firewall, so I may best use it to solve customer problems. 

The integration should be improved. 

I have been using pfSense for around six years. 

The solution is stable. 

Technical support is perfect, excellent. 

The solution is easy to install for one who properly understands the nitty gritty of the firewall and network.

It is my engineers who are responsible for the installation, not I, so I cannot comment on its duration, although I know that it does not take them long. 

We don't buy the PS from Sophos, because we have in-house training and in-house trained engineers who always handle the implementation.

Our customers must pay for an annual license. 

The solution can be deployed both on-cloud and on-premises. 

When it comes to Sophos, we have around 18 to 20 customers making use of it. 

I would recommend the solution to others. 

I rate pfSense as an eight out of ten. It is good. 

We use pfSense to protect our customers using IPS and IDS.

We are a government agency and we manage the government network. 

We complete the setup and we are protecting our customers.

The most valuable feature is that it's robust.

In terms of resources, utilization assets, CPU utilization, and a lot of memory, it's very good. 

The concurrent users are perfect for us.

The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall.

I would like an API that can sync to SolarWinds because we use SolarWinds for our monitoring platform. It would be great to be able to do all of the monitoring from SolarWinds instead of logging into the application to monitor it. It would be a nice feature to have.

I have been using pfSense for less than two years.

In the last two weeks, we moved a few resources to the pfSense and it's been stable. 

When compared to SonicWall there were some issues but it could be that SonicWall was doing too much. It was doing almost everything. It was doing IDS, IPS, and contextual training. It may be that it was overwhelmed.

We were using the software base, and then we bought the hardware device. We moved 12 users onto it and we are monitoring it.

Based on the documentation it would not require much to scale up or upgrade. There is no doubt that it is scalable.

Most of the support is online.

We do a lot of reading, and if there is any support or suggestions we quickly do it. 

We have not contacted them directly.  

They have a lot of resources available on the internet that will guide you in finding your way around.

We use a few different firewalls. We use SonicWall and Huawei firewall along with pfSense.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy.

We did not use an integrator. I completed it with one of my colleagues.

Looking at what it does, I think that it is fairly priced.

When we compare to SonicWall, we feel that we are getting the best with pfSense.

Depending on what they want their firewall to do for them. If it is for intrusion detection, and intrusion prevention I would recommend this solution. 

In summary, this product is good but I would like to see resources utilization (cpu, hard disk) directly on SolarWinds. A one stop shop for monitoring on SolarWinds. It would be great!

I would rate pfSense a six out of ten.

We use the open source version and we chose the hardware platform.

For pfSense the valuable features are:

• High availability
• VPN (openVPN)
• Easy administration
• Extensibility (by modules)
• Easy backup/restore, independent platform not linked to a commercial vendor

We have been using the solution since version 2.1, which was three years ago.

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability. It depends on the hardware, not the software.

I can't say. We provide our own support to our customers, as we are Linux, FreeBSD and IP specialists.

We used Watchguard and Endian, but pfSense is the most complete for layer 3 firewalls. We split the roles. We use pfSense only for the layer 3 and other products for proxy and reverse proxy (Diladele, Nginx) so we are not dependent of a constructor and easily update each part.

Setup is easy and done in a few steps.

You pay only the support and the price depends on the hardware not the functionalities.

The pfSense product is very powerful in layer 3 but you must add some products to match a viable commercial product which generally has all the functions integrated in one hardware system (proxy, antivirus, etc.).

For us pfSense is better for layer 3. We use MailCleaner for the mail relay, and Diladele for the web proxy. We like to split the functionalities for security reasons.

• Load balancing multi-WAN (High latency)
• Queues with CBQ algorithm
• Traffic shaper (limiter)
• Aliases for grouping anything 
• VPN (OpenVPN)
• DHCP server (with ARP reservation)
• DNS forwarder
• Firewall 
• Graphs for monitoring
• NAT

Before using pfSense:

• I always had problems with internet connection for users
• I had no idea what users were downloading and, therefore, what was killing the internet connection
• I did not have not statistics on the quality and stability of the internet
• To get a VPN I had use a pay software that offered lower performance than I have now

I always need to open different graphs on different windows of the web browser to have an overview,  Therefore, it would be good, if it is possible, to have a customizable, large dashboard.  At the moment though, the others options are good because I am a beginner with the pfSense.

I've used it for six months.

No issues encountered.

There was an issue with the Layer 7 filters on an old PC.

No issues encountered.

No previous solution was used.

It's very straightforward, even for beginners.  There is documentation and different tutorials and videos available in different languages.

I implemented it myself.

The only cost to set up is the hardware for a standard PC and any ethernet card extensions.

No, as I asked a friend they told me to get pfSense without doing other research.

Don't install pfSense on a machine with only the minimal recommended hardware configuration, but on a better machine.

I am using pfSense as a secondary firewall and network management.

The most valuable features of pfSense are the reports, monitoring, filtration, and blocking incoming and outgoing traffic.

The usage reports can be better.

I have been using pfSense for approximately six years.

The solution is stable.

I had 20 to 30 users using the solution.

I have used Sophos and Cyberoam solutions.

The installation is very easy.

I did the implementation of the solution.

I am using the free version of pfSense.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I have been 100% satisfied with the solution.

I rate pfSense an eight out of ten.

We use pfSense for the firewall, VPN server, client-server, and internal network.

pfSense helped us during COVID-19 because we used OpenVPN to connect from home.

I like the Package Manager feature. 

The main problem with pfSense is that it lacks adequate ransomware protection. I would also like pfSense to be more robust like Cisco or Fortinet.

I've been using pfSense for two or three years.

The stability is very good.

Scalability is very good. We didn't have to slow down, and we worked with it for months.

The pfSense page, community support, and YouTube tutorials are good.

The initial set up is complex and took two days to deploy.

pfSense is open-source.

I like Fortinet and Sophos as they have more tools to prevent ransomware attacks. Sophos has a client-server, and pfSense doesn't have that. Fortinet and Sophos are under a paid license, and pfSense is open-source and free. This is the main difference.

I would recommend pfSense to potential users. I would tell them to just read the tutorials because they're very useful. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a nine.

We have a hosted platform with our client. We've built a VPN site and the solution is deployed as a VM. The client connects to it and it protects anything that's behind it like a regular firewall. Everything we have there is hosted in a data center, all our servers and things that clients connect to. So we're using it as our gateway device. We are customers of pfSense and I'm the owner of our company. 

I like the site-to-site VPN and the basic firewall features.

Right now we have to use a lot of third party plugins with other providers that have their own built-in features so I'd like to see layer 7 advanced firewall features included in the solution. It would definitely improve the product. 

We've used pfSense over the past three years. 

The stability is very good, it's just that it's not as easy to use as SonicWall. There are limits as to who we can put to work on the solution, a limited number of our engineers work with it.

The solution is very scalable. We don't sell pfSense to the end users, we use it ourselves. Our clients have SonicWall but the whole company benefits from the firewall. 

We've never used technical support but we're looking into it now and I think it's very comparable to SonicWall.

It's harder to set up pfSense than SonicWall. Only a couple of people in our company can do that. 

We are currently using the open source solution so it's free. 

There's a learning curve to this solution, it's not as simple to use as some of the other GUI based firewalls. You need to play around with it a bit. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.