Netgate pfSense Reviews

We deploy the pfSense firewall to our customers' networks.

The solution provides customers with reliability and additional security.

The interface is very good. The configuration options are excellent. All of its capabilities are quite useful. It's more capable than what we need it for. I like having the ability to have additional capabilities compared to others.

pfSense's flexibility is great. I would rate it pretty high based on that.

We immediately witnessed the benefits of pfSense.

The IPS intrusion protection system helps prevent data loss. It works really well. It's a little bit manual process, however, it works really well overall.

pfSense provides high availability to help minimize downtime. They all have built-in high availability, which fails over to another box.

The solution provides visibility that enables users to make data-driven decisions. That said, that's a capability that we really don't need due to how small our customers are.

The visibility in pfSense helps to optimize performance. Just being able to see network traffic and the load on the firewall on the box, or the response times from packets going back and forth is helpful. There is a lot of visibility into network performance.

pfSense does not provide a single pane of glass type of management. That's one of the biggest downfalls. We take care of more than 60 customers, so it would be nice to have the ability to have all of the pfSense boxes that we deploy under one pane of glass so we can manage them centrally. 

I've used the solution for two years. 

I've had no issues with stability; I'd rate it ten out of ten. 

While we do not scale the solution, I can see it being very scalable. 

Technical support is of excellent quality, and they have fast response times. 

We've never used any alternative to pfSense.

We're buying the machines from Netgate. It's very easy to deploy. I'd rate the ease of implementation as eight out of ten. Even if someone didn't have much experience with pfSense, it would be pretty easy.

It's low maintenance; we may only need to worry about an occasional firmware update. 

I did not use an integrator or consultant during the implementation. I handled the process myself. 

The total cost of ownership is very good. It's low maintenance. Once you get it up and running, you really don't have to touch it. It's very favorable to have the inclusion of firewall, VPN, and router functionalities.

The pricing is excellent. 

We're an end-user.

We use the pfSense Plus version. 

I'd rate pfSense nine out of ten.

New users should be aware that it is more complex than just a consumer-grade product. Users need to be prepared for a lot of features that they might not understand or know how to implement at first. Check your resources in preparation.

I use Netgate pfSense as my office firewall.

I implemented pfSense as a firewall, VPN, and content filtering solution using pfBlocker and configured it to verify HAProxy certificates.

Most of our pfSense deployments are on existing machines with a small amount in the cloud.

pfSense offers excellent flexibility and works well with both physical appliances and virtual machines.

The ease of adding features to pfSense and configuring them depends mainly on the user's experience. I find it extremely easy.

Firewalls and Network Address Translation offer immediate benefits once configured, as they are foundational security measures. Other features, however, require more extensive configuration and testing before their advantages become apparent.

Compared to other firewall solutions, pfSense's interface is user-friendly and straightforward.

pfSense allows us to configure multiple internet connections and firewall rules to minimize downtime.

It provides visibility into our network by capturing and delivering log data, such as Syslog, firewall logs, and other relevant information. This enables us to make informed decisions based on data analysis.

pfSense can help optimize network performance. When using appliances, we can install more than ten gigabit network interface cards and add more as needed, depending on the hardware capabilities. Typically, new appliances come equipped with ten-gigabit network adapters or ports. We can significantly enhance network and server communication speeds by fully utilizing these ten-gigabit connections.

The most valuable features of pfSense are the pfBlocker, HAProxy, NAT, and VPN.

I am unsure if it's feasible, but I have previously utilized a web VPN interface with Cisco Firewalls that allows VPN connections through a website, eliminating the installation of VPN software. Such a feature would be a valuable addition to pfSense. Additionally, an easy method to monitor pfSense within other monitoring software would be beneficial.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for ten years.

We have encountered only minor and infrequent stability issues.

Netgate pfSense is highly scalable.

The quality of the technical support is good, but if we cause an issue, we have to pay for the support hours.

Positive

I have previously used WatchGuard Firebox and OPNsense, but I prefer pfSense for its excellent usability within my company. Other firewalls like WatchGuard and OPNsense are often retained due to customer preference or specific requirements, but most of my deployments utilize Netgate's pfSense.

Deploying a single pfSense box is relatively straightforward. However, the process can become more complex if outdated hardware is used and network cables must be reconfigured. Deployments using Netgate appliances tend to be more straightforward.

We can have the Web GUI up and running in under 30 minutes, and a complete deployment can last up to four hours. One person is required for each deployment.

The pricing is reasonable.

Netgate pfSense offers effective total cost of ownership by combining firewall, VPN, and router functionalities into a single solution.

I would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten.

pfSense does not have any built-in features specifically designed to prevent data loss. Instead, we must configure various functions to indirectly protect against data loss, primarily as a preventative measure against unauthorized access to our servers and equipment.

I use both the paid and community versions of pfSense. Most of my appliances use the paid version. In the cloud, some virtual machines come with the free community version.

Maintenance is required to open ports and create VPN users.

I use pfSense for my home network firewall.

I've installed pfSense on nearly every environment type, including Virtual Manager and most virtual machine hypervisors like Microsoft Hyper-V, ESXi, and even older versions like VM Player. Currently, it's running as a VM in Virtual Machine Manager on my NAS, showcasing its flexibility.

pfSense is a highly flexible product with a rich feature set. While designed with a graphical user interface in mind, it also offers command-line access for greater control. This versatility allows users to tailor the product to their specific needs.

Adding packages to pfSense is straightforward; navigate to the package manager and click "add." However, incorporating hardware, such as a dongle, is slightly more complex.

I saw the benefits of pfSense immediately. Going from a SOHO router to a pfSense one is night and day. pfSense is an enterprise-grade product that is easy to use and has a simple GUI.

The dashboard is very handy. I use mine almost daily. I can put up the widgets I want to see or remove widgets I don't want to see. It has pertinent information about my services running, any VPN connections I have, and clients connected. It's a nice dashboard.

The failover functionality for connectivity helps minimize downtime. It has also been simplified recently with some excellent added features. If I lose or corrupt my image, I can easily reinstall the operating system and restore my configuration. I'm pleased with these features of pfSense.

pfSense is a straightforward, feature-rich firewall. I am a big fan.

One area where Netgate could improve is communication with its user base. While they make an effort, much of their user base isn't composed of enterprise-level engineers who regularly read release notes and stay abreast of feature changes. A few years ago, they held a commendable meeting with forum moderators to discuss upcoming changes, which was appreciated. However, they could enhance their communication further by providing more precise information about changes and release timelines for new features.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for 19 years.

The only time I need to restart pfsense is when I update it.

I have not contacted technical support for any technical issues. I did contact them for a replacement box, and their support was fantastic. I received the replacement box within a couple of days. I do contact their TAC when they release a new version. That process is changing with their new Netgate, the store, and everything. Previously, if we had a Netgate appliance and wanted a new image to install natively, we had to contact TAC with a ticket. The turnaround time was always excellent, just a couple of minutes. They would provide a link where we could download the image. I've been surprised by how fast they respond sometimes. Even when they're in the middle of deploying a new version, I've reached out and received a download link within five minutes. So they're usually on the spot.

Positive

Over the years, I've played with quite a few different firewalls, but I always go back to pfSense. It's a leader in its field, with its direct competition being OPNsense. There was a feud when they forked off. pfSense is the leader in that sense.

Installing pfSense should be relatively straightforward, even for a network engineer unfamiliar with the product. The process is user-friendly and guided, similar to installing an operating system like Windows. With a basic understanding of networking concepts, setting up pfSense can be accomplished within minutes. The main challenge arises when users need more fundamental networking knowledge, such as understanding IP addresses or the difference between DHCP and static configurations. For someone with networking experience, however, the installation process is quick and straightforward.

The pricing is reasonable. It costs money to run a product. It used to be completely free, and I think that's where many people became a bit disappointed when the pricing model was introduced, but I think it's a pretty fair price point. Some users don't understand that they can't offer everything for free. The development work involved costs money.

The inclusion of firewall, VPN, and router functionalities significantly reduces the total cost of ownership. In my previous role, we utilized pfSense in some locations due to its superior cost-effectiveness compared to other enterprise solutions. For smaller companies or those aiming to reduce expenses, it's a highly affordable option, and even their hardware is reasonably priced.

I rate Netgate pfSense ten out of ten.

I usually use it on premises, and I use it for different purposes. I use it for network security for my infrastructure, and I use it for my web servers and data servers that are on-premises.

My main use cases for Netgate pfSense are proxy servers and IDS/IPS, blocking ads, clearing the network for adware and malware, and monitoring the network flow. 

As an open-source solution, Netgate pfSense is highly flexible because a person with kernel-level or code-level experience can control the firewall as per their requirements, and there are multiple packages and tools readily available to integrate with Netgate pfSense. In the IT industry, most of the tools can be integrated with pfSense.

Adding packages to Netgate pfSense is very easy. I just need to search for the required package and then install and configure it.

Netgate pfSense has a very intuitive dashboard. The information is readily available on the dashboard.

Netgate pfSense has routing facilities that help minimize downtime while having multiple internet connections. If one bandwidth goes down, it automatically diverts to the other. 

Netgate pfSense helps prevent data loss by monitoring data transactions and network protocols, allowing us to block certain amounts of data and implement policies to reduce malware and firewall threats. 

From my perspective, the best feature of Netgate pfSense is the load balancer, as I usually take multiple internet connections. I can use both internet providers' bandwidth as a single network bandwidth, which helps in a very smooth network traffic flow. Netgate pfSense has a very interactive and intuitive dashboard that provides all the major and informative information that is readily available.

Netgate pfSense has positively impacted my organization because when we look at other firewalls or alternatives, they are costly. 

For my requirements and use cases, it is sufficient for me, and I have never faced a need for additional features. AI would always be a plus point, and if pfSense could change its framework from FreeBSD and PHP to a different language and Linux OS, that could enhance security.

I have been providing services for network solutions and network security, and I have been using Netgate pfSense for almost four to five years.

Netgate pfSense is definitely stable; I've multiple sites using it, and they are live right now. I've at least 20 sites operational.

It is a scalable product. I would rate its scalability a seven out of ten.

I have never used the services of Netgate, but I can rate the product itself as a 10 out of 10 because it has been very helpful to me.

Neutral

I have previously used Fortinet and Sophos. The major reason I switched from Fortinet and Sophos to Netgate pfSense was to mitigate the financial aspect, as those alternatives were costing us lakhs.

Deploying Netgate pfSense is very easy because I used to deploy it on my personal hardware. Whatever spare hardware I have, I install it directly on that. Installing and configuring it is very easy for me.

I deploy Netgate pfSense for various companies. There are many startups in India that require a cost-effective solution that allows them to use their hardware and provide basic security. 

Deploying infrastructure for a new company takes me approximately one day, unless there are separate requirements to configure, such as creating usernames and passwords for each user, which may take two to three days.

I do everything in-house by myself. I am the only person involved in the deployment.

I have seen a return on investment with cost savings after implementing Netgate pfSense, as other firewalls would cost me lakhs of rupees while pfSense is free.

Everything we need is covered in the free version of the open-source pfSense. I have never used the licensed version or required certified partner help to implement or deploy anything.

If we are not purchasing any support or incurring any Netgate costs, the total cost of ownership for Netgate pfSense is zero, as it is freely available to download and install, requiring only hardware for deployment.

The cost of other firewalls goes to thousands and lakhs of rupees compared to pfSense, which costs zero. If we opt for Fortinet, it costs about one lakh thirty thousand Indian rupees for the firewall, and then it costs up to almost fifteen to twenty thousand annually for the user subscription. With Netgate pfSense, all those things get covered at zero cost.

I did not evaluate any other options aside from Netgate pfSense because it was the only solution I could find that effectively met my needs. It works for our use cases.

In terms of data-driven decisions, there is a package that can help me understand each and every packet and time. I have not gone through that avenue yet, but it allows us to get all the data for data-driven decisions.

There is a paid feature to increase performance, but there are multiple tweaks available in the advanced settings that can help increase bandwidth or usability based on requirements.

I have not used pfSense Plus on Amazon EC2 VMs because there was no requirement. 

I would rate Netgate pfSense a ten out of ten.

I run a company that is a managed service provider. We supply our clients with products and purchase on their behalf. We install pfSense in their offices or main client offices.

What I like most about the product is that it is simple to use. I use it at home and in other locations. It offers great value for money because there are no licensing issues apart from the support package. I don't have to worry about licenses expiring or the firewall not working. The overall security gain is stable and reliable.

Multi-appliance monitoring and management, like a single pane of glass, would be very nice to have. A centralized management console would help us. There might be improvements to the web UI, which could benefit from a new look. It looks a little dated, although everyone knows where the options are.

I have used the solution for four years.

The solution is stable. I'm happy with the stability, I would rate it a nine. I had some minor issues, like hardware power supply failure after two to three years, but it was rock-solid until it failed.

The solution is pretty much scalable. I would say nine, although I'm not sure why.

I used their support about two times. I don't need much support, as I've managed to fix everything by myself. I would rate it ten because they went above and beyond expectations.

Positive

Sophos was used in some cases. Some clients require products which are used in their other offices.

The initial setup takes about one hour. It is fairly simple and sometimes only takes half an hour, depending on what needs to be done.

We implemented it in-house with one person.

Because we are familiar with the product, the ROI is between ten to twenty percent. We have been saving by having a stable, well-known product.

I estimate it to be between four or five, something like that. I cannot say it is cheap, but it is not expensive either, so let's say three or four.

I usually advise having a solid firewall with a low cost of ownership, which is why I rate it nine. There's room for improvement, as I would love to have more control over the packets. Overall, I would rate the product nine out of ten.

We use the Netgate pfSense firewalls for each location in the same metropolitan area.

We implemented Netgate pfSense at the most basic level, aiming for a reliable firewall solution without incurring the high costs associated with Cisco products.

Netgate pfSense is a flexible firewall solution. It supports OpenVPN and IPsec, providing various options for establishing secure connections. Additionally, it offers features for monitoring user browsing behavior, enabling administrators to implement restrictions if desired. Overall, pfSense is a versatile platform that can be adapted to meet the needs of different network environments.

Adding new features to pfSense is quick. We select the feature we want and click install.

One feature that pfSense had, which my Cisco PIX firewall lacked, was built-in failover. With the Cisco PIX, if I wanted to implement failover, for instance, if one internet connection went down and I had a backup, I had to purchase additional hardware and a whole other firewall. However, with pfSense, failover configured two ports on the existing box to switch between them if one connection failed.

The security of pfSense is excellent. It effectively prevents unauthorized access.  To date, we haven't experienced any security breaches.

pfSense Plus provides a cold spare that helps minimize downtime. In the event of a failure, the other firewall can be activated while the broken one is restored and configured.

We saw the value of pfSense within a few days. Some of it was instant, but other things took time. When we first implemented it, we saw some value, and a few days later, it kept impressing me with more. A week went by, and I still saw more value.

With a firewall, VPN, and other router functionalities, pfSense offers an excellent total cost of ownership. It's a one-time purchase with no hidden fees, making it significantly more affordable than Cisco products, which require additional licensing, subscriptions, support, and per-feature purchases. While pfSense necessitates some time investment to learn and configure, this is comparable to the effort needed for any enterprise-grade solution, including Cisco, which also incurs substantial licensing costs. Overall, pfSense's upfront cost and user's time represent its total cost of ownership. 

Netgate pfSense is 100 percent flexible and configurable. We can do anything with it. We have not run into any scenario where it didn't work.

The overall documentation has room for improvement. Currently, we need to search forums for answers, as the official documentation by Netgate is not very helpful. The community support is excellent, and there should be a feedback loop to incorporate missing information from the community forums into the official documentation.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for four years.

I would rate the stability of pfSense ten out of ten.

The scalability of pfSense fits our company requirements.

Based on both my partner's and my experience with technical support, it is excellent.

The user community support is fantastic. It's a large and engaged community where members show genuine interest in one another's questions.

Positive

I switched from Cisco Firewalls to pfSense Firewalls. I had a Cisco PIX, but they started implementing a subscription model where we had to pay for individual features. It was like, if we wanted this feature, it's a dollar. And if we wanted that feature, it's another dollar. I decided I was done with that approach and wanted something different. I like that with Netgate, what we buy is what we get. It's not a subscription model. We can get a support subscription, which is perfectly natural to me, but we don't have to buy or pay extra for every feature. We get what you get.

It was a gradual learning experience, beginning with our initial purchase and installation of a pfSense firewall. Its features impressed us, so we decided to replace another firewall with pfSense to enable failover capabilities. This success led to a broader implementation across our network. It wasn't a planned, calculated rollout; rather, it evolved organically as we replaced outdated firewalls and discovered the benefits of pfSense, particularly its ability to work in tandem with other pfSense devices for enhanced functionality.

The initial deployment takes a couple of hours and can be done by one person.

Netgate pfSense offers good value for its price. I prioritize getting the most out of my money, so I choose pfSense. I don't always seek the cheapest or most expensive option but rather the best value for my investment. With pfSense, I get the most product for every dollar spent.

I would rate Netgate pfSense ten out of ten.

I am one of two IT people in the organization, and we are the only two who can access the pfSense firewalls. We have what will soon be four metropolitan locations that use pfSense.

Other than updating pfSense, no other maintenance is required.

I recommend pfSense to others. It's an awesome product that fits everything we've ever needed, and they don't overcharge for every little license feature.

I use pfSense as a home firewall and router. I don't use it for anything professional. When I first deployed pfSense, I was using my ISP-provided gateway, and there were a few things that I felt a little frustrated about. I didn't have control over the networks in my home and lacked some features, such as dynamic DNS, the ability to split different VLANs, multiple gateways, etc. There are a lot of features I use now, such as DNS or GeoIP blocking, that I knew about but couldn't take advantage of. 

The gateway failover helps prevent downtime. The ZFS Boot Mirror would also help prevent downtime in the event of a disk failure. The dynamic DNS is nice because when my IP changes, my web services won't be affected because it automatically caches my new IP.

PfSense has features that drive data-driven decisions. I was using pfSense years ago on a capped internet connection. It was a Comcast connection with a set amount of data I could use monthly. One useful thing was that it had the traffic totals as a package, so I could track the amount of data I was using and the clients that were using it broken down by client and network. I can determine how much data I use to ensure I don't exceed that limit. That's something I couldn't find in any other similar product.

From a performance perspective, it can help in terms of bandwidth and things like that because I know that the machine I'm using has enough processing power to establish all of my routes, DNS blocking, IDS, IPS, etc. I can utilize the full spectrum of my connection and a custom 10-gig NIC. If I had a smaller off-the-shelf product or an ISP-provided gateway, it wouldn't have the performance I need.

I'm using pfSense Plus, which has several features I like, such as the ZFS boot environment. I support Netgate because they're one of the biggest contributors to FreeBSD, so I'm happy to contribute. The most valuable feature to me is the gateway failover.  The area where I live has a lot of natural disasters and times when my Internet connection will go down. I work from home sometimes, and my wife works from home all the time, so it's essential to have a reliable connection. I like that it can automatically pick the connection based on packet loss.

The flexibility seems to be excellent. It has a large set of features to choose from that are built into the UI, so I can do 99 percent of it through the interface. It's also nice that I can run it on my own hardware. I don't necessarily need to buy a Netgate appliance, even though they make good products. It's nice that I can run it just about on any x86 PC with a dual NIC.

If we're adding a plug-in to the pfSense platform, that can be difficult, but I don't mind because Netgate vets the plugins before they make them available. That said, I found FreeBSD easy to deploy, and adding custom packages to it is simple. 

It doesn't prevent data loss in other machines, but pfSense has ZFS built in and can mirror it in two disks in different boot environments. If I have a corrupt OS, a bad update, or something else that goes wrong so that I can't connect to my Netgate, that's something built in so I don't have data loss on my firewall.

The dashboard is extremely easy to use. I like that I can go to one page and see the status of my hardware, packages, gateways, interfaces, disks, RAM, thermal sensors, and traffic graphs. It's a one-stop to look at each item and see everything operating properly. I can see them in different menus in the UI, but having one page where I can view them together is nice.

I would like them to have more security platforms. The pfBlocker is nice, but they don't have anything native for CrowdSec or Fail2Ban. I'm running CrowdSec on a web server instance on my server instead, but I'd like to move more of these services to the edge and put them in pfSense. I think that's something that's coming. I don't know if Failed2BAN is, but I'm sure CrowdSec is a popular platform, so it would be nice to have a package that's native to the platform. 

I've used pfSense for about five years.

I rate pfSense 10 out of 10 for stability. I've never seen it crash, and I have deployed two of them without any problems.

I think the scalability should be pretty good. I can put two of them into high availability. If I add more clients and start to deploy a lot of these for a small business, it would be able to handle that. I don't have experience doing that personally, so I can't speak to that, but I have seen evidence of it being used in a more scaled environment.

I rate Netgate support nine out of 10. I only needed help from the support team to transfer a license because I bought new hardware. They could answer my questions pretty easily.

Positive

I've tried UniFi gateways. The feature set was lacking, and it ran on substandard products. Unlike pfSense, I could not run it on my equipment. I've run OPNsense, which was a fork of pfSense at one point. I didn't like the UI or their documentation, but it seems like a fine product. I've also tried OpenWRT back in the day. 

Deploying pfSense is easy. I'm not a network administrator, but I'm familiar with computers. I can install it on a USB and set it up like any other operating system. The documentation is excellent. I can configure it based on that, and many YouTubers cover it.

The only people who would have any problems installing it would be people who don't know how to use a computer beyond basic functions. Anyone who's installed Windows can easily install pfSense, and anyone who has used an off-the-shelf consumer router would know how to use it. If you don't change anything, it doesn't require any maintenance besides updating packages twice or thrice annually.

The price of pfSense seems reasonable. I pay around a hundred dollars a year for pfSense Plus, which is inexpensive for such a complex product. It's also good that they can still release a community edition. If it started to get extremely expensive to the point where it was more of an enterprise-only product that costs thousands of dollars a year or something like that, I might consider stepping down to the community edition or looking elsewhere.

The total cost of ownership seems pretty low because you have the cost of the OS and VPN. If I'm paying for a VPN that's probably five to 10 dollars a month, and the firewall is already included.  

I rate Netgate pfSense nine out of 10. It's an excellent product. I advise new users that you don't need a Netgate product if you're deploying it at home. It's one way to go, but pfSense works on any old mini PC or PC you have lying around. You can get something off eBay and throw a 20-dollar network interface card into it and you're off to the races. It's not as expensive as you think to get started. The basic routing and firewall rules aren't too complicated. Don't be intimidated, and it's not expensive.

I do some consulting work for a couple of organizations on the side, and I have a few personal home lab builds of pfSense, so I use it in both a professional and personal home lab environment. I'm using the community edition and pfSense Plus.

I began seeing the benefits of pfSense immediately. The use cases for pfSense were creating remote VPN servers and satellite offices where remote employees connect. I've been using it for so long now that I have some baseline configurations. When I bring a new site online, I load that default configuration and ship it out to where it's needed. They plug it in, and the system comes online. It's fantastic from that from that perspective.

PfSense gives you much control and visibility into your boundary that helps you identify nefarious actors and things that could lead to eventual data loss.

It helps minimize downtime from a boundary perspective. They have some features. I have used Plus in boot environments quite regularly to test out some things before going live into production, which has been nice because I've made some configuration changes that I regretted. 

The boot environments help you get back into kind of what you had. Both the community and Plus editions have a fantastic configuration export. Your boundary device is relatively static once you can configure it how you need it. You can export those configs relatively easily so that when something goes catastrophically wrong, the hardware fails, or something along those lines, you can reload the configuration onto that device or the replacement device and go about your day. 

One thing I can say about pfSense specifically and the Netgate hardware is that it is not something I worry about from a security or a resiliency perspective. It's stable. It works. I have the ability to forget about it. As an IT professional, I have so many things to worry about daily, and it's incredible to minimize those things. I think pfSense has done a great job in that area.

There's a lot of logging that produces a ton of data I can pull into a data analytics platform and make data-driven decisions about bandwidth increases or changes to firewall rules, intrusion detection rules, or employee access.

It also enables us to optimize performance, one of the biggest things you do when you get a new Internet service provider or a modem replacement or something along those lines. There are tons of tools built into pfSense that let you look at how that's working, and even some tools online that allow you to tailor that experience based on your real-world use case.

In the time that I've used pfSense, I'm continuously blown away by the quality of the product, its attention to security, and all of the features it has. It's easy to use. The web-based interface is great. The tutorials on the website are fantastic. I wouldn't say it's necessarily one feature. It's the full offering of all of the features that make it for me. I use firewalling, intrusion detection, and two of the VPN features: WireGuard and OpenVPN. 

The flexibility is great. PfSense will run on homebrew hardware and Netgate. The interface is excellent on the web and through the console. There's a lot of flexibility through the console. It lets you get into a low bandwidth environment to do the things that you need to do when you're remotely administering some of these things. 

I enjoy the fact that the web interface is customizable. A seldom-used feature is the ability to change to one of several built-in themes. I use those themes to tell which system I'm administering because they're all remote to me, and the interfaces all look the same. I don't have those little tells about changing the colors of certain things. 

Sometimes, it takes some back and forth to figure out which one I'm on. I never thought the themes would be a feature I would use. I use it all the time. The user interface is fantastic and responsive. The tooltips are in the right areas and help you build out your firewall and boundary device.

The ease of deploying and configuring features depends on the feature. Most of their features are designed to be implemented with some basic knowledge level, but some are super-advanced, and you need that knowledge level. They have excellent guides for just about every feature on their website or that's inside pfSense. They're great. They explain all the different things about adding new features and each package's function. I don't think that there has been a feature that I wanted that someone didn't already have a package built for.

I would like to see a better plugin for data analytics. They have some things that you can do, but it's not purpose-built to get data out super easily. That's kind of an advanced feature, and you do have to do some configurations that are a little more advanced than some people might be comfortable with. 

I would also like some type of fleet management, like a dashboard where I can see multiple pfSense and their statuses. I'd also like that to be self-hosted. I don't necessarily want a cloud version of it. I'd like to host that at a parent site and have the satellite offices push their status there. 

I have to manage each of the devices individually. There is no interface where I can manage multiple devices. I wouldn't call it single pane of glass management. It does give me a single pane of glass for everything related to the boundary, including VPN intrusion detection, DNS, DHCP, VPN, and firewall rules. But it doesn't have that fleet management piece. I would love to see something like that.

The last thing that I would like is not a feature. It's Netgate as an organization. I would like more transparency from them when they make some decisions that sometimes appear to be made in a vacuum. Most recently, the change in licensing and some of those things did not go over well in the community in general. I think some transparency from their organization would be valuable to the community at large.

I've been using pfSense for around 15 years.

I rate pfSense 10 out of 10. I have never had a system fail in more than 15 years. I've never had one fail on-site. They are incredibly stable and resilient

PfSense is highly scalable depending on the hardware you buy. Their hardware is well-documented. If you buy a device designed to scale with your business needs, I don't think there would be any issues with that.

I rate Netgate support 10 out of 10. I have never had a bad interaction with any of their folks. They respond quickly, and their answers are always extremely thorough. 

Positive

I used the old m0n0wall, which I migrated away from. I have also used SonicWall and OPNsense in a lab environment and various Cisco and HP devices throughout my career.

PfSense offers the best bang for your buck from a feature and cost perspective. Many other systems have some cool features that either aren't necessary or are significantly more costly than pfSense.

The initial deployment is easy, and it's even easier once you've spent some time with it. If you buy devices from Netgate, they provide you with "zero to ping." 

Even if you have some kind of odd setup or something weird you can't figure out, you can call their technical support, and they will help you get online. They'll even remote into the device to help you get online or solve a problem, which is incredible. 

Now, I have a standard image that I use from a configuration perspective, so it takes me about half an hour. It is typically a one-person job. The only reason why I put a caveat on that is I am fully remote from all the services that I support, so I do need a person on-site to at least plug the thing in, but the rest of the setup is a one-person job. After deployment, it doesn't require any maintenance aside from standard firmware updates. 

I don't like subscription models, and unfortunately, the latestpfSense license, pfSense Plus, went to a yearly subscription model. I think yearly is probably the best of the worst because at least I can pay it once, and be done with it for the year. I would rather see either a one-time cost or something along those lines that would be at that price point. I think the costs for their hardware are reasonable. I wouldn't call them cheap, but I also wouldn't call them expensive. I think the hardware costs are reasonable.

I personally run a couple of black box or white box servers that are custom built using pfSense Plus that I've licensed, but all of the other deployments that I support are devices purchased from Netgate.

I rate Netgate pfSense eight out of 10. I recommend that new pfSense users join the community. PfSense has an active community on Reddit and a community forum. You can also get a copy of the community edition and deploy it to a virtual machine to learn it before you put it into production. You won't be disappointed.

I have the Netgate 6100 firewall with pfSense at my house, and I also have several business clients on it. I use it for site-to-site VPN from one doctor's office to another so their PBX phone systems can replicate across the network. 

PfSense helps prevent data loss. It's a firewall, so unless you open ports, they are completely closed off, and nobody will crack into your network. You can set up various rules that will let you know if you have an intrusion or block an IP address, country, etc., for malicious threats. 

I haven't experienced any downtime with the 6100, but I've had problems with the Netgate 2100 appliances. One of the data-driven procedures is performance. If you make a change, your traffic comes up almost immediately. If I had to compare pfSense to SonicWall, I probably wouldn't use SonicWall based on the boot time. When you have to restart the system or something like that, pfSense is quick, whereas these other firewalls will take 10 minutes to come back online. 

The visibility pfSense provides helps optimize performance. Some of the stuff is visible in their charts and graphs. You can see their traffic moving in real time. That's beneficial to me, especially if I'm looking for something. For example, if you're looking for an IP address that's seeing a lot of data, you can narrow it down to what device it is.

The most valuable aspect of pfSense is the community. If you have a question, you can post it on the forum. The backups are also good. I restored it from a hard drive recently and was back up in 10 minutes. 

I like pfSense's flexibility. It lets you install it on multiple applications, such as a VM, appliance, or white box. For a short time, the community edition had a free upgrade to the Plus edition, so you could technically download the version and convert it into a Plus version. They offered support there for a while, but I don't know if they still do. 

If you log into it, it is a single pane of glass, but the features are scattered everywhere. If you make a firewall rule and you run a port, it will automatically make the firewall rule for you, so you don't have to do that. That's convenient versus some firewalls where you have to make the net rule, then you have to make the firewall rule to allow the net to operate. 

It's easy to add features, but some require configuration. Depending on the feature you're adding, that can be tricky. I wish their GUI were easier to use because it's always been scattered instead of having everything in one column. You have to click one thing to get something to work kind of like UniFi. You have to be a little techie to get it working as you want. The only other problem I've encountered is that sometimes it has buffer bloat, and you have to go in and change some firewall limiter rules to get the bloat to go away. Once you get it down and have done it a couple of times, it seems fairly straightforward. 

If the GUI interface were better, that would be a huge benefit. There's a fork of pfSense called OpenSense with a far superior interface. Everything's in the left-hand column. When you click on one item, you see everything listed under a single tab. You don't have to jump back and forth through the program. 

Everybody is sometimes scared of open firewalls, but they get updates regularly. I check them all the time. I wish it had an app or some alert feature that you could set up. That would make it a little bit easier if something went wrong because you usually don't find out until the last second.

I've used pfSense for 10 to 15 years.

PfSense is highly stable. I don't typically have any crashes. Usually, it's hardware problems, such as a hard drive or memory chip. Beyond that, I have had no issues with any appliances that pfSense installed.

The scalability is good because if you have two identical devices, you can do high availability, so it's highly scalable. 

I rate Netgate support 10 out of 10. Netgate technical support is just phenomenal. If you pay for support, they're on it right away. I've had to call them a couple of times and ask for a system image for some of their lower-end devices. I've noticed that an upgrade will sometimes break them. You can take the serial and model numbers, send them an email, and they'll send you the image. You just download the image, flash it over onto the device, and restore from the backup.

Positive

I've used UniFi's Dream Machines, FortiGate, SonicWall, and OpenSense. I've got one instance of OpenSense out there. They're all about the same in performance, but everything has its own learning curve. The learning curve of pfSense is higher than OpenSense because of the GUI, which is a little confusing and intimidating for someone brand new.

A brand-new user might be confused, especially if they don't have too much networking capability. If you have a white box and download the software, you need to configure everything, including the network interface card, but if you buy an appliance, you should be able to plug into a port and get an IP address. That's not the case with the community. It isn't. For those who want to dabble and play around with it, there's a bit of a learning curve there at the beginning on how to get it. They have some good documentation, but it's a little confusing.

I can have it running in 10 minutes. It depends on what you're doing and whether you have VLANs, which can be confusing to configure. But you can set up a simple home user with no VLANs in 10 minutes. For maintenance, it'll tell you if there's an update, but I typically wait a while before I do the update to ensure that it's solid. They do good testing on it, but I've had some problems where it breaks something else when they do an update.

The price of pfSense is on par with everything else. It depends on how big an appliance you buy and whether you're purchasing it directly from Netgate. Some rack-mounted systems are expensive—a couple thousand bucks. The one that I use at my house was $700.

The total cost of ownership isn't too high or too low. I think it's right where it needs to be. Obviously, with new appliances and faster technology, your prices will go up, but that's expected with any product you buy. It was all free when I first started using it, and you could put it in any box you wanted to buy. 

I rate pfSense eight out of 10. The reason I give it an eight is that the GUI needs to be cleaned up a little. I think Netgate would sell more if the GUI were a little more like Opensense. Before buying, I would test the community edition on a virtual machine and select an appropriate appliance based on your deployment. 

We use pfSense as our main router.

We implemented pfSense to address the instability and limited customization options we experienced with our previous router.

pfSense is highly flexible, allowing for creating IPsec tunnels and various other configurations.

Adding features to pfSense is easy.

Since implementing pfSense, our overall stability has improved significantly over the last ten years as we transitioned from Prosumer equipment to a more robust tool. This success has allowed me to implement more pfSense routers in other locations. We saw the benefits of pfSense in less than a couple of weeks. Having that added stability is great.

pfSense Plus provides us with the visibility to make data-driven decisions. We can see historical data and bandwidth utilization, allowing us to make informed decisions about our internet connection based on that information.

The most valuable aspects of pfSense are the stability, hardware compatibility, and low cost.

I want pfSense to add some next-generation firewall features.

The scalability has room for improvement.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for ten years. 

I rate the stability of pfSense ten out of ten.

Due to the absence of a single pane of glass management feature, scaling out pfSense becomes quite challenging. I'd rate its scalability a three out of ten, as the process is far from straightforward at present.

The few times we've had to engage support, they have been professional and incredibly knowledgeable. If we encounter someone who doesn't have the answer immediately, they can find it very quickly. In the past, they have even joined meetings with us and a client to work on a problem, providing a lot of insight and assistance throughout the process.

Positive

We previously used Prosumer routers, but their capabilities were insufficient for our needs.

Initially, it was a bit complex when I started using the system over ten years ago. pfSense required a deeper understanding than the Prosumer devices I had used before. I had to grasp the ramifications of every action. However, once I overcame that learning curve, it became knowledge I possessed.

It took us about two weeks to implement and learn how to use pfSense. I've noticed that with pfSense, I'm always learning something new. Just because we've used something for a long time doesn't mean we know all of its functionality. For example, I needed to establish an IPsec tunnel for the first time last year. I called in support, and we successfully established the tunnel to another location. There's always something new to learn, whether pfSense adds new features or we encounter a need for functionality we haven't used before.

pfSense Plus is cost-effective for what we're getting. I've been using Netgate hardware for a long time, and including the pfSense Plus license with the hardware offers significant value. Additionally, using pfSense software for free is of great value.

The total cost of ownership is very low. We've used pfSense historically in a simple configuration, and I've been able to train peers on how to use the Netgate hardware and pfSense Plus effectively.

I rate Netgate pfSense seven out of ten only because of the lack of ability to manage all our switching and WAP from one location.

We have three locations, and two to 25 users use a combination of wired and wireless devices and a typical broadband connection.

pfSense requires maintenance when new versions or patches are released. This does not happen often, but it does happen.

I recommend pfSense to others. Once you overcome the learning curve, it becomes almost second nature to use. The cost is also a major factor. Every year or so, I explore alternatives to Netgate hardware, but almost everything I find is subscription-based, like Cisco Meraki or other brands. I'd struggle to justify renewing a router license every 18 months or risk it stopping working. So, using a platform like pfSense without an annual fee is a huge benefit for our budget.