I USE Netgate pfSense for home networks, lab environments, and R&D. In production, professional career-wise, I have built pfSense production firewalls that run in various configurations and high availability for different organizations serving a different number of clients and servicing any amount of requests throughout any given day.
It also serves thousands to tens of millions of requests a second a day from small to large deployments.
Netgate pfSense is an extremely flexible solution. It is an open-source tool that has a very large community of professionals, enthusiasts, and hobbyists alike. There is a lot of flexibility in doing whatever you want with it. It also offers enterprise-grade support so that you can have something equivalent to the Cisco enterprise-grade data center firewall product. You could build that with pfSense or OpenSense, which is a derivative of pfSense.
The initial benefit I saw of pfSense was way before I ever used it professionally. It is a robust tool that can replace your consumer-grade firewall router solution. I also saw immediate benefits in my professional career as it is a powerful solution that can be compared to other solutions like Palo Alto or Meraki today.
Netgate pfSense can be a fully functional L7 firewall. You can not only have the base Layer 3 functionality of the firewall, but you can add things like Snort and pfBlockerNG to build out and become an L7 firewall doing actual inspection and security analysis.
It is very easy to add and configure features to Netgate pfSense.
pfSense has a built-in auto-configuration backup. While that is technically data loss from the sense of protecting the firewall, it is a feature Netgate offers to every pfSense user, licensed or not. You get this feature if you have a Netgate appliance. Just using pfSense won't get you that. There are third-party packages you can use to set up pfSense configuration backups if you don't have pfSense Plus.
In terms of data loss outside of that, you configure it in a way that puts it as a security device. By default, pfSense is not inherently a security device. It is a Layer 3 filtering firewall. If you want it to be a security appliance beyond basic TCP/IP Layer 3 filtering, you can run Snort or pfBlockerNG to turn it into a security appliance. Doing so can aid in data loss prevention by using the tool for basic intrusion detection prevention.
Netgate pfSense provides a single-pane-of-glass management capability. Its dashboard has a lot of prebuilt functionality, allowing you to have a single-page view of the firewall's status and everything going on with it.
pfSense Plus provides features that help us minimize downtime as a supporting part of the infrastructure.
pfSense Plus provides visibility that enables us to make data-driven decisions. The kind of data-driven decisions that could be made with information from pfSense are things like how much bandwidth I am using and what is the throughput of all my band connectivity.
I can also decide whether I need to go from a 1 Gig network to a 10 Gig network or a 2.5 Gig network and whether I need to increase my commit for my WAN circuit because we see that we are averaging above 99%, etc. The kind of decisions that it can help you make are related to your network and your connectivity.
The visibility that pfSense Plus provides helps us to optimize performance. It could help you to improve performance on the network side. It is, after all, a firewall router, so it is a network piece of equipment. It could help improve performance in that if you are actively monitoring, pulling data from pfSense, or actively reviewing the different types of information and graphs that pfSense provides, you could make decisions to see that a machine is consistently using lots of network traffic.
I have been using Netgate pfSense for 15 years.
I have pfSense Plus in production. I have both pfSense Plus and pfSense Community Edition (CE) running at home. They are essentially the same, and the only difference between them is the support and auto-configuration backup.
Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
We primarily use the solution for firewalling, site-to-site VPNs, and VPN management.
We largely needed a good firewall solution. We wanted to find a suitable firewall for our company size and what we're doing with it.
It's open-source and everything is available to me without having to pay subscription fees.
The support with NetGate probably is the most value I've seen from it. They've been really, really helpful. The open-source nature of pfSense, paired with the amount of support we receive, has been great.
The flexibility is great. It does everything I need it to do. The amount of open apps for it is extensive. I was able to help track some networking issues using the pfSense to scan the network.
It's significantly easier than expected to configure the solution and simple to handle add-ons.
pfSense can help prevent data loss. In our environment, things are fairly strict. However, it makes it easy to manage and configure the firewall and handle inter-VLAN routing and firewalls between them.
We do have access to a single pane of glass management. It's easy to review traffic, usage between VLANs, threat monitoring, and user connectivity. I'd have to monitor items separately without this single pane which would make monitoring difficult.
We do use pfSense Plus. It provides us with the features we need to minimize downtime. The updates and everything that comes with it have been great.
The visibility provided allows us to make data-driven decisions. The modules I have access to for network monitoring and management have been very helpful.
We've been able to optimize performance. With NetGate support, I've been able to utilize traffic shaping and performance optimizers.
I'd like to see it become more of a next-gen firewall or deep packet inspection, however, I'm very happy with the way it is as of now.
I've used the solution personally for about two years. My company has been using it for about eight years now.
The stability is very good.
We have two locations. I have yet to uncover any scalability limitations.
Support is quick to respond. For the amount we pay a year, the support has paid for itself. I'm very happy with the level of support we get.
Positive
I do have experience with Meraki and NetGate devices. I've used FortiGate devices in the past. The expense and support were not near the quality of pfSense.
The initial setup was easy to set up and straightforward to configure. It did take a moment to learn where each tool set was. However, after that, it's really good. I handled the deployment myself. I was able to implement it within 16 hours.
There isn't really any maintenance; it is pretty much set and forget. I do updates every three months or so and that's it.
90% of the setup was handled in-house; I referred to NetGate support for a few items along the way.
We do pay about $600 a year for NetGate support. pfSense is free, however, NetGate, that made the appliance, charges for a support package. I'm very happy with the quality of service that I get for the price.
We would have paid another $7,000/year for subscription fees if we went anywhere else.
I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate it ten out of ten.
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.
I use the solution in my home. It's my firewall, DNS server, DHCP server, intrusion detection server, and reverse proxy server.
The solution's web interface is very feature-rich and well-supported. There's a large community of users out there you can get to. There are many things that I'm not using at the time. It's got great support for VPNs. One of the ways that I'm using it is for VPN support as well. Netgate pfSense is a great product.
Netgate pfSense is an extremely flexible solution.
You'll see the benefits of Netgate pfSense immediately after you deploy it. The more features you use, the more benefits you get from it. I'm using the tool for VLAN support. That was something I implemented first, and it completely changed the way I was using my network. That was a real game-changer because it provided greatly enhanced security for my network and reduced the complexity of my network.
The firewall, the intrusion detection service, the VPN support, and VLAN support keep me from getting hacked and possibly having problems with ransomware and potential data loss.
pfSense Plus provides features that help us minimize downtime. You can create copies of different environments that you set up. If you want to try a setting but want to be protected from loss and downtime, you can create a copy of your current working environment.
You should try adding the new change to your pfSense configuration. If that doesn't work, you can easily go back to the working configuration with just a simple change from within the web interface. It also does automatic backups of its configuration.
The visibility of pfSense Plus helps us optimize performance. You can overcome latency issues through traffic shaping. I previously had buffer bloat issues, which I don't have currently.
If you have a slower connection, you can use traffic shaping limiters and priority queues to ensure that your VoIP traffic, internet TV traffic, or streaming traffic has enough guaranteed bandwidth. In my case, my broadband connection is wide enough, and I do not have to really use those features.
The cost of ownership of Netgate pfSense with the hardware cost was about $ 350.
It would be nice for the code optimization to run on even slower processes. It's optimized quite a bit, but there's always room for improvement.
I have been using Netgate pfSense for two years.
We haven’t faced any issues with the solution’s stability.
From my point of view, the solution's initial setup is pretty easy. Many YouTube videos are out there to help you get it up and running. There's a lot to try, a lot of things to do, and a lot of technology to play with, but I'm afraid I'm a bit of a tinkerer. To do what I initially wanted, I probably spent a day.
I would like to see the solution's price reduced.
There is some complexity to adding features to pfSense and configuring them. I would not say it's extremely complex, but it's got a high degree of complexity.
The website is all you need to configure Netgate pfSense. If you choose to, you can use its SSH terminal interface, but that's not something that most users would do. I would think they would stick with its fully developed, mature web interface.
The solution by itself does not need any maintenance. However, if you use the incursion detection plugins, you need to make sure that those are tuned properly. That involves periodic checks and possible adjustments. New users should be prepared to learn, read the manual, and utilize YouTube resources. It'll be worth it.
Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.
We use Netgate pfSense as a firewall solution for small and medium-sized businesses.
Netgate pfSense offers firewall protection, VPN access, and a range of monitoring tools.
Adding features to pfSense is easy to do through the wizard.
Netgate pfSense is well documented, and the interface is easy to use when we consult the documentation.
Netgate pfSense was recommended, so the benefits were immediate.
It provides a single wizard. Some third-party tools out there allow us to manage remotely. It also helps us optimize performance by enabling us to turn features on and off.
With the inclusion of firewall, VPN, and router functionality, we love pfSense's total cost of ownership.
The most valuable features are the alerting and local monitoring.
We are a security shop. It would be very useful if we could place pfSense appliances in customer environments and remotely manage them.
I have been using Netgate pfSense for four years.
Netgate pfSense is relatively stable. It has been running for four years now without any issues.
The scalability is limited without upgrading the appliance.
The technical support offers great quality and good response times.
Positive
The initial deployment is not a plug-and-play out of the box. It takes a little bit more than that. For us, it takes ten to 20 minutes for one person to deploy one pfSense firewall.
Netgate pfSense has a great pricing model.
I would rate Netgate pfSense ten out of ten.
Maintenance is required for software updates.
We use pfSense internally to protect our management networks and provide VPN access to our internal staff. We also use it for customers needing a more sophisticated firewall than your home or small business WiFi router firewall package.
We deployed it at work when I got hired because we needed to replace the existing hardware solution. I've used pfSense for over 10 years, so I drew upon the experience from the experimentation I do in my home lab.
We're an ISP that provides managed services. We deploy pfSense as part of a larger solution, usually a contract for managed services. We provide their Internet circuit and a managed firewall so that they don't have to do that themselves. They pay part of the hardware cost—maybe 50%—upfront, and then the rest of it is applied against a contract, after which they will then own the hardware.
We use pfSense as a hybrid within our data centers, with some virtualized instances running pfSense community edition and some as Netgate hardware running pfSense Plus (the higher-end ones because we need a firewall that can handle 10 gigs of throughput). We've got multiple different models of the official hardware deployed for ourselves and some managed customers. They range from small businesses to a professional sports venue.
We use pfSense for work because I was already aware of its flexibility for our needs. The solution provides a great base level of network protection. PfSense is not a next-generation firewall, so it doesn't do in-line virus scanning or offer out-of-the-box IPS/IDS, but that can be covered by a manged antivirus suite and following good security practices. In terms of how secure pfSense is and how secure it keeps your network, it does that very well.
The biggest benefit of pfSense is its ease of setup, especially for VPN — both the end-user VPN and site-to-site VPN. It's easy to add features to pfSense via the package management system. We can just turn things on. They have made it much easier to deploy things like free radius, where we want to have enterprise authentication for WiFi. It's by far the most flexible firewall I have ever worked with. There are also packages for ACME for Let's Encypt SSL certificates, and HA proxy.
The pfSense Plus package has given us peace of mind, but we haven't had to open many trouble tickets with NetGate. Aside from the maintenance and support contract, the only feature we use from pfSense Plus is the wizard for building site-to-site VPNs from our locations to AWS VPCs. Building site-to-site IPSEC tunnels to AWS is a fairly complicated task, so having that wizard made it easier.
I would like a management console to manage and monitor multiple pfSense installs. We have several pfSense hardware devices installed and as far as I know, there is no single, unified pane of glass that I can use to manage all of them at once. That's the one thing I wish I had, just having a good single unified configuration interface for each install.
I have used pfSense at my current company for at least four years now, but I've used it personally for over 10 years.
I have to really dig deep to come up with any shortcomings. If you are using VLAN tagging, and making adjustments, restart the DHCP and DNS services manually, just in case.
As far as I know, there isn't a single console from which I can manage multiple installs. That is the only thing impacting their scalability. They max out at 10 gigabits per second, but anything above 10 gigs is such a niche market. To be honest, I doubt that's their target.
I rate Netgate support 10 out of 10. They turn around tickets quickly and their staff is fairly well educated. When I provide detailed information about the problem, they've been able to reply quickly with a solution or go research the problem and get back to us quickly with a fix. It's been pretty top-notch.
Positive
I've used OPNSense, a fork of the pfSense project, as well as Cisco ASA, PIX, Palo Alto, Ubiquiti's Unified Gateway, SonicWall, and FortiGate. Some bigger Ubiquiti firewall products are comparable to pfSense, and Cisco ASA has name recognition. SonicWall and FortiGate offer some enhanced features, like better threat management you get as part of a subscription, some block lists, and some more next-generation firewall features.
Overall, our chosen solution is pfSense, as it balances features and cost. It isn't the best at everything, but it's more than enough for almost everything you can throw at it, and it isn't ridiculously expensive like some solutions. It is massively flexible. Although it is missing some of the more esoteric features, you don't need those features 99% of the time. If you have the budget for it and need to do something more advanced than just the basic firewall, it remains the go-to solution we use every time. It's why I keep a couple in stock on the shelf so that I don't have to order them if we need one for an immediate customer install.
It's incredibly easy to deploy pfSense and takes no more than 30 minutes in a typical small office setup. A typical out-of-the-box setup for a small business can be running in five minutes flat. We usually have a two-person team with someone from our network engineering team responsible for the configuration and a field tech installing equipment on-site.
Regarding maintenance, you need to go back in occasionally and install the most current version of the software. We check for updates every couple of months, and that's it. That's it for maintenance. Once it's installed, we fire it and forget. It's there, and it works.
In-house
Priceless
I would say pfSense is competitively priced. It isn't the cheapest hardware, but I've never had a problem with it. It is far cheaper than big brand names like FortiGate and Cisco while delivering a feature set that's nearly the same across the entire list. The only places it falls short are esoteric features that almost nobody needs.
The support plan is reasonable. The pfSense Plus license with the warranty is either 400 or 800, depending on the level you want. For a commercial customer, that's more than reasonable and a lot cheaper than many solutions. We haven't had any sort of issues with the firewall hardware itself, so it's doing extraordinarily well on the total cost of ownership.
We did side by side comparisons of the feature sets and prices, and drew upon our experience with multiple vendors, including the equipment we had at the time.
I rate Netgate's pfSense 10 out of 10. I recommend turning on the built-in automatic configuration backup so that if you mess something up, you can easily restore the configuration from a backup and get it back up quickly. I also suggest downloading the community edition on a spare computer to play with and break because it's free.
I use the solution in two of my homes. I have a home in the UK and one more in the US. I have two firewall tools running with a VPN link between them, and it allows me to easily administer and protect both networks, one in the UK and the other in the US.
I can discuss the product's most valuable features if you have a playbook for some of the things you want to hear about or expect me to touch upon.
The tool's most valuable features revolve around its ease of use. It is a resilient product with a very easy-to-use interface. The learning curve for the product is very simple. I also like the core packages included in the tool, making my firewall a one-stop shop for stuff like DNS and VPN usage. The tool has a lot of packages available. I like the product's in-built packages. I use WireGuard VPN, and it is very good. I use IPSec, the built-in DNS product in the tool. I can also link the tool with my UPS if the UPS has an outage in the northeast region where people experience electricity cuts. The software I use on Netgate pfSense acts as a kind of choke point and sends messages throughout my network to start shutting down during electricity cuts. My firewall is a ground zero area for me on my edge. All the packages in the tool allow me to protect my network. It serves as a Layer 4 product since Netgate pfSense doesn't do anything like other products offering Layer 7. As a Layer 4 product, Netgate pfSense is very strong since I can easily create very advanced firewall rules, which I wouldn't be able to create as easily with other solutions, especially if they don't come with more than 10,000 or 20,000 USD as the price tag. Palo Alto, Check Point, or FortiGate are expensive firewall products compared to Netgate pfSense. I don't think Netgate pfSense really competes with Palo Alto, Check Point, or FortiGate, but the latter set of tools may make it feel like Netgate is trying to compete with them. I work for a major security firewall vendor, and I don't think Netgate pfSense competes with it. Netgate pfSense provides SMEs with a significant amount of value for not a lot of cash.
It is very easy to add features to Netgate pfSense. Now remember that Netgate pfSense does not attract an average IT person. The tool attracts people with two profiles, including CCNA-certified or very sophisticated firewall administrators, hoping they can help use some of the pretty advanced features in the product. The second profile of the tool's users would consist of those who are getting started or want a better firewall than what their carriers or the provider provides them with so that they can learn about firewall devices. They want to learn about networking by using Netgate pfSense. For both profiles, the tool offers a very linear learning curve. The documentation in Netgate pfSense is very strong.
The benefits related to the product can be experienced immediately after the product is deployed. I wanted to replace EdgeRouters from Ubiquiti for my use cases, which have now gone into a deprecated mode. I wanted a tool that could offer me the functionality of EdgeRouter, and I was happy to pay more for a product that could provide such features. Compared to EdgeRouter, I had to spend 700 to 800 USD on both the final units from Netgate pfSense for both of my homes. I chose Netgate pfSense since I wanted a tool with a set of more updated functionalities and a solution that can be considered an easy replacement product for EdgeRouter. I saw immediate value in Netgate pfSense from day one.
A single pane of glass is a vast term. If I were to define a single pane of glass, I would say that it is something from which you can see everything from everywhere in a single dashboard. The single-pane-of-glass feature within the tool's user interface is one of the core aspects of the product. In my opinion, the tool has a very strong dashboard.
Netgate pfSense can minimize downtime easily since it is easy to put it in a high-availability configuration.
Considering that the tool offers a Layer 4 firewall's functionalities, I can say that Netgate pfSense provides visibility that enables me to make data-driven decisions. For example, the firewall fits into two markets. The north-to-south market is where Netgate fits in with Palo Alto, Check Point, Sophos, and Cisco. There is also the east-to-west market where I work since it is where my employer is currently. When you talk about the visibility of data, you are looking for either north to south or east to west. In terms of the visibility from east to west, which is based on application to application or data center within a data center, Netgate pfSense will not be helpful at all. From north to south, I get visibility over what is coming into my network. For example, I can easily capture dump traffic using the in-built features in the tool and run an SNIP on the traffic. I can see what's coming in and inspect those packets, and I can do that all within the user interface, which is a new feature in the tool that is very strong. I like the tool's new feature. The tool has very easy-to-consume logs, and it is very easy for me to export them into a SIEM server if I want to do some kind of mass data warehousing and sorting.
With the inclusion of firewall, VPN, and router functionalities, if I assess the total cost of ownership of Netgate pfSense, I would say it is very large.
I think the tool requires more strategic improvements than we need it to be in the present. With Netgate, considering that I work in a firewall market, I know that its problem is not just in its features. It needs improvements in terms of the strategic vision, where the product should go, and what market it should be for in the future. Netgate needs to figure out if they want to strive for the SMB business and the home market or if they want to attempt to reach out at an enterprise level.
I don't think Netgate knows where they want to go with or without a plan. I think Netgate is still trying to devise a plan by itself as to which market it wants to fall into, which can make it more profitable for the tool. There is nothing that Netgate pfSense could do to make me feel any better about the product. I love the product, and I will use it until I die. It is a really good product. Improvements are needed in the area of the company's strategic vision and based on where the solution needs to go in the future. I spoke about north to south and east to west since the world is moving towards the concept of zero trust. If you are a CISO or a CIO and you are trying to achieve a zero-trust architecture, you need to check if Netgate is on your list of companies that would help you achieve it. If I consider the CIOs I speak to, Netgate doesn't even get mentioned in our talks.
I do not require improvements in the product. It is feature-complete. As a firewall, Netgate pfSense can be described as a very feature-complete product for the market space in which it currently operates.
Strategy and vision of the product are the areas with shortcomings where improvements can be made so that Netgate pfSense can figure out where the product should go in the future. It will provide Netgate with choices like whether it wants to go towards a zero trust architecture if it wants to go towards the east-to-west direction if it wants to go towards big enterprise or go into Layer 7 traffic. My answer regarding the need for improvement in the product is going to be more of a strategic-based one rather than from a technical point of view because the product is excellent.
I have been using Netgate pfSense for five years. I am an end user of the solution.
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
The solution's scalability is tricky, and it all depends on the context. It is infinitely scalable for me, and my company has 150 devices in my network, which may be nothing. Suppose a company like J.P. Morgan says they want to use Netgate Netgate as their north-to-south firewall. In that case, you may face big scalability problems because, at such a level, tools like Check Point or Cisco have custom silicon chip designs to support their workloads. For SMBs, the scalability part is not an issue. I don't think Netgate pfSense can offer much scalability for big enterprises.
I have contacted the solution's technical support team. The quality of the answers provided by the technical support team is good, and the responsiveness is exceptional. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.
Positive
I have used many solutions that can be considered alternatives to Netgate pfSense. I can compare Netgate pfSense with FortiGate since Netgate is priced similarly but falls at a lower end when compared to Fortinet FortiGate. FortiGate is a better product for an enterprise. For home usage and small and medium-sized enterprises, Netgate pfSense can be a stronger choice than FortiGate. For home use, Netgate pfSense is very much preferable.
Even for an unskilled person, the tool's deployment phase would be easy to manage. It is a very easy product to consume because it has a lot of WYSIWYG and built-in wizards, along with a very easy graphical user interface.
Deploying one instance of Netgate pfSense can take around five minutes, and only one person does it. Regarding the other tasks, our company has firewall products that handle more than 100 or 1,000 workloads, and two to three people manage them.
A limited amount of maintenance is required from the end of the tool's users. It is just to adjust the firewall rules as and when necessary to meet the business needs, like in patching, where Netgate pfSense does a very good job while also being very responsible and quick to respond to zero day and CVE alerts. The tool is superb and very impressive, but it can be described as a very low-overhead product because, by nature, firewalls under the north-to-south are for static workloads, which is where Netgate's market is currently. Those workloads are not changing for now. You put Negate pfSense into your system and forget about it, which can be considered as a whole other problem in firewall products, but I won't go too deep into it because that is why there are 20 years of rules in firewalls and no one maintains it because you just set it up and forget it.
I bought Netgate pfSense Plus since I have to use the firewall in both my houses, so I have four solutions. I have made certain payments using a subscription-based model to use Netgate pfSense Plus.
If I were a part of Netgate leadership or running the company, I would clear out a few areas on the strategy side of the business. I work for a major enterprise where an SME or the tool is needed. Netgate's strategy regarding Netgate pfSense Plus for home users or labs was very misleading in nature and handled very badly. I have opted for the tool's subscription-based pricing model. a subscription, and I am very happy to pay the money money, which comes to around 130 USD for two years, which is nothing for me. Netgate handles the tool's subscription-based pricing model very badly.
I think Netgate pfSense's pricing or licensing models are fair enough. I think the way Netgate pfSense handled its previous pricing model with regards to Netgate pfSense Plus was an area that was misleading for users. Overall, what I pay for the product is very reasonable.
There are no features in Netgate pfSense that help prevent data loss. One can use a DLP tool to manage data loss.
The visibility in Netgate pfSense does not help me optimize performance, and I think it is because I am a pretty advanced user on the command line. I wouldn't rely on the visualization part for any advanced performance.
I have never used Netgate pfSense on Amazon EC2 virtual machines.
My suggestion to those who plan to use the product would be that they need to read the solution's documentation, utilize the community forums and shouldn't be afraid to fail. It is easy to recover from failure with Netgate pfSense since it has configuration change logs along with very easy rollback abilities. In the newest version, if you make a change and you reboot, it just snapshots you back to the new change, which is excellent.
I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
I'm an independent IT consultant specializing in pfSense router deployments. I use pfSense not only in my home and my parents' homes but also at ten of my clients' locations.
The pfSense router can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or on a hybrid platform, but I only deploy it on-premise.
pfSense's flexibility overall is excellent. I can't think of a feature that it doesn't have.
Once I got the hang of it, pfSense became easy to use to add new features. However, there are occasional complexities, like configuring a RADIUS server, which initially seemed overly complicated. Thankfully, the documentation helped me navigate the process successfully.
I immediately saw the benefits of pfSense based on the cost savings alone. The routers are low-cost, to begin with, and there are no annual licensing fees like those required by Cisco routers and other brands. I have replaced many Cisco routers with pfSense because of the ridiculous licensing fees.
pfSense, as long as it is properly configured, is excellent at helping us prevent data loss.
Netgate hardware devices come pre-installed with pfSense Plus, which means all of our installations benefit from pfSense Plus because they run on Netgate hardware.
pfSense provides visibility that enables us to make data-driven decisions. The package manager lets us add a lot more visibility. I use the softflowd add-on package, and there are a few other add-ons if we need more visibility.
The visibility provided by pfSense helps optimize performance. The data flows across the different subnets, which is helpful if there is a performance issue.
pfSense stands out for its full features and adherence to industry standards. Unlike competitors introducing proprietary variations like UniFi or Omada, pfSense prioritizes compliance. This is crucial in manufacturing environments where diverse systems need to integrate seamlessly. In such multi-brand settings, standard compliance becomes a critical factor for successful system interaction.
pfSense doesn't offer a central management system for multiple sites, which wouldn't be a big deal for most of my customers, who typically manage just one site. However, for larger companies with many sites, logging into each pfSense router individually to manage them could become cumbersome.
Previously, we were able to download an offline installer for our firmware. For example, if our router crashes, we must reinstall the OS. We would have it on a USB stick that is available to reinstall. Now, with the current version of pfSense, they are no longer providing an offline installer. We have to be connected to the internet to download the OS in real time, which, in some cases, is not possible. Some routers need to be air-gapped for compliance controls. They are not supposed to have access to the internet. In other cases, we can't disconnect the company's internet to connect the replacement router because that would take down the company. So we don't have a way to install the OS. I went back and forth with Netgate's support, trying to get that through their heads, and eventually, a manager gave me the offline installer but told me this would be the last one and not to expect this ever again. They have provided offline installers for 15 years, so I don't understand why they would remove them now. They are not considering all of the use cases. If we have a large company and the router goes down, we could be losing thousands of dollars an hour, and we don't want to sit there trying to troubleshoot an internet connection when we could use a USB stick to reinstall it in two seconds and restore the config. This is an essential need for some organizations and an area where Netgate pfSense can improve.
I've been a Netgate pfSense user for nearly 15 years, practically since its launch.
Netgate pfSense has been excellent in terms of stability. I have never had an issue with any of the business-grade routers. Their lowest-end model runs on MMC storage instead of regular hard drive storage, and I have had some of those crash.
Netgate pfSense has different tiers, so the higher we scale, the more expensive it gets, but as long as we match it appropriately, it works great.
I have never paid for Netgate support, but when we purchase a new router, they allow us to send a config of the old router and provide one-time support for free. So, I have interacted with them a few times under these terms. The results have been mixed. Sometimes, I can tell I am speaking to a competent person, and others don't understand what I'm saying. In the past 15 years, I have been working with pfSense routers. I have contacted the support team 15 times, and the results have been 50/50.
Neutral
I have used Cisco routers, which were a real hassle to manage. I have also used Linksys and Apple AirPort routers.
The initial deployment for a new user is moderate. It all depends on their experience level. The documentation on their website is suitable for beginners. For a basic deployment, there are many articles from other people and YouTube videos on how to deploy.
Compared to other business routers, pfSense's pricing is reasonable. It also offers a free community version that can't be beaten.
With the inclusion of firewall, VPN, and router functionality, pfSense's total cost of ownership is low compared to other routers like SonicWall, which licenses the VPN feature.
When I compare pfSense to other routers like TP-Link and Omada, I see that it has all the standard network features, whereas the others are missing a few. The challenge with pfSense is learning to use it because of all the features it includes. I have never felt like I needed to change brands because pfSense was missing a required feature.
I would rate Netgate pfSense eight out of ten. It is a great product.
I recommend new users do a test setup on their home network first to understand how it works before moving it into their business.
