OPNsense Reviews

The solution is basically an open-source firewall - a next-generation firewall solution. Now we actually use it at a client or company's request. They use it if they prefer something that is more versatile than a Cisco or Fortinet device.

The security has improved as we can isolate the network.

We can do attrition prevention via a tool that comes with the solution.

We can have a VPN solution in place for those that work from home, outside the network, in a secure manner.

We also like that it offers good authentication. It offers radius-based authentication, which has been useful for the company. 

The main platform is under the Open VPN firewall.

The solution has high availability. When we have different ISPs, we can actually load balance those links or actually put some priority or even classify the traffic that might go into one ISP or another.

The interface, specifically the web interface, is very easy to use. 

The firewall functions have been quite helpful. 

Since the pandemic, the VPN component has been crucial now that everything is basically remote.

It's stable.

We've witnessed a solid ROI. 

There are helpful online forums for troubleshooting.

It's open-source and technically free to use.

The reporting part could be better. They actually provide some dashboards; however, when you have to relay information to upper management, there's no way to actually have some sort of executive summary. When you present it to a manager, there's way too much information in there. Having some sort of API to be able to pull out just the information we need to share would be ideal. 

If we could install agents on computers and have that information correlated by the IES, that would be ideal. 

I've been using the solution for ten years. 

It is fairly stable. It will always depend on the resources that you've given it. That said, historically, every time we log into the console, it will alert us to the bug and ask us to update it. In all of the years, only one bug scared me away from a feature. However, that bug only lasted a month. 

We have about six people on the solution in between companies. The numbers of users vary from around 120 users to up to 5,000 users.

I typically use the forum. They don't actually have a contract that you can buy from them for support. Instead, there's a web forum you can reach out to. I know a couple of people on the forum that actually develop the tool, and they are helpful. I've used them only three times over ten years. 

We used to use Cisco or Nortel Solutions. We also worked with Linux. It was very manual in terms of configurations.

The initial setup is very easy. In terms of configuration, you should have a design on hand. The system will only assess whatever you tell it to. For us, it is easy as we use a dedicated server for it. Right now, we're using a virtual machine. What we do is download and install, and that's it.

If you have everything in place, it might only take about three or four hours to deploy it. That's plenty of time to get the job done. Usually, one or two people handle the deployment process.

I always handle the deployment myself in-house. 

We have witnessed an ROI in less than three months. Money-wise, if I go and look at all the solution that costs money, you're looking at $5,000 in yearly fees. In this solution, you won't have any recurring fees, and even if you have to pay for equipment and setup, you save that money within three months. 

The solution isn't exactly free. Basically, you need to invest in the equipment, and you'll have to install the solution and use resources. You'll have to train people to use the tool. However, if you go to their website, you can simply download the solution for free. While the solution is free, you need resources, people, and training. 

We did look into other solutions. However, we did not find anything that compared to this solution. 

I'm an end-user. 

It's important, before starting, to understand your network and the features you need. If you need certain features, you need to ensure that the company you choose has them, and you need to consider the cost involved in attaining the usability you need. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. You do need to have a bit of management experience to be able to troubleshoot effectively. 

I mostly rely on the solution's network intrusion detection and prevention system, along with other systems, CMs, and log management. We are currently satisfied with the solution's threat intelligence. It's a pretty much in-house developed solution because it's in a Wazuh server. We have several scripts around it, allowing us to improve our posture on threats.

SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) is integrated into some restricted service providers for OPNSense.

I pretty much like the solution's APIs, but it's somehow limited. I would like the APIs to be more mature and more developed and have more options to automate threat hunting. Also, I would like to see more drill-down possibilities.

We have to rely on specific hardware for the in-depth analysis of NetFlow. Although we have an interface on OPNsense, it's not as easy to use on the security side as other solutions.

I have been using OPNsense since 2016.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

OPNsense is an extremely scalable solution. I played on one network with CARP, and I was pretty happy with what I achieved there.

Before OPNsense, we worked with the Cisco ASA 5505 product for three years. Although it included the FirePOWER part, it was quite a poor experience.

OPNsense has helped reduce the speed of threat detection and containment from 50 minutes to 15 minutes.

I have quite a background in Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) systems. I was looking into BSD, especially for the packet filter side. While evaluating, OPNsense was the most solid solution. I was also considering pfSense as my first option, but it is not so strong on the file system side.

OPNsense is a strong and solid solution that is easy to interact with. I don't see much on the new generation of firewalls, and only a few solutions are available for OPNsense. OPNsense handles network traffic much faster during peak loads because it's on dedicated hardware. I would recommend OPNsense when no specific topic prevents me from recommending OpenSense.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It is a firewall.

The VPN has helped us a lot. 

It has firewall and VPN capabilities, which are very valuable features.

The scalability needs improvement.

I have been working with OPNsense for the past five years. 

I would rate the stability a six out of ten because we've encountered issues with OPNsense when establishing a side-to-side VPN using IPSec.

I would rate the scalability a five out of ten. 

The configuration and access VPN functionality in OPNsense are satisfactory and work well. Currently, I prefer using Azure Firewall for my firewall needs, even though it might not be the absolute best option. My preference is due to a lack of experience with other Windows-based solutions.

The deployment process takes almost an hour. The installation process involves several steps. First, you need to install the software. Then, configure the interfaces as needed. After that, establish the necessary rules for the software to function correctly. Finally, configure the VPN settings to ensure secure communication. I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

I would rate the pricing a three out of ten. 

It's easy to configure, and it's good. I rate it a seven out of ten. 

The tool's integration is more like a button press. 

pfSense has better performance and quicker updates.

I have been working with the product for six months. 

The tool is more stable than pfSense because it has the drivers for my network card, Realtek. I didn't know at the time because manufacturers sometimes don't advertise what network cards they come with. I bought a computer with Realtek, and pfSense says immediately, out of the box, that it doesn't work with Realtek cards. OPNsense is the same, but it does have a way of installing the Realtek drivers, which gives you a lot more stability overall on the system.

I didn't contact the tool's technical team yet. 

The tool's deployment is easy. Apart from Cisco firewalls and Fortinet, if we talk about Untangle, pfSense, OPNsense, and so on, they are fairly quick to set up. It's not something you spend too much time on. It's a firewall, so you can spend months tweaking the system. If you know what you're doing, you can spend forever on logs, checking and tweaking the system because there's always a new update or feature coming up. Then you start playing with them, tweaking settings, checking logs, blocking or unblocking different things.

You can stay in that loop forever. But for a startup, the initial configuration is fairly easy and quick. It can be completed in 30 minutes. 

I've used the free version. My computer with two network cards at home allows me to try as many different software options as I want. I did pay for the license, but it was for the Zenarmor license, which is the packet inspection tool. They use AI for packet inspection, which integrates with OPNsense and pfSense.

I'm not using OPNsense at the moment. I work with many different technologies and keep testing various setups. Currently, I've gone fully customized. I'm using a Linux server configured as my router and firewall, and I'm using Zenarmor for packet inspection.

This setup allowed me to easily configure SSL VPN and port forwarding for specific ports, which isn't as straightforward with other systems. I've tried several, including Untangle, pfSense, and OPNsense, but found them somewhat restrictive.

OpenSense is quite good. I like it. It has many services and is somewhat similar to the WatchGuard system. I honestly have no complaints; it was a very good experience. It's easy to set up, especially if you know what you're doing. It also offers a nice library of add-ons.

However, if you have appliances with Intel network cards, I would probably go for pfSense instead. Firmware updates and other updates come a bit faster, making it a more reliable service than OPNsense. 

Everything that comes up on OPNsense appears first on pfSense. Some features are not yet available on OPNsense, and they haven't announced a release date. However, I'm confident they will eventually release these features, as they have previously done.

Ultimately, choosing between pfSense and OPNsense is more of a personal preference since they are very similar. Both are FreeBSD systems, operating in similar situations and offering comparable functionality.

Now, I'm just using a Linux server. I can monitor the system, reboot the card, install Apache, and redirect web servers within my home directly to the firewall. This eliminates the need for third-party boxes or other connected computers, allowing me to do everything in the same box. It gives me a lot more freedom.

That's the main reason I stopped using the other systems. I used OPNsense for about six months, which shows I've tried various solutions to find the best one. Despite all the good things I'm saying about OPNsense, I did stay with it longer than pfSense.

I traveled to China, so I used my home as my VPN instead of paying for one. They block VPN services in China, so I was using OpenVPN at home. OpenVPN is a known service, but it gets blocked there. The only way to do it was through SSL VPN, which worked fine. But, talking about OPNsense, everything was working fine. I had no problems. I just had to move away because I needed to use port 443 for something else on my web server, and I can't have a web server together with other stuff. It's a bit more complicated to configure because I use Nginx and Apache, too. You can install these tools on OPNsense, but I found it more complicated than just going onto the command line and doing it.

If you want to use something like OPNsense for FreeBSD, use pfSense instead. Unless, obviously, like me, the person in question has some hardware incompatibility with pfSense. Only then would I go for OPNsense. Because, I mean, they're the same systems, but pfSense is a bit better in terms of overall performance, and security updates come quicker and more often.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. 

I'm using it as a proxy in several scenarios.  

There are a lot of features I like. One of the most valuable features is the network checking. Additionally, the firewall and web filtering functionalities are highly useful.

There are some add-ons that need enhancements to make management easier for users, especially the reporting features. Some reports don't show the level of detail I'm looking for, and I've had trouble installing certain add-ons, especially for Internet bandwidth shaping within my company. So, this is an area of improvement for me. 

I have been using OPNsense for more than six years. I currently use the latest version.

I would rate stability a seven out of ten. I've encountered some instability after a recent update.

It just doesn't respond, so I have to restart it over and over again to try to figure out what the problem is. I haven't been able to find the problem yet.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. There is room for improvement.

In my organization, there are 400 users, and OPNsense serves as our gateway and proxy for all of them. Therefore, all the users go through the gateway. 

The initial setup is very easy. The installation just takes minutes, but setting up everything may take a couple of hours.

It's reasonably priced. It's not expensive.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I just want to say that it's the best open-source firewall. Strongly recommended.

We started working with a tier-four data center cloud service provider company, and we wish to develop our cloud instance/VM hosted.

We use OPNsense for content filtering, securing networks through DNSs and overcoming the challenges of ransomware, and securing different types of malware-virus attacks.

This is causing a lot of issues because we are focusing more and more on securing our customers' data.

It includes backup, recovery, archival, and now coming up with securing cloud instances/VMs. It is really essential for us.

Example: a firewall as a service can be provided to those who mainly work from home or Soho, Freelancers - clients.

OpNsense has given the most fundamental security service/support to our clients in an unstructured world like freelancers, consultants, soho users, etc. That is based on NIST guidelines, so, overall basic security postures are in place.

The most valuable features are content filtering, DNS level filtering and blocking unwanted Global IPs, built-in scanners and authentication capabilities, HA, etc.

I think that the most important aspect is a step-by-step run-book for its installation and deployment on small as well as on commodity hardware. Plus, clubbing the services into several (pre-configured) modules, detailing a BASIC, STANDARD, RATIONALIZED, and DYNAMIC (Enterprise ready) modules, and then custom configurable module, in that case even novice users can configure and start experiencing its benefits. On the same, documentation should be developed keeping the above five modules in mind.

The initial installation menu should clearly identify the existing IP class/subnet and suggest its challenges and benefits in configuration, and the respective error log should be shown on a screen on the same panel. They should also provide "modules" wise installation video links and their changes with previous versions for reference.

Our primary focus is to ensure the protection of customers' and consumers' data and critical IT/Dynamic infrastructure, for the same we have to do critical tunings, though, we practiced it in such a way that we have developed a habit of tuning things using a checklist based on clients "Mutual Value Discussions" (assessment session).

Added capabilities of add-ons/filters/extensions and its tunable help us detecting and alerting clients in sensitive environments when a malicious URL is detected in the traffic (e.g. messaging services/emails and/or other communications on the fly). This additional layer of protection helps in further safeguarding user data and preventing potentially damaging malware from being transmitted within the LAN environment.

We started using OPNsense in the last three or four years. Now they are pretty mature.

When we demonstrated this software and the firewall, the main thing is the customer's confidence.

If I remember correctly, it was 19.x version.

We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable.

We also attempted a different method of providing the load factor, adjusting the various parameters, cross-checking the network jitters, detected security threats or not by other third-party software/hardware equivalents. It appears to be rather reliable, though, with the stated data points above, it is not yet ready for the enterprise yet.

Most of the BSD/FreeBAS or Linux-based software-defined firewalls support vertical and horizontal scaling 'scaling out and scaling up'(this all depends on how it has been architecture) based on the requirements.

Keeping Technology and Architecture governance with the leading practice of security, availability, and scalability as critical elements in mind. Few stated features make these products scalable and highly available, though, based on load and constant monitoring would require tuning from time to time.

To date, we managed to support clients ourselves and whenever we received feedback we come to know that support cost is very high, it is not as local as we are, for small soho, WFH, freelancers, and young startups they prefer locally available partners and hence they are not even interested in talking on those factors.

Neutral

A few years back, cybersecurity was not a problem for small and micro businesses, but since 2019 or so, that has seen a massive uphill, then, we were using built-in features of different types of OS-level firewalls with basic filtering, blocking the ports, orchestrating based on local FQDN based filtering, NATing, few BIND/DNS based filtering, implementing proxy's like Squid, etc. Best since these techniques are not good for business, we have to find other methodologies to protect clients' environments. Till recently, we also tried using Hardware firewalls, which most of our clients did not like because of known/unknown reasons.

A few years back when we first began using it, we were unable to find a proper document detailing different network scenarios for IP allocations for 2NIC cards. We went through aggressive discussion, reading blogs, and setting-up labs we started getting the knack for all possible configurable elements and started running several tests, packet forwarding, bombarding networks in the most ethical way possible, and verifying results. e.g. We created two separate networks, with WAN and LAN networks assigned to different classes. The menu-driven setup process is relatively easy, but you must know which IP address to define in the router, WAN section, and LAN sections. If this is clearly explained, the basic and fundamental aspects of your network will be in place, allowing you to set it up quickly.

Then we recommend clients purchase easily available commodity hardware-based motherboards with two NIC/Ethernet cards built-in, it simplified our tasks and so on.

We took some help from our old industry connections, and systems integrators, and later our lab practices and tests started solving most of the issues.

It is now organic, and growing (hope to improve better - though accidents do happen, e.g, COVID, Share market / Financial institution meltdown, the war between nations, and now CyberWarFare picked up!) these are the few key factors which disturb the business one way or other.

The best is to read through the terms and conditions, and fine-prints, and to spend time identifying support and operational cost, most of these elements are covered on the website, etc.

We made an attempt, but it appears that forming a partnership would not be done as the other party is requesting a significant amount of money, which we find to be very expensive to start with.

We are exploring the possibility of locating a domestic partner who has a partnership with either PfSense or OPNsense to partner with.

Subsequently, if we are successful in finding a suitable domestic partner, they would be able to offer these services to us.

While this software is certainly capable of getting used by masses, it is important to have the pragmatic knowledge to support and operate the system effectively and keep key parameters monitored for new cyber challenges.

It is crucial to have a clear understanding of exactly what you are looking to accomplish and to have access to the necessary data in order to effectively configure and use the system.

pfsense - Software-defined firewalls have been around for a while. Whereas, OPNsense came later into business.

I would rate OPNsense a seven out of ten.

The primary use case of OPNsense for me is VPN and firewall rules.

URL blocking, Wireguard, Tail Scale, Engine Blocker, and VPN are the most valuable features for me.

There is room for improvement in SSL inspection because that's where OPNsense, the open-source firewall software, just doesn't work well. So, I really use it for inspection.

I have been using this solution for five years. I am using the latest version now.

It is a pretty much stable solution. I rate it an eight out of ten. I haven't experienced much complexity with stability. Mostly there are a lot of false positives when the firewall is on. The inspection may not be very good compared to CSP4 Fortinet. But other than that, it's okay because I really like the user interface for business purposes. We can do all things through GUI, and things come in line.

It's very flexible and scalable, and I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. It can adapt to changing needs easily. Around twenty customers are currently using OPNsense.

I haven't contacted customer support. I usually resolve any issues through online forums and the community web page.

I have experience with Cisco as well. I moved to OPNsense because it is free.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. The deployment process took three to four hours. When I install OPNsense on the premises, I usually allow everything; after that, I go to one location. I work remotely on that firewall or VPN, so the first step is to put it online and remotely access the VPN server or firewall there. After that, I installed and configured it while working remotely.

I'm an integrator, so I mostly use OPNsense for VPN purposes and firewalls, and I use a couple of plugins for web blocking, and that's it. Only one person is required for deployment and maintenance; therefore, I handle all the deployment and maintenance.

I haven't used any licensed operations. But when companies get bigger, they'll probably need a license model. The old companies where I have worked with OPNsense were small.

I would suggest using OPNsense because there's no cost and a good interface. You don't need to use the command line to configure anything like on Cisco; sometimes, you don't need all the technical knowledge to operate OPNSense. Additionally, you have good community support.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We are using it for intrusion detection and prevention. The firewall comes with a lot of third-party modules, and we also use proxy functionalities.

In our company, we are using it as an appliance, but we are bringing companies to the cloud. We ourselves do not have an Azure layer, but we have got a contract from a customer to bring them to the cloud. So, we are installing it there and monitoring it, but it is not owned by our company. OPNsense is available on appliances, but we have made a special integration with Azure. There is a special mechanism in Azure to deploy firewalls, and we have installed three or four of them.

We always have the latest version on the firewalls. One should run the updates very frequently.

We are onboarding cloud solutions for customers. We are on Azure. Especially on Azure, when the customers start, they always have small environments. We were looking for the best firewall solution for small environments, not big environments. We needed a small firewall, and we came across OPNsense. For small customers, we will use OPNsense in the future due to cost reasons. These are small installations, and Azure Firewall is very expensive.

The IDS and IPS features are valuable. From the usability perspective, there is a lot of good documentation. As IT professionals, we found it very easy to configure the firewall. It was easy to configure and use. 

The difficult part was the integration with Azure because OPNsense, in most cases, is not used on public clouds. It is on appliances that run on-prem. 

We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much. 

Within our own company, we have been using it for three or four years as an appliance, and on Azure, we have been using it for three months.

We have run it for three months in production, and we haven't had any problems in three months. 

We run it as an NVA cluster with Azure, and it has good scalability, but when we have bigger deployments, we would use another firewall. I'm not sure if it makes sense to scale up. OPNsense has a very good niche market in comparison to FortiGate, Azure Firewall, or other firewalls. If a customer is starting in the cloud and has 100 or 200 users, I would always recommend OPNsense, but if you have a big installation, and you have a good DevOps team that deploys via source code and things like this, then I would not recommend it. So, the software itself may be scalable, but I wouldn't call it an enterprise-scale firewall.

In terms of people working with this solution, I'm an architect, and we've got two people for monitoring and setup. Its usage is increasing. It has not been that long since we started using OPNsense, and it fills a gap. Not everybody needs a full-scaled enterprise firewall. So, it will be a part of our business. We've found a niche there.

We were in touch with Microsoft support for special networking considerations. The firewall itself was easy for us, and we had no need to reach out to tech support of OPNsense. The heavy part was the Azure part, and we are specialists there.

OPNsense deploys it on the Azure marketplace. So, you can download it directly via the Azure marketplace. You do not have to be a partner. From our perspective, it's easy to configure and it's intuitive. We have a background with a lot of firewalls, and we were just looking for a small one.

We found that not many people have used it on Azure. The firewall itself is not bad, but the support around Azure in terms of documentation and the required infrastructure is not so good, but because we are Azure specialists, we found a very good solution. We would not recommend it for a beginner in Azure.

In terms of the implementation strategy, there is a cloud adaptation framework. There is a white paper from Microsoft containing best practices for deploying firewalls on Azure, and we had to provide a setup for this, which took some time because it was not easy. It took at least two weeks, but it was only a one-time job. After that, for each firewall, you only have to adapt the rules, which takes two days, but it also depends on the complexity of the infrastructure. If a customer has hundreds of endpoints, it takes longer for sure.

Its pricing is unbeatable in comparison to other firewalls. You can have a small instance that could be €80 a month with the hardware underneath. Azure Firewall and FortiGate are out of the question at this price.

If you are on a public cloud, you need the underlying infrastructure. Other than that, there is no additional cost. If you have it on-prem, you have to buy the server or the appliance. The hardware cost is replaced with the infrastructure cost in the cloud. You also have costs for the public IPs and underlying VMs, but that's not related to OPNsense. It would be the same for a FortiGate deployment on Azure. You need a FortiGate license, and you need the underlying infrastructure that scales up depending on your needs.

We use it on-prem, and we can recommend it for a standard, typical IT engineer with a networking background. We have had a good experience with it. It is good in terms of functionality and resource usage. It is easy, and we would recommend it, but for implementing it on the Azure cloud, you need good knowledge of Azure. When it comes to public clouds, you do not have your own hardware, and you need deep knowledge of the public cloud on which you are deploying it. It is a good solution if your installation is not too big. We would recommend it for small customers or companies that are starting in the cloud. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten.