Netgate pfSense Reviews

I install Netgate pfSense in various locations. It is also used for monitoring traffic and acting as a proxy.

I handle the scanning for the finance department. I recently encountered an issue with our company bills. I resolved the matter, cleared the bill, and received calls regarding it using pfSense. 

The user interface is extremely user-friendly, which is why we use it across various sites. Our IT representatives at the plants find it easy to use and manage because of its straightforward interface.

They rely on third-party tools, unlike Fortinet, for example, which has its own tools. In comparison, we also use third-party tools on pfSense. For example, we had a situation where we needed a tool to identify authorized users, and when I searched for a solution, I found a third-party tool. However, using such tools may come with additional costs.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for around one year. 

If I think about pfSense, I would rate the stability around six. There have been some issues with stability, causing occasional downtime. I haven't extensively worked with pfSense in the last year, so my experience is limited.

The scalability of pfSense is excellent, and it's easy to expand. Currently, we have around 200-plus users at our head office using pfSense. I would rate it 7 out of 10.

I haven't contacted Netgate technical support, so I can't provide feedback on that aspect.

Comparing pfSense with other vendors, I appreciate Fortinet for its all-in-one device with ALi involvement. However, for a country like Pakistan with limited resources, pfSense is suitable for small offices due to its cost-effectiveness.

Installation is straightforward, especially for IT professionals. During the installation process, you are prompted to input the brand of the internet and LAN cables. If you're unsure, you can simply connect the cables – one for the internet and one for LAN – and proceed. You can choose to use either one or two cards based on your preference.

Regarding maintenance and technical support, we have a team of around 14 technical staff who handle phone calls and work on maintenance when required.

On a scale of one to ten for pfSense overall, I would rate it a seven. In comparison with other top devices like Fortinet and UDMP, pfSense stands equal in my opinion.

We primarily use the solution for security purposes. We use it for a firewall.

The solution is quite stable. The performance is very good.

We've found the solution to be very easy to use. It's user-friendly.

The scalability potential of the product is quite good. 

We like the fact that the product is open-source. It's free to use. There are no costs associated with it.

The solution is very easy to install.

The solution is quite fast.

It does a good job of monitoring our systems.

The solution could always work at being more secure. It's a good idea to continue to work on security features and capabilities in order to ensure they can keep clients safe.

I've been using the solution for a while. It's been about six years or so.

The stability of the solution is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. Its performance is reliable. It's been very good over the years.

The solution scales quite well. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so with relative ease.

We have a few hundred users at this time.

We do have plans to continue to use the product.

We have used technical support in the past. They have always been very helpful and responsive. They are knowledgeable. We have no complaints. We're quite satisfied with their level of service. 

The installation of the solution is not overly complex or difficult. It's easy. It's straightforward. e didn't have any issues with eh implementation process. A company should find the setup very simple. 

The deployment was very fast. It only took a few minutes.

The solution is an open-source product. It's free to use. It's extremely affordable.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's been very good in terms of its overall capabilities.

I would recommend this solution to other companies and users. It's very fast and very easy to use.

I build my own firewalls, and I use pfSense.

It is very easy to use. The interface is quite understandable. There is a good community, and I can take over at any time I want. If there is anything wrong with it, I could just reinstall the whole thing and start all over again, and I'll be up again in less than a few minutes.

More documentation would be great, especially on new features because sometimes, when new features come out, you don't get to understand them right off the bat. You have to really spend a lot of time understanding them. So, more documentation would be awesome.

In terms of features, for my use, I don't see anything wrong with it. I basically get what I need from it by default. I build my firewall, so I only rely on the software. On the software side, there is not much to improve right now. So, at this point in time, I don't see anything, but I always welcome any kind of upgrades that they do. I always try them out and see if I can use them in the company or not, but so far, there are no complaints on my end.

I have been using this solution for more than eight years.

It is a very stable product.

It is quite scalable.

I don't have any experience dealing with technical support directly from the makers of pfSense. I am using its Community Edition. That's why when it comes to technical support, I rely on myself, the community, and the information on the internet, especially from those who are more adept at it than me.

It is quite easy. It is up in a few minutes even though I reinstalled the whole thing. For me, it is as straightforward as it can get. I'm a long-time user, and I don't see any problems with the configuration.

We are using its Community Edition, which is free. My company is a government school, and we don't have much budget.

There is a steep learning curve and you have to spend a lot of time with it to understand how you're going to use it and how you're going to customize it yourself. That's where you're going to have to spend a lot of time, but by the time you're done with everything and you have played with all the features you want, you will understand everything you need. You will always be up in minutes, even if it gets "destroyed" during the night, you can come back to it and reinstall the whole thing, and everything will be good.

I would rate it a 9 out of 10. It cannot get a 10 right now because it changes every day. It might be 10 today, but in a few seconds, it won't be a 10 because the whole internet changes in a few seconds, and the whole way of serving your clients can change in a few seconds. So, it can't get that perfect 10. 

The product makes our business more secure. It has increased the security of our business. We are using the two solutions. The first one is from Cisco, and the second is from pfSense.

A few months back, we were attacked, however, the attackers used the wrong software. We decided then it was important to start prioritizing our security, which is why we brought on this product. 

The solution is very flexible.

I find the product very easy to use. 

The initial setup is not complex. 

The solution has been very stable so far.

We can scale the solution if we need to.

The process can be challenging. We do not have one security team. We need a team that can guarantee the security of our company and we're not there yet. We only have the client's equipment, and one guy managing this equipment. This isn't necessarily a problem with the product, it's more about our own internal structure. 

Ultimately, we'd like something stronger, and something that can handle threats better in real-time. 

I've been using the solution for about five years now. 

The stability has been great so far. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. Its performance has been great.

The scalability of the product is very good. If we want to expand, we can do so. 

We have 3,000 people on the solution right now. There are people from various teams that utilize it. It's not just IT. 

We previously used OpenBSD, a Linux solution. 

We switched to this product as it is free and open-source. It also increased the level of security we had on hand, even though OpenBSD was more user-friendly. 

When it comes to setting up the solution, it's not a complex process. It's pretty straightforward in general. 

The deployment took maybe a month and a half. 

We have two teams that handle deployment and maintenance tasks. One team is internal and the other is external. They're mostly engineers and they work together. 

We used an outside integrator to help us and we were pretty happy with the results. 

We are using the free version of the solution. We are not paying anything for it at this time. 

We're reading up on other solutions every day. We likely won't stay with this solution. It's good for now, however, we'd like something more robust further down the line. 

We are a customer and an end-user. 

We're using either version 5.3 or 5.4 at this time. 

While this is a good solution, we're looking for something stronger in the future. I'd recommend others also look for something strong, that fits their security needs. 

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. 

We have all sorts of users. We have admins, we have the finance guys, and we have salespeople using it. We created a captive portal for our teams as well as a guest portal. So in general, we are more or less happy.

Right now, I use it not only for intrusion detection but also for ETLs. We are a telephony integrator. We use it for applications and radius, etc. I use it as much more than a firewall. I use it for telephony applications as a certificate authority. 

Well, we do have the versatility of a fully functional firewall at practically no cost impact... So its a good investment for us in terms of the time spent on it... Most of all, we can see where our Internet etc can be well managed from the real time graphs that we see...

It's quite an awesome product with so many good things packed into it. I am happy with the EPLS, the radius, and I am happy with the captive portal. All in all, it's a good product. And considering that I get it for paying nothing, it's really worth the time invested in it.

As I said, the product is fantastic. It could use a little bit of improvement in the reporting — the reporting is virtually non-existent. Something like a reporting module would be a benefit. Otherwise, in terms of the performance, at least for my organization, I don't see much of a problem.

By this, I mean that we cant generate reports of trends etc that could be exported out of PFSense in terms of a PDF etc to see how the firewall is functioning...

Though I must say that the work around for this could be to use the pfsense zabbix plugin and integrate to a Zabbix platform and then use the Zabbix reporting capabilities to get the required reports... Not much of an effort for the technically sound persons but definitely not in the scope of those from a non technical perspective... 

I have been using this solution for roughly 10 months. I started with version 2.4, but about four days ago, I upgraded to version 2.5. It's been a good product so far.

Stability-wise, it's fine. I've only experienced one issue in the last 10 months. But in general, I am happy with it. Scalability-wise, as I said, our organization is just about 10 to 15 people, so we have not had much of a problem. I can't comment on how it would scale up with hundreds of VLANs and tens of thousands of people operating on it. But in general, for a small organization, I think it's very stable.

As we are in SMB, I cant comment on big traffic situations but for a small organization like ours (10 to 20 users) and with various integrations that we need (e.g., OpenVPN, WireGuard, LDAP authentications, Tens of VLANS, Captive portal, DHCP Relay, EAP-TLS, IDS, Adblocks etc.) We are ok with it...

I think the documentation is good enough because I've never had the need to contact technical support. I just use Google to get the information that I need.

We used to use Fortinet in our office in Dubai. But where I am right now, I thought an open-source was the option for me because I'm very involved in open-source projects. It came down to pfSense and OPNsense — the first one we downloaded was pfSense and I stuck by it.

The initial setup was straightforward. I come from the IT industry, so I had no issues. Within 20 minutes, I had it up and running.

I implemented it myself.

Too early to comment... Though all I needed to invest was a small desktop and ofcourse, time and effort to configure it... 

Well, its opensource... So for the tech-minded, its not so difficult but yes, the configuration is understandable for those with good prior firewall knowledge... 

If you can get it working, its great... But yes, thats the first part... Get it working... 

Oncw working, all licenses etc are not a problem as it is opensource... So no restrictions there... so far...

I did use Sophos-XG free but I stick to pfsense as it is free and open source...

I would recommend pfSense for the simple reason that it's open-source and it's free. Anything for free is good. I personally got much more out of it than I expected. I never expected this product to be so worth the time. It's a good product. For my needs at least.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. I have not used it for thousands of users, but for our usage, for an SMB organization, I would give it a rating of eight.

The solution pretty much is our only firewall security at the moment. It handles the integration with our active directory and makes sure that all communications are channeled through a secure network.

The solution is very robust.

The solution can be complex. It needs a bigger team with more coding skills than what we have at our disposal. With our skillsets, we're facing a lot of limitations. We're a team of four who handles 12 independent companies under a larger umbrella. Our workload is already quite high. We need solutions that lessen it, not enhance it.

The solution requires a lot of administration.

The solution would work better for us if the user interface had some kind of unifying feature that didn't just do firewalls. Sophos, for example, offers so much more. You get one license and you're good to go. Everything's handled from the anti-virus to the network and the traffic and monitoring. Sophos is really user friendly and easy to master. It's easy to get rules put in. pfSense offers none of these things beyond just the firewall capabilities. 

We've been using pfSense as of early last year, around about February 2019. It's been just over a year.

We have about 350 people at our organization that this solution covers.

Although the solution offers a lot of documentation, has a large knowledge base, and has a support forum, when it comes to actually contacting technical support directly, we didn't have access to that level of attention. Everything, therefore, was really on the team. We had to figure out how to troubleshoot on our own and tried to use documentation to guide us.

We originally used this solution way back in 2011. We used it for about 18 months. Then we then migrated on to a system called Kerio Control. We realized that we needed something a little bit more robust than Kerio Control. So we then moved back to pfSense as of last year.

The deployment didn't take too long. I have experience in pfSense, as does my junior. We were able to deploy it within a couple of hours - at least for what we wanted it to do off the bat.

Basically, you need to get all the rules together. We were able to do that within a couple of hours. Obviously, I must say, if we wanted to do a lot more, it would take us quite some time. Unfortunately, we're quite a small team, so we've got quite a lot on our plate and we just honestly did not have the time to get really granular. 

That's the reason why we're moving to something a little bit more user friendly for our size.

We're just users of the product. We're not consultants or resellers.

It's your basic firewall setup. However, when we looked at Sophos, we found that Sophos offered a lot more as it's a fully unified solution and had a firewall, as well as anti-virus and network monitoring capabilities.

This solution really gives us a greater extensive array of modules or features than we would not necessarily see in managing the system as administrators. The solution is quite extensive in that there was a lot of material that we had to read about. It just was not user-friendly for the team. We needed a solution that can handle itself without our intervention.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.

I stood up pfSense in a Large Telecom providers Lab environment for their next generation products. I was able to achieve 10G throughput (about 9.1 true throughput as tested over 4 days solid), and only hit a max of 20% CPU utilization on a DL380 G7. This server also had Suricata (in IPS mode and a heavy ruleset), as well as pfBlocker running.

I use pfSense because it gives me the flexibility to greatly expand basic firewall features. It's open source (and free - as in beer and speech), but also has commercial support. This can be run on any commodity hardware on the market (I've ran it on AMD and Intel - even Atom, processors) and throughput is excellent, even with lower speed CPUs and less RAM.

The GUI. There are TONS of plugins for pfSense, as such, if a user wants to add quite a bit of functionality, the GUI will feel a little congested.

A little... BUT, this was contributed to a failing Arista switch that would do a coredump and reboot. The pfSense installation at high speeds failed over perfectly though.

No - in our high-speed tests (10G), we were not able to push the CPU over 20% utilization.

I didn't really need any technical support. But was in contact with the Developers of pfSense as we were starting to work with them for an NFV setup.

Fortinet, SourceFire, etc.... the cost... oh the cost! Why pay these guys when I can use pfSense for free AND only pay for support when and if I need it?

Very straight forward. If anyone has ever installed any kind of OS or set up a firewall, it will be a piece of cake.

Open Source - just download! If you need support, it's available.

Fortinet, SourceFire.

It's an amazing product. There really are few issues with pfSense.

We're using pfSense as a firewall and for web filtering.

The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well.

The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely.

I've used pfSense for two and a half years.

pfSense is stable. 

You can scale up pfSense with multiple clusters for higher availability. It has that capability. It gives you that flexibility to set up a hybrid with part of the deployment in the cloud and a mural copy or to grow your network. 

At my previous company, we used a Cisco firewall and a router, but they kept having issues with the firewall and the device.  When I joined this company,  we introduced pfSense and haven't had any issues since. 

Setting up pfSense is easy, but it depends on your experience level. The average person with an IT background who is grounded in ICT can do install and configure pfSense in 15 to 30 minutes. 

PfSense is an open-source product, but you need to buy a license to get some features. 

I rate pfSense eight out of 10. It's an open-source solution that you can deploy on data warehouses with various resources. You're not tied to specific hardware. It's easier to manage and use.

Before deploying, you should find out the details about the environment where you will install pfSense. I would recommend pfSense for an enterprise environment with around 1,000 to 2,500 users.