Netgate pfSense Reviews

We primarily use the solution for security. It's a firewall.

The solution is an excellent open-source product. It has a big community around it as well. Out of those few points, you'll come up to a situation whereby you can avoid the vendor lock-in. Since there is a big community, you can count on reliability. There are lots of installations and lots of people who understand how everything works. 

The solution offers excellent flexibility. You can either install pfSense just on a machine, on your local PC, or you can buy an appliance. You can even buy your own hardware and install it on your own. Of course, if you choose that route, you need to have a technical expert on your team. For us, as a software company, that's not a problem.

There are plugins you can add to the product if you want even more useability. You can even add more security functionality.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We did have a strange issue with an update at one point, however, that was resolved quickly.

If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson.

You do get a good solution for free. However, the trade-off is you need to be technical to really take advantage of it.

The installation could potentially be faster.

I haven't been using the solution for very long at this point. It may be somewhere around three to five months. It hasn't been long.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's excellent.

The scalability is excellent. We don't have any issues as far as that is concerned.

Prior to pfSense, we used Cisco.

The implementation is not complex. It's very straightforward to initiate. A company should have no problems with the process.

As an open-source solution, it is free to use as you see fit.

I didn't evaluate the solution against other more expensive commercial tools.

We are just customers and end-users.

The solution is an open-source platform. We are a software company and we like open-source. Lots of people say open-source means that you need to install it on your own. They will see that as a limitation, however, we see that as the other way around. 

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations and users. It's open-source, it's flexible, and has a strong community. You can use it in many different ways, either in a small installation, laptop, PC, or on a machine, or you can buy an appliance or you can even buy your own hardware and configure it in a different way. The software as such is free and you have a lot of options as to how you want to use it.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's been very good for us

Our primary uses for this solution are as a network firewall and a VPN Server. 

This solution has helped our organization by protecting our network from attacks.

The most valuable feature is the proactive network protection.

We also find the following components valuable:

1. pFBlocker
2. Squid
3. SquidGuard
4. Firewall

This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing.

The most valuable features for me and my current company are the open VPN capabilities and the firewall service.

pfSense has provided my current organization with remote access to the internal services and additional protection via its firewall.

I would like more add-ons/packages for extending pfSense which are approved by the main community.

I have been using pfSense for the last five years, in three different companies in Denmark.

We never had any stability issues, even during high load usages.

We never had any scalability issues. It's easy to add additional services, or even a second or third pfSense product which works with the others.

Unfortunately, I never used the technical support. However, the community forums provided me with answers to the implementation and configuration questions that I had.

I was using FortiGate and other firewall and VPN solutions. They were all ou0dated and too complicated to maintain. The change was made due to the ease of use of pfSense and the features that it provides.

For an IT person, the setup was more or less straightforward.

pfSense is free and open source software. Modification is easy and you can adapt it to your company's requirements.

As I already had experience with pfSense and I knew how it would help me and my company, I didn't evaluate other options.

The product is flexible, scalable, and has logic in using it. It is easy to integrate and implement into your IT environment.

We use pfSense as a firewall in the healthcare sector, education sector, and banking sector.

pfSense is very easy to use.

It is a better firewall than others and it has better features.

They do not provide support in India.

The security could be improved.

I have been selling pfSense for 12 years.

pfSense is a very stable solution.

We have 50 customers who use this solution.

We provide local support to our customers.

It is very easy to install.

We only need one person to install and maintain this solution.

When compared with other firewalls, the price is reasonable.

There is an open-source community version that is available.

I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten.

I use pfSense for the security of my company.

With pfSense we have low balances for the internet and the internet is always available. When our service provider fails, it takes communication to another service. The employees always have access to the servers that they need. They always have an abundant flow or they always switch to the lead when the internet fails.

It has a good web cache. I used to use a DHCP server and DNS server. For my company, I use pfSense as a load balancing application.

The HA proxy is the main feature that it's used for. 

Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system.

They should put an anti-spam in a web application firewall.

I have been using pfSense since 2006. 

The stability is rock-solid. 

I think scalability is good enough. 

I do the maintenance for pfSense.

There is a lot of information in the online forums. 

I have used other solutions but I chose pfSense because it's easy to use and configure.

The initial setup was very easy.

Before I set up, I wrote down all the levels on a paper and I drew the plan I wanted to protect. After that, I deployed it pfSense. I filtered the access to the users and to the servers. Everyone has the access that they need.

The deployment took less than an hour.

It's open-source. You can pay for support if you need. 

I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten. 

Primary we use it for bandwidth limiting and load balancing our ISPs. And Pfsense excels doing that. 

We had two ISPs, and still our Internet connection was awful. By installing pfSense and configuring load balancing and limiting bandwidth, we now have a reliable and stable connection.

Routing, load balancing, Traffic Limiter and queues. Since this company relies on an Internet connection, having these features is a must.

Reporting and real-time monitoring, since I'm used to Watchguard's reporting features, it would be nice to have an embedded solution for reporting. 

Close to none. One time, while upgrading, the system crashed and had to install from scratch. After some research, it was due to an unsupported package that I had installed which the new version didn't like. I just installed and restored my configuration and that was it. No biggy.

Haven't tested this part since the company hasn't grown much.

Haven't used the official support channels. The community forum is awesome when you're looking for quick answers.

Actually, PfSense replaced a Watchguard firewall, mostly due to costs. But I haven't missed it since.

Very straightforward. For a small company with few configuration options it works almost out-of-the-box. The firewall comes with basic outgoing and incoming rules, and you take it from there.

The implementation was made in-house. 

If you need to buy hardware onto which to install PfSense, go with their boxes on their website, they are great. If you already have the hardware, just download and install, it works great either way.

I did, I evaluated Untangle, IPCop and MikroTik.

Just go with it, can't go wrong.

Flexibility is the most valuable feature for us.

There's no expensive licensing costs, which helps us save money.

Also, its capacity and functionalities are great for our needs.

Whenever a new version rolls out, there are hidden bugs. That's why we normally run a version behind for a little while before rolling into the current build.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

This solution can be used for a firewall, VPN, and VLAN.

The main features of this solution are customization and ease to use.

The configuration of the solution is a bit difficult.

I have been using the solution for one year.

The solution is stable.

I have found this solution to be scalable.

The technical support was good in my experience.

The installation is easy and can take approximately one day.

We did the implementation of the solution and we have five technicians available for implementation and maintenance.

My advice to those wanting to implement this solution is that if you are new to configuring this solution I would seek assistance. You most likely will have problems if you have not done it before.

I rate pfSense an eight out of ten.