Netgate pfSense Reviews

Firewall system for small, medium, and large data networks. It allows you to provide security to your environment: DMZ networks, LAN, WAN, etc. A very stable product that lasts over time, easy to understand, and administer.

With pfSense, an incomparable stability is achieved with other firewall systems. It is easy to use and has integrity with other systems, such as proxies and quality of service.

Security

• Stability
• Integration with other systems
• Easy assimilation of its features
• Easy administration
• Multiple network management tools
• Load balancing
• Multiple links
• High availability, etc.

The connections should be shown in a more specific way, as Kerio Control does. It should integrate with LDAP, Active Directory, etc, to improve the way in which the traces and connections of each IP, or user connected through the firewall, are shown.

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.

First of all scalability of this solution. It's an all-in-one solution useful for every kind of company. It's also very easy to set up rules and NAT, and it has several modules like transparent proxy, VPN, and traffic shaping which are the daily modules for me.

pfSense software was designed to be a customizable platform that can be hardware agnostic. This allows the engineer to meet the needs of a project with a device that's got the right I/O and specifications, and then customize the pfSense settings to their needs.
So power consumption and less hardware requirement can save our money!

Compatibility with virtualization system (like VMWare, Proxmox and so on and so forth); in some cases, it can create conflicts with virtualized hardware, and configuration export (sometimes the XML file creates a conflict with the hardware network MAC address).

I've been using it for three years.

• Compatibility with some virtualized system
• Configuration export in some cases
• Sometimes updates can mess up the running configuration

Never had any issues. In fact, I've had a pfSense firewall with the uptime of a year.

No, and it doesn't matter how many rules or not that you have. It can manage different network interfaces (virtual and physical) without a problem.

We never use it, but it has a large community so you can find whatever you need in the pfSense forum.

We never use it, but it has a large community so you can find whatever you need in the pfSense forum.

Previously we've used hardware firewalling solutions like SonicWall, Zyxel and others but they're not powerful like this solution. Also, they are hardware so the cost is much higher than software. I've also used IPtables which is a software Linux solution but it's complicated to setup when you need to manage several rules.

It's easy to setup the solution because there's a wizard that guides you through it, and therefore, you cannot make mistakes. Then, you can configure the different aspects to fit your needs.

We have become experts in this solution. We installed it in our lab and tested the solution. After that we implemented it throughout our company, and then began using the solution with our customers.

We've a strong know how, and we've use this solution with our customers so we can be more competitive than hardware solutions.

It's a software solution, and also open source, so it's cost is zero!

We tested IPCop, Smoothwall, IPTables and others. When we have an OS project, we want to test so we can compare it to our technology, and if it's better, we build it!

Test, test, test and...test! It's powerful but only with testing will you realize what you need.

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. 

• Fail-over of between multiple ISPs
• Firewall
• Graphs
• Real time interface monitoring
• The web UI gives you an overview of everything you want to see
• For an open-source solution it has performed fantastically
• OSPF
• It contains loads of optional packages e.g Snort (IDS), asterix (PBX), network monitors etc.

We have pfSense across three sites where it manages the VPN and firewalls between them. Also, it has reduced costs drastically and has outperformed its expectations.

The load balancing can be improved as it uses tier levels to balance. For it to function most effectively, you often need to have the same bandwidth on the ISPs.

We've used it for six years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

There were stability issues with certain versions, but fixes were released and the right hardware helped.

We do have issues as the right hardware needs to be deployed in order to expand correctly in certain areas.

We use a vendor team, Shrike Technologies who have been excellent, and once a while I consulted the pfSense cookbook.

The online forum has lots of answers.

We previously used Monowall and switched because we needed more functionality.

We used a vendor team, Shrike Technologies whose experience was very high.

Pricing is fantastic, we have gold subscription which covers on-line backup of device configurations, premium support, webinars and lots more.

Proper planning is necessary in order to select the right hardware and configuration required (rules, services etc.).

The easy to use GUI. Less training is required for the newcomers in IT.

Any new hire straight out of school who has network knowledge is able to operate the software without the complication of a CLI.

There were some bugs in the version we used.

We have been using the solution for one year.

We had a stability issue. A handful of times the firewall box froze and needed a power cycle.

We had a scalability issue. The fail over did not work automatically.

Our infrastructure manager tried contacting their support but it was not helpful. Response time was bad as expected for an open source software.

FreeBSD box was an old setup from 1998, so it was time to upgrade without it being costly.

The setup was straightforward.

It's open source so it's free. We did not buy their hardware.

We evaluated Cisco .

If your organization has the budget, go with a paid solution. We've had our days with it and went with a paid solution (another firewall) due to the company growing and we couldn't have any downtime. It would likely cost the company more money with downtime than to purchase a good quality firewall.

The solution is fairly scalable when it comes to integrating with other applications and data sets. They have a lot more customization compared to the competition.

They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals.

For a feature update, they should increase the API integrations into decentralized identity platforms making it stronger.

I have been using the solution for two years.

In my experience, this solution is able to increase its scalability.

Technical support is very supportive. When we are in contact with them, there is no problem at all.

The setup was straightforward.

When doing deployments of the solution we generally average approximately six to eight weeks.

The pricing is lower than some of its competitors. However, If you do not have a strong technical team and are trying to get pfSense to do some of the same functions as some of the competitors such as Fortinet or Palo Alto, It will cost you a lot in professional services to do it. You then lose the low cost-benefit of this solution.

I have evaluated Fortinet, their pricing is reasonable for the SME market, but they are not enterprise players. The strongest solutions in this field are certainly SentinelOne and Carbon Black, they outperform everything else.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I rate pfSense an eight out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is to protect our business network.

I like the fact that it is open-source.

The Surakarta and the web blocking functionality seems to be quite good. It's not perfect, but none of them are.

The interface is straightforward and easy to use.

I would like to see the dashboard modernized.

If you look at some of the other providers, their dashboard is more modern looking.

Also, simplifying the rules for the GeoIP. Making it simpler to understand would be an improvement.

I have been using pfSense for approximately one year.

It seems to be relatively stable. I haven't had very many issues.

If I do have any issues, it is more to do with the way that I have configured it. Other than that, it works fine.

It's a scalable solution. We have 14 computers with more powerful hardware that allows us to deal with larger networks.

Apart from what you see on the interface, you can also use the command line to create a cluster if you need to.

The initial setup is straightforward once you read the manual.

I did evaluate another solution but felt that the cost was too high for what it was. Based on the consumer market, I didn't feel that it was at the enterprise level.

I would recommend reading the manual and the administration book. It has all of the proper information.

Many will jump into pfSense without reading the manual properly, or taking the time to understand the definitions, and how to set it up properly.

If you don't, then you might have a bad experience, which would not be fair to the product.

To give a fair comparison and trial, definitely read the technical documentation before implementing it.

Given the fact that it's open-source, relatively easy to use, and it seems to do the job quite well, I would rate pfSense a ten out of ten. I think it deserves that.