Netgate pfSense Reviews

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.

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.

The GUI is an all in one solution that includes features such as DHCP, VPN, Squid, Firewall, etc.

I am using this product as a firewall for site-to-site connectivity and also, the Dynamic DNS (DynDNS).

As per my understanding VPN, Captive Portal user-level and MAC-level filtering need to be improved.

I have used this solution for the last one and a half years.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

I am using the community version so there is no need for any support.

Earlier, I was using FortiGate. Due to budget issues we moved to pfSense.

The setup is simple, if you have some Linux and firewall administration expertise.

We evaluated FortiGate, Cisco ASA and Palo Alto.

I would recommend joining the community and ask questions.

You should also read the installation and configuration documentation on the website.

• 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.).

- Firewall/router

- OpenVPN server

- DHCP server

- High availability cluster

- It's for FREE!

Before I started working for my present company, they used to use a small (for home use :) ) Linksys router. The main problem of Linksys was the limitation of firewall rules of up to 50 entries. I suggested using a main firewall/router because it has professional functions, has no limitation, and it's for free.

So far, from my point of view everything is working perfect!

I started working with pfSense in 2009.

Deployment is very easy and quite intuitive. Installation is very simple.

No, I didn't have any issues. Every issue I had with pfSense was with hardware (not caused by pfSense).

Never.

I never use customer service.

I never use technical support.

Before pfSense I had in the company an old Cisco router, but it had problems with stability so I was looking for an alternative and I found pfSense.

If you have some knowledge about router and firewall, initial setup won't be a problem for you. Ask google about it and you will find a lot of documentation, instructions and video.

I implemented pfSense by myself, so I can't rate the vendor team level of expertise.

System is totally free. I spent two days to implement it.
As hardware, I used old workstations which were prepared to scrap.
So ROI = use some cheap hardware with 2 NICs and you will get a professional firewall/router.

It's absolutly free, no pricing and no licensing.

I was checking some other alternatives (right now I don't remember which) but pfSense had the best documentation, so the choice was simple.

For professional use, I advise using two computers with three NICs

Why 2 computers???
To create a HA cluster.

You will need 3 WAN IP addresses, 3 LAN IP addresses, and a quite simple NIC configuration:

1st NIC use to WAN connection (CARP)

2nd NIC use to heartbeat and sync between two pfSense

3rd NIC use to LAN connection (CARP)

For more details ask Google :)