Netgate pfSense Reviews

I use pfSense firewall, especially as an IPSec VPN Server. There are several VPN connections with equipment of various manufacturers at the other end.

I use ServerU as hardware instead of an ordinary PC, as most other people usually do.

The gain in performance and security from configuring the VPN connections was significant, since pfSense has replaced a server with a custom Linux open source version, which was running on outdated hardware.

Security and stability. The pfSense server acts as "IPSec VPN Server" for a small financial institution, but regardless of the company size, interruptions would cause significant financial impact.

pfSense serves us very well. My only observation is about the quality of the IPSec logs, which are difficult to interpret and are poor in filters. I have more than 10 IPSec VPN connections, and when there is a need for troubleshooting, the logs are of little help.

With regard to this configuration, I consider it a stable solution.

• Firewall
• State Table
• Network Address Translation (NAT)
• High Availability
• Multi-WAN
• Server Load Balancing
• Virtual Private Network (VPN)
• PPPoE Server
• Reporting and Monitoring Applications
• Dynamic DNS
• Captive Portal
• DHCP Server and Relay

The reporting and monitoring applications improve our organization.

Load balancing of multiple networks

3 Year

Compatibility Issues

None

None

None

Excellent

Yes

Simplest

Extraordinary

pfSense software has the flexibility to integrate into wide area on a worldwide range of hardware. Among all monitoring and firewalls application. I haven't see powerful tools like PfSense.

• Firewall
• DHCP
• VPN

The organization relies on pfSense for DHCP, and remote users may access it on a local network via VPN.

I was satisfied with the overall features of the product, considering the limited capacity of our hardware at the time. It's probable that an improvement can be made to the user friendliness of the interface.

I've used it for over three years.

I believe that the issue of stability that we encountered was linked to our hardware limitation. For example, we would need to soft reboot the system manually after a power failure to get the DHCP functioning again.

This is linked to our hardware limitation as well, however it has been working fine for company with 30-40 users.

8/10.

9/10,

It was done by external technical support.

It was implemented by a vendor who were 10/10.

I don't know the setup costs but the day-to-day maintenance is done by myself, and I occasionally need to engage the vendor for technical issues.

pfSense is good for a company that is looking for a solution with a reasonable cost for implementation.

pfSense is very valuable as previously I had to use Microsoft's TMG solution. After some research, when I got stuck configuring a physical machine with many VMs, I noticed that pfSense, as a firewall, uses less resources. I started to test it on a simple PC, and I have now seen how I can benefit from open source software. So therefore, the most valuable feature is that it uses less resources than a physical machine.

It is free of charge. I am living in country where this is not so important yet, as no one controls the licenses of software. However, our company tries to look forward and prevent issues that may happen in the future. So it being free, and easy to configure, are the benefits for us.

I think that areas for improvement are not closely related with the work of pfSense but with its components, meaning the packages. I am faced with little problems when I install none-recommended (beta) versions. But, I also understand that these versions are mostly for developers, who are trying to contribute their best efforts for open source.

I have been using pfSense as a firewall solution for approximately eight months.

When I started to test it in a real environment, it was on a physical machine and I was faced with problems. It was that the freeBSD wouldn't detect my USB keyboard, but after waiting a while, it eventually worked. In a virtual environment, I had no problems.

Just once. One of our customers had an issue with their electrical stability. The electrical supply was jumping, and playing about, and when it was happening pfSense stopped.

It depends actually, and to be honest, I have never used all the available features of this product, but I believe that there should not be any issues with the scalability.

I have never used the customer service for pfSense. I have read the manuals, but have never contacted customer service.

I have never used it.

I previously used Microsoft's TMG solution. I switched because after some research when I got stuck configuring a physical machine with many VMs, I decided to use pfSense.

Two particular features stand out to me:

1. The WAN load balancing feature
2. The product offers many additional functions such as router, WLC, and traffic analysis etc.

It has enhanced our organization because of its versatility. It doesn't need expensive hardware to build a robust firewall, therefore, providing a saving on cost. Also, its reliability is quite remarkable which allows IT to focus on other tasks, and how efficiently it manages our WAN traffic.

I think the dashboard/interface could be improved and the ability to manage it from a mobile platform.

I have used this solution for the past two years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

I have never had to use customer service.

I've never used it, but their technical knowledge base, and via online documents and forums, is quite good, but not excellent.

We didn't have a previous solution.

It wasn't straightforward but at the same time not complex. The only issue was identifying relevant static routes to move traffic in and out our network.

I implemented it myself.

The setup cost was practically zero because we had servers in stock. Also, there is no real day-to-day cost attached with it either.

No evaluation took place, we just looked at the initial cost to implement a solution using the hardware we have, and how fast it could be rolled out

Plan, research and test certain features and configurations in a lab environment first.

I use pfSense for OpenVPN and DNS. 

I like pfSense's security features. 

The integration of pfSense with EPS and EDS could be better. Also, it should be easier to get reports on how many users are connecting simultaneously and how sections connect in real-time.

I've been using pfSense for about 10 years.

PfSense is stable.

PfSense is scalable.

It's easy to set up pfSense. But it generally takes two or three days, depending on the environment.

Eight out of 10

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.