Netgate pfSense Reviews

I am in IT. I use pfSense for my personal use. I use it to practice networking and understand how networks work. I apply all the networking-related things that I have learned to pfSense at home.

I also use it to isolate my IoT network from my regular network and from the devices I use for the cameras.

The main reason for implementing pfSense is that I like playing games. With pfSense, I can place quality control over the traffic traversing over the WAN connection or the Internet. I am able to prioritize and limit some devices to allow me to have a better connection to the Internet than some devices in our house.

pfSense is a flexible solution. It has features for setting devices into groups. I was able to group up the devices in our house to be able to set some restrictions on some devices and have full restrictions on other devices. It allowed me to control my kids' devices to limit access to the Internet to a certain time. It automatically stops on the Internet for those devices when that time comes.

pfSense gives a single pane of glass management in regard to the network. I was able to control everything in my network, which is good.

I use pfSense Plus. I got third-party hardware, not with pfSense, but I purchased the license to have a pfSense Plus version. That hardware went down a few days after I bought the license. I created a ticket, and the engineer allowed me to move it to another device because I had just recently purchased it. Thanks to them, I was able to have less downtime because I did not have extra money to purchase another license. I was able to bring it up as fast as possible. The backup and recovery of the configuration is very pretty easy. I just reuploaded the file and updated two lines of code, and that was it. Everything worked.

Everything works well. My streaming is working fine. My kids do not complain about any lags. I can play my games without having any issues. I do not experience any lags. When my wife is working, she does not have any problems downloading or uploading files back to her work. We are pretty happy with the performance.

For me, the firewall is most valuable because I can play around with the firewall. That is the best asset for me. I can limit what I want to limit, and I can open what I want to be open.

I like the versatility of pfSense. Compared to other products I have used for home and small businesses, this is the easiest to understand. It has enterprise features compared to, for example, Ubiquiti UniFi. Their router is limited to some features, whereas with pfSense I can do, for example, routing and dual WAN. I also have several VPN options. 

It has a lot of features, but I wish there were even more features. Some of the features I am looking for are still not there in pfSense, like, for example, content control. Because I have kids, I want to control the content or what they watch. There is a feature in pfSense called pfBlocker, but it is limited. If I set that up, it is blocked by an IP address. Sometimes my devices are borrowed by my kids. They are able to get a full connection to the Internet, but their devices are limited. If content blocking is added to pfSense, it would be great. If I can block content by a user, that will be a preferred solution.

The frequency of feature releases can be better. We have been waiting for some of the features for a while, but they have not been released. I know they prioritize what is used in the enterprise area, and then they provide some features for regular consumers like me. If they can balance that 50:50 and focus equally on the enterprise and consumer suggestions, it will be great.

The interface and support are perfect for me. I saw a post on their blog that they will be moving to the Linux operating system. Hopefully, they would have better wireless because the wireless for pfSense is horrible or horrendous. If they move to Linux, hopefully, they will improve it.

I have been using pfSense since 2020. It has been four years now.

It is very stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

It is scalable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

We are a family of five. Five of us are connecting to the pfSense Internet.

They are great. They are perfect for me.

Positive

I have used TP-Link and Ubiquiti EdgeRouter. In regards to features, the two are on par. They are way behind pfSense. pfSense is way ahead of these two in terms of what it could offer. In terms of security, TP-Link is very bad, EdgeRouter is in the middle, and pfSense is way ahead. In terms of performance, TP-Link is worse, and EdgeRouter and pfSense are neck to neck. I prefer pfSense over others.

I installed it on third-party hardware. The longest period of initial configuration was when I deployed it for the first time. After that, it is very fast because I can back up my config and restore it if I break something.

It took an hour or two for all the installation and configuration.

In terms of maintenance, it requires regular updates. That is the only maintenance that it needs. I also need to monitor if any known or zero-day bugs are found in pfSense. I am watching that because pfSense is the device facing the Internet, so I need to be always alert about any zero-day bugs. I also need to be mindful of the configuration to not accidentally expose any ports. These are the three things required in terms of maintenance.

In four years of using it, that payment of 189 dollars per year has already paid off. Over these years, I only experienced it going down two or three times, which is less than 1% downtime per year.

It is cheap. If you are a technical person, it is a pretty cheap solution because first of all, the Community Edition (CE) is free. I am in Australia, and my pfSense license is about 200 dollars. It is not bad because it is per year and not per month. It is cheap compared to other solutions.

I am not using the hardware. I am using the software. It is very cheap. It does not cost me a lot. The only cost is just the one-year payment. If I need extra hardware, I need to purchase that from the third party whose hardware I am using.

I would recommend pfSense to others. I already recommended it to my boss, and he is using it now. He is loving it as well. It is easy to use, and there are a lot of resources available. If you have any problem, someone would have already encountered that problem and found a fix, so it is easy to fix based on that. It is very reliable. The downtime experience is very low. It is almost zero.

I would rate pfSense a ten out of ten.

The benefits I have seen in my organization from the use of Netgate pfSense rewards around the fact of how quickly we can implement changes that are needed with the tool are definitely one of the main things. Overall, we have experienced less downtime with the tool. In my organization, we have had downtime with Cisco. Overall, we have noticed some performance increases as well with the use of Netgate pfSense.

The solution's most valuable feature is that I really like the third-party add-ons, as they give the firewall a ton of flexibility and extra functionalities.

My organization plans to solve costs-related problems by using Netgate pfSense. We were using Cisco's firewall products, and the license and hardware costs were just too high. With Netgate pfSense, I think we can get a full firewall tool with support and no need for licensing for under 5,000 USD, saving a ton of money.

There were no specific security issues or challenges I was trying to address using Netgate pfSense.

In terms of the overall flexibility offered by the product, I would say that it is very easy to implement, make changes, and adapt to different challenges that we may have with it. It offers a lot of different options, including VPN options for site-to-site client VPNs. Overall, it is a great tool. It is a highly adaptable solution that is, most importantly, very easy to implement.

It is extremely easy to add features to Netgate pfSense and configure them. If you are talking about third-party stuff, it is something that is within the firewall itself. You can go into the Package Manager and install it.

From a configuration point of view, it is extremely easy to use the tool. With third-party stuff, it can be a pain, but overall, it is extremely easy to manage Netgate pfSense since it is mainly a GUI-driven tool. It is super easy to configure overall.

If I assess the solution for helping our organization prevent data loss, I think it has been great for us. Everything has room for improvement, but it has been great right now.

Netgate pfSense provides our organization with a single pane of glass management. The tool offers great flexibility and is awesome. In our organization, we haven't had any issues with it. It just makes changes that need to be done extremely quickly and efficiently by the end of the day.

I have worked with Netgate pfSense Plus. I buy the hardware from Netgate, and it comes with pfSense Plus.

Netgate pfSense Plus provides 100 percent features that help minimize downtime. In extreme situations, implementing connections that were super helpful in the past and just the ease of deployment, the product offers is helpful since even if something happens to the firewall itself, I can have a virtualized firewall doing the same thing within less than an hour. It can help with that downtime. I know that Netgate pfSense is extremely reliable and a great tool.

Netgate pfSense provides 100 percent visibility, enabling my organization to make data-driven decisions. Netgate pfSense is very much configurable. It gives you 100 percent of everything you need to make decisions. It gives you details of all kinds of different graphs, traffic, and firewall rules, along with the things that you definitely need in the form of the data that you need to be able to just make quick data-driven decisions.

Netgate pfSense visibility helps me optimize performance. The data is just so easily accessible that you can make decisions very quickly. It also helps improve performance. In our organization, we have noticed a very noticeable performance increase since we shifted from the old firewall from Cisco to Netgate pfSense.

If I were to assess the total cost of ownership of Netgate pfSense, I would say it is extremely low and affordable. I think it is a really very simple and extremely budget-friendly tool.

In our organization, we have had such a good experience with Netgate pfSense over the last four years. In terms of improvements, I have not really thought much, to be quite honest. Maybe faster releases for the software or the firewall itself can be areas where improvements are possible. The tool is just a little bit slow to release patches, so it is probably one of the things where the tool can improve. In general, the tool is not bad at all at the end of the day.

Speaking about whether any enhancements are required in the tool, I would say that the tool has everything that we need for our usage. We have an extremely complex environment, the most complex of which is how we use Netgate's BGP to connect to our ISP. Netgate pfSense is extremely feature-rich for our specific use scenarios, and we have not encountered any shortcomings in the solution.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for around four years. The box itself says Netgate pfSense XG-1540. I don't remember the software version we are using right now, but all I know is that I keep it up to date. In my organization, it will be the latest version of the product.

I have not faced any issues with the stability of the product. I have one firewall in a very bad physical environment. It was very dusty, but it has been 100 percent reliable.

It is an extremely scalable solution.

In our school, we have close to 1,800 students and 210 teaching staff overall. With administrative staff, I think there are about 50 people.

I have the tool in different locations and on different campuses.

If I can call someone from the product's technical support team, l can have a technical person on the phone with me in less than five minutes. If you have any questions for them, they will come and try to give you the answer as quickly as they can, and if they don't have a reply, they will reply to you later via email. For the amount that it costs per year, the level of service that you get is unbeatable, honestly. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The product's initial setup phase was extremely straightforward.

When we deployed the product for the first time, we went through its documentation and how to do things. Otherwise, the strategy is usually based on the fact that we have four campuses, and they run in a similar manner. At least for us, we have a master configuration sort of thing, which we can kind of load into Netgate pfSense and make the small changes that we need, like VLAN changes and small things that apply to the location that the device will be deployed to, and it takes less than probably an hour or two to kind of have a firewall deployed working with the bare minimum, which is extremely fast compared to what it takes with Cisco.

In terms of maintenance, it has been pretty much like we do the setup and then forget it. The firmware updates, or physical maintenance, like cleaning the device, are there. From a greater overview, it is just kind of a set-it-up-and-forget kind of solution for us.

The product's deployment was done in-house, and it involved just me. The enterprise-level support from Netgate helped my organization a lot, especially during the first two deployments, but after that, it was easy.

Personally, I do not have any metrics or data points associated with the ROI that I can share with anyone. My CFO is the person who has information related to ROI.

In our organization, the whole point of moving to Netgate pfSense was that we wanted something that wasn't hard to use or where the licensing wasn't so expensive. We looked at different open-source options, but I can't remember their names. We also looked at UniFi's firewall, but Netgate pfSense came on top for us, considering the support provided and the fact that Netgate's team is the main set of people that keep up with pfSense's open-source project. With Netgate, we work directly with people who use Netgate pfSense, and it is great. We did look at other options, one of which was UniFi, but I cannot remember the name of the other alternative to Netgate pfSense. I think it is called OPNsense.

Suppose I compare the other tools I evaluated with Netgate pfSense, and I feel that the pros of pfSense revolve around the area associated with the product's cost in terms of hardware requirements and licensing. There are no existing costs for the licensing or the hardware. You can deal with the licensing part yourself and get it at a cheap rate from elsewhere or buy it from Netgate's boxes directly from the solution company. Another pro would be the ease of management the tool offers since it is possible to have everything that you need in the GUI, which is a little bit controversial because a lot of people like CLI, but sometimes you need to get something quickly without having to have hundreds of different things.

I haven't come across any cons in the product since most of our company's scenarios are simple and small since we are just a school compared to what other big companies have. Everything that Cisco's firewall was doing for us, Netgate pfSense's firewall does for us for a fraction of the cost and even offers a better performance. I would not know the tool's cons since I do not have anything on my mind right now.

I do not use Negate pfSense Plus on Amazon EC2 VMs. In our organization, we are using Negate pfSense Plus on Netgate's hardware. We use Netgate pfSense XG-1540.

To others who plan to use the solution, I would say that the support offered by the product is 100 percent worth it. The enterprise support is also extremely worth it. In a general sense, if people don't know much about implementation, they just need to read the documentation because many things, like the GUI part, could throw some people off. If you come from a CLI-based tool, the GUI aspect can throw you off, and I know it since it threw me off a little bit initially, but we were able to get through the implementation phase very thoroughly as the tool offers great documentation. By thoroughly going through the documentation, you will have a fairly easy time configuring the tool very methodologically. I really don't think I would recommend anything else apart from the fact that others need to read the documentation and take their time.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

I use the solution in two ways. I deploy it commercially and I use it in my home lab as well. 

It's very easy to deploy. It's nice when you've used something for a while. You get comfortable with all of the benefits. I know what I'm doing. I'm very familiar with the product.

The addition of packages makes it very customizable. The flexibility is very good. Not all firewalls out there have that. Typically, you are tied into three or four different plugins. pfSense, however, allows you to add more than the standard handful others offer. 

It's easy to add features and configure them.

They do improve it consistently, which makes me want to return to it over and over as a solution. 

It just introduced, with the latest revision, the ability to save your backups incrementally as well as go back and make changes. I can go back to a particular backup, and that's quite useful.

The solution does prevent data loss. You can pick up your configuration files consistently, whether you want to do it daily, monthly, hourly, et cetera.

Users can manage everything under one single pane of glass. 

I also use pfSense Plus. It provides good features that help minimize downtime. The updates come quicker to Plus, which is helpful. It also helps optimize performance. Having the pane of glass offers consistency in terms of finding things. The UI is very intuitive.

Updating some of the packages can be a bit difficult. It's hard to stay on top of them all. There also might be a bit of a lag on updates.

If they could get to something like Meraki, where I could remotely log in and not have to deploy a package to do that, that would be nice to have. 

It would be helpful if they had more documentation. Some online details seem out of date and you have to spend a lot of time going through forums to uncover what everyone else is doing.

I've been using the solution for probably ten years. 

The stability is very good. I'd rate it nine out of ten. 

Most of my clients who are users are under 50 users. I handle mostly SMBs. I'd rate scalability eight out of ten.

Technical support is awesome. I haven't dealt with them a ton, however, every time I do, via email, within an hour, they've responded. 

Positive

I've used Cisco Meraki over the years. It's a bit different. There's also a cost factor. 

I've also tried OPNsense. I didn't like the look of it after using pfSense for so long. 

The initial deployment is straightforward. It's awesome. I always bench test it before deployment. I do it through my office, not on-site, to go through the various variables that could make things go sideways. 

The implementation only takes about a day. I can manage the process by myself. I don't need a team. 

A majority of my deployments are for home users.

There's not a lot of maintenance. You just want to keep packages updated when the time comes. 

I have witnessed an ROI from a remote perspective. I'm able to remote in for some users and fix any problems that way.

The solution is fairly priced. The total cost of ownership is pretty good. They do offer appliances as well and those are quite cost effective. 

I'm a consultant. 

I'd advise new users to learn at home first and play with pfSense just to get used to it. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I use Netgate pfSense in my home lab and company. I wanted to learn more about networking so I swapped my ISP router with Netgate pfSense.

Netgate pfSense is a flexible solution. Netgate has its appliances but if I want to use pfSense somewhere else, I can install it into a virtual machine or on my hardware.

I would rate the ease of adding features to Netgate pfSense eight out of ten.

Netgate pfSense has improved the traffic visibility of the devices we are monitoring. Netgate pfSense has also taught me a lot about networking because I got to use an enterprise-grade firewall.

pfSense Plus helps minimize downtime thanks to its ZFS snapshotting feature. This means if we misconfigure something, we can quickly restore our system to a previous working state, reducing downtime.

Both pfSense Plus and the community edition provide visibility that enables us to make data-driven decisions.

Netgate pfSense has provided a reduction in downtime of 30 percent thanks to its user-friendly configuration process.

The most valuable features of Netgate pfSense are the ease of use and GUI. 

pfSense's dashboard offers basic monitoring, but it lacks centralized management for multiple PSM devices and a unified event interface for various services. Ideally, I'd like a management interface that can handle multiple PSMs, even if they're in different locations. This interface should provide at least status information and basic management features.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for three years.

I would rate the stability of Netgate pfSense nine out of ten. While I did encounter some issues earlier on, they have all since been resolved. 

Netgate pfSense is scalable. While we haven't used features like the rack-mounted version or maxed out its capabilities, the system is easily scalable. Upgrading to a more powerful model is simple - just export our settings and import them to the new device.

I had to use the technical support twice and they were extremely quick to respond and deal with my issues.

Positive

While I previously switched from UniFi to pfSense for its wider range of features, the gap between them has narrowed somewhat. However, pfSense remains a more enterprise-focused option, allowing for granular control over specific network elements useful in complex environments. UniFi, on the other hand, offers a less detailed view.

While the initial setup was mostly straightforward, some specific configurations proved challenging and lacked intuitiveness. To address these, I consulted YouTube videos and Netgate's documentation.

I would rate the ease of the setup process a seven out of ten.

Installing pfSense took a full day.

I implemented pfSense myself.

pfSense has definitely paid off for me. It's become a rock-solid foundation for my network. Since the memory leak fixes, it's been incredibly stable and requires minimal maintenance.

While pfSense hardware from Netgate might have a higher upfront cost, I've had very little trouble with it. Plus, buying from them directly helps fund the software's development, making it a worthwhile investment in my eyes.

pfSense offers a reasonable total cost of ownership for me. Since I primarily use it at home, I don't need additional features or paid support. However, compared to commercial options like SonicWall, even support costs seem affordable. It's worth noting that advanced features like Suricato or Snort require additional subscriptions for business use, but overall, pfSense remains a cost-effective solution.

I would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten.

pfSense handles both my home lab, suitable for a small household, and our company's branch office with roughly 150 on-site users and 50 remote VPN connections. It also facilitates a site-to-site VPN connection between this branch and our main New York office.

pfSense is low-maintenance. While regular updates are important, I typically won't need to perform much additional maintenance beyond occasional logins to check the dashboard and install those updates.

pfSense is a stable and feature-rich firewall, but it lacks  Layer 7 application filtering, which means you can't easily block specific applications. While I haven't personally needed this feature, it's a known gap in pfSense's functionality.

I recommend pfSense overall to others.

After successfully using pfSense at home to manage IoT devices and separate their traffic from my computers and gaming consoles, I'm now evaluating its suitability for our hospital system. As the IT manager, I'm impressed and considering replacing our current firewalls with Netgate pfSense appliances.

I implemented pfSense at home to proactively prevent security issues on my home devices.

Netgate pfSense is flexible allowing us to add plugins.

It has improved my home network's security, making it significantly harder for attackers to access my data.

Netgate pfSense works well to prevent data loss and helps optimize performance.

As a first-time NetGate pfSense user, I've been impressed by several features: easy integration for blocking traffic by country, straightforward creation and management of firewall rules, and the ability to extend functionality through plugins.

I'd love a centralized management system for multiple pfSense appliances. This is where Netgate could improve. Redesigning my network for seven pfSense units sounds like a daunting task, especially with the need for individual configuration. A single pane of glass for managing everything at once would be a game-changer, streamlining the process significantly.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for five years.

I would rate the stability of Netgate pfSense ten out of ten.

Based on what I have heard from other users and what I have read, Netgate pfSense can scale.

The deployment was easy, but I took a cautious, phased approach to avoid disrupting household internet access. Once complete, the upgrade from my previous Netgate appliance allowed me to take advantage of SFP+ ports, so I put ten gigabytes into it and continued fine-tuning the system.

The initial deployment for basic functionality was completed within a few hours, but achieving full functionality took approximately two weeks. 

Netgate pfSense stands out as a cost-effective option that delivers excellent value. While I haven't personally used their support at home, a vendor I spoke with praises it highly. Their reputation suggests phenomenal hospital-grade support might be worthwhile for a critical environment like ours.

Netgate's maintenance contracts are significantly more affordable compared to other vendors, demonstrating their competitive pricing and commitment to customer value.

I would rate Netgate pfSense ten out of ten.

Netgate pfSense is low maintenance.

Before committing to any network or security hardware, including Netgate pfSense, I recommend a Proof of Concept to ensure it meets your specific needs. Don't rely solely on others' suggestions. Thankfully, pfSense offers downloadable virtual images, allowing you to experiment with its features before purchasing physical equipment.

We use the Netgate pfSense firewalls for each location in the same metropolitan area.

We implemented Netgate pfSense at the most basic level, aiming for a reliable firewall solution without incurring the high costs associated with Cisco products.

Netgate pfSense is a flexible firewall solution. It supports OpenVPN and IPsec, providing various options for establishing secure connections. Additionally, it offers features for monitoring user browsing behavior, enabling administrators to implement restrictions if desired. Overall, pfSense is a versatile platform that can be adapted to meet the needs of different network environments.

Adding new features to pfSense is quick. We select the feature we want and click install.

One feature that pfSense had, which my Cisco PIX firewall lacked, was built-in failover. With the Cisco PIX, if I wanted to implement failover, for instance, if one internet connection went down and I had a backup, I had to purchase additional hardware and a whole other firewall. However, with pfSense, failover configured two ports on the existing box to switch between them if one connection failed.

The security of pfSense is excellent. It effectively prevents unauthorized access.  To date, we haven't experienced any security breaches.

pfSense Plus provides a cold spare that helps minimize downtime. In the event of a failure, the other firewall can be activated while the broken one is restored and configured.

We saw the value of pfSense within a few days. Some of it was instant, but other things took time. When we first implemented it, we saw some value, and a few days later, it kept impressing me with more. A week went by, and I still saw more value.

With a firewall, VPN, and other router functionalities, pfSense offers an excellent total cost of ownership. It's a one-time purchase with no hidden fees, making it significantly more affordable than Cisco products, which require additional licensing, subscriptions, support, and per-feature purchases. While pfSense necessitates some time investment to learn and configure, this is comparable to the effort needed for any enterprise-grade solution, including Cisco, which also incurs substantial licensing costs. Overall, pfSense's upfront cost and user's time represent its total cost of ownership. 

Netgate pfSense is 100 percent flexible and configurable. We can do anything with it. We have not run into any scenario where it didn't work.

The overall documentation has room for improvement. Currently, we need to search forums for answers, as the official documentation by Netgate is not very helpful. The community support is excellent, and there should be a feedback loop to incorporate missing information from the community forums into the official documentation.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for four years.

I would rate the stability of pfSense ten out of ten.

The scalability of pfSense fits our company requirements.

Based on both my partner's and my experience with technical support, it is excellent.

The user community support is fantastic. It's a large and engaged community where members show genuine interest in one another's questions.

Positive

I switched from Cisco Firewalls to pfSense Firewalls. I had a Cisco PIX, but they started implementing a subscription model where we had to pay for individual features. It was like, if we wanted this feature, it's a dollar. And if we wanted that feature, it's another dollar. I decided I was done with that approach and wanted something different. I like that with Netgate, what we buy is what we get. It's not a subscription model. We can get a support subscription, which is perfectly natural to me, but we don't have to buy or pay extra for every feature. We get what you get.

It was a gradual learning experience, beginning with our initial purchase and installation of a pfSense firewall. Its features impressed us, so we decided to replace another firewall with pfSense to enable failover capabilities. This success led to a broader implementation across our network. It wasn't a planned, calculated rollout; rather, it evolved organically as we replaced outdated firewalls and discovered the benefits of pfSense, particularly its ability to work in tandem with other pfSense devices for enhanced functionality.

The initial deployment takes a couple of hours and can be done by one person.

Netgate pfSense offers good value for its price. I prioritize getting the most out of my money, so I choose pfSense. I don't always seek the cheapest or most expensive option but rather the best value for my investment. With pfSense, I get the most product for every dollar spent.

I would rate Netgate pfSense ten out of ten.

I am one of two IT people in the organization, and we are the only two who can access the pfSense firewalls. We have what will soon be four metropolitan locations that use pfSense.

Other than updating pfSense, no other maintenance is required.

I recommend pfSense to others. It's an awesome product that fits everything we've ever needed, and they don't overcharge for every little license feature.

I USE Netgate pfSense for home networks, lab environments, and R&D. In production, professional career-wise, I have built pfSense production firewalls that run in various configurations and high availability for different organizations serving a different number of clients and servicing any amount of requests throughout any given day. 

It also serves thousands to tens of millions of requests a second a day from small to large deployments.

Netgate pfSense is an extremely flexible solution. It is an open-source tool that has a very large community of professionals, enthusiasts, and hobbyists alike. There is a lot of flexibility in doing whatever you want with it. It also offers enterprise-grade support so that you can have something equivalent to the Cisco enterprise-grade data center firewall product. You could build that with pfSense or OpenSense, which is a derivative of pfSense.

The initial benefit I saw of pfSense was way before I ever used it professionally. It is a robust tool that can replace your consumer-grade firewall router solution. I also saw immediate benefits in my professional career as it is a powerful solution that can be compared to other solutions like Palo Alto or Meraki today.

Netgate pfSense can be a fully functional L7 firewall. You can not only have the base Layer 3 functionality of the firewall, but you can add things like Snort and pfBlockerNG to build out and become an L7 firewall doing actual inspection and security analysis.

It is very easy to add and configure features to Netgate pfSense.

pfSense has a built-in auto-configuration backup. While that is technically data loss from the sense of protecting the firewall, it is a feature Netgate offers to every pfSense user, licensed or not. You get this feature if you have a Netgate appliance. Just using pfSense won't get you that. There are third-party packages you can use to set up pfSense configuration backups if you don't have pfSense Plus.

In terms of data loss outside of that, you configure it in a way that puts it as a security device. By default, pfSense is not inherently a security device. It is a Layer 3 filtering firewall. If you want it to be a security appliance beyond basic TCP/IP Layer 3 filtering, you can run Snort or pfBlockerNG to turn it into a security appliance. Doing so can aid in data loss prevention by using the tool for basic intrusion detection prevention.

Netgate pfSense provides a single-pane-of-glass management capability. Its dashboard has a lot of prebuilt functionality, allowing you to have a single-page view of the firewall's status and everything going on with it.

pfSense Plus provides features that help us minimize downtime as a supporting part of the infrastructure.

pfSense Plus provides visibility that enables us to make data-driven decisions. The kind of data-driven decisions that could be made with information from pfSense are things like how much bandwidth I am using and what is the throughput of all my band connectivity.

I can also decide whether I need to go from a 1 Gig network to a 10 Gig network or a 2.5 Gig network and whether I need to increase my commit for my WAN circuit because we see that we are averaging above 99%, etc. The kind of decisions that it can help you make are related to your network and your connectivity.

The visibility that pfSense Plus provides helps us to optimize performance. It could help you to improve performance on the network side. It is, after all, a firewall router, so it is a network piece of equipment. It could help improve performance in that if you are actively monitoring, pulling data from pfSense, or actively reviewing the different types of information and graphs that pfSense provides, you could make decisions to see that a machine is consistently using lots of network traffic.

I have been using Netgate pfSense for 15 years.

I have pfSense Plus in production. I have both pfSense Plus and pfSense Community Edition (CE) running at home. They are essentially the same, and the only difference between them is the support and auto-configuration backup.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We are a reseller. We resell the product to our customers as we are an MSP. We use it for various different verticals, from manufacturing to schools to typical offices. That is mainly the use of this solution.

There are a lot of limitations with competitors like WatchGuard and SonicWall where there are a lot of costs for licenses to utilize their products. We felt that by going to pfSense, we have a little bit more freedom. We can use certain features without having to pay exorbitant costs for licensing. It is better for the small to medium-sized customers.

They are the most flexible, for sure. In my experience, it is quite easy to add features to pfSense and configure them. There is a lot of support from the local community. Because it is an open-community-built platform, there is a lot of support out there. Adding features and configuring them seems to be quite simple from my experience so far.

There is an overall performance increase. The hardware is much more performance-driven. The constant upgrades certainly make it easier to keep up with the evolving environment. The community-driven platform certainly helps to ensure that things are kept current.

pfSense gives us a single pane of glass management. There is a user interface and also the command line. The user interface is very friendly and easy to navigate. The single pane of glass management certainly increases productivity. The ability to look at one single pane of glass, add different widgets, and see things at a glance certainly helps to cut down the time of looking for certain statuses or things like that. It makes things more efficient.

We deal with pfSense Plus in a few cases. It can help minimize downtime. We have not experienced it in any sort of live environment, but I am confident that it would.

pfSense Plus provides visibility that enables us to make data-driven decisions.

It optimizes performance, and in most cases, it affects operations and makes things more efficient. Efficiency means money.

The ability to utilize the features instead of having to pay a license fee for every single thing that you want to use on a firewall is valuable. A lot of other companies give you a firewall out of the box that has very basic functionality, whereas pfSense gives you all the good features, and if you want to have more advanced features, you can pay a fee. You are able to use a lot of the features that you cannot use on other products. That is the best thing.

It is very good from a troubleshooting perspective. Things like logging are very good. We have been using these firewalls with filtering very successfully, and VPN has been very successful on them. We have not had any issues with that.

One thing that stuck out to me was the move to use plastic chassis on the Netgate devices or products. They are moving away from using metal chassis, and I find that the plastic seems to get hotter than the metal. Other than that, they are such great devices. They always seem to have all the cool things and bells and whistles.

One thing I would like to see Netgate do is to have a cloud-based management portal, similar to SonicWall, WatchGuard, Ubiquiti, etc. With all these platforms, you create an account, and you have a way to cloud-manage these products. Currently, one of the challenges that we face is not being able to manage those things from a centralized platform. It has always been one thing I have dreamt of for Netgate. That is the only place where it falls short. Apart from that, they are far superior in building, keeping up with the times, and keeping things current.

It has been probably eight or nine years.

A couple of times we have had some strange issues that have been unexplainable, but overall, it is stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

It is scalable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

They have been fantastic. I have never had an issue, and it has always been very good. They are a highly intelligent and very resourceful team. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We have used everything, such as Cisco, SonicWall, and WatchGuard. You name the flavor. We have used them all, and Netgate is definitely a much better product than those. It also depends on the use cases. 

It has been very straightforward to very complex. We have set up entire data centers run by Netgate devices to small offices using a 2100. We have gone from the most complex to the least complex. We have seen everything in between.

Its deployment is a matter of hours. Our clients are small to medium size. We have about ten people working with pfSense.

It requires general maintenance. We have to keep up with firmware and updates. From a physical perspective, there is no maintenance.

It is very cost-effective. There is 100% ROI.

They are on the higher end, but you do not get stuck with spending thousands of dollars every year. You do not have recurring license costs to have people use a simple feature like VPN. That makes it more cost-effective in the long term. There is a very good price point. No one ever complained, and I have not ever thought that they were overpriced. That is for sure.

If you are looking to deploy a product that is reliable and high-performing and that is going to be cost-effective for yourself or your customer in the long term, you are doing the right thing by looking at Netgate.

I would rate Netgate pfSense a ten out of ten.