OPNsense Reviews

The primary use case of this solution is to detect and block malicious traffic, malicious files, and malicious links to protect the internal network from any external malicious website that may contain a virus or malware.

The most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility. 

The visibility is awesome. With the visibility, you can see the data source, data destination, the source port, destination port, protocols, the most used, the malicious files that have been detected and blocked, the countries the customer has visited, and the IPs based on Suricata.

OPNsense also has ClamAV, which is a great tool.

I have some issues with OPNsense. I have created a virtual machine that I've lost connection at times and I am not able to connect to the gateway or ping the internet. When I started with OPNsense, it worked right away. It may be an issue with the virtual machine itself. I am currently setting up the protection on all of the virtual machines so they will connect to OPNsense and the internet, or anywhere they need to access.

I have tried to download some malicious files or a virus and it should dump the files and prevent the download, but I don't seem to get any notification or warnings.

It may be an issue with the configuration but I am not sure.

I would like to see improvements made to connectivity and alerting.

I wanted to deploy this solution in our organization and some of the workstations from remote sites but it's not reliable enough to do that yet.

In the next release, I would like to see real traffic monitoring and more visibility. Also, for the antivirus, I would like to see the files protected by ClamAV. 

I would like to see intelligence in OPNsense and have the option to apply it or not.

They need a threat intelligence tool similar to the one they would find with Cisco. It will show you the file hashes, all of the IFCs, the niches, the address information, and more.  With all of this information, you can be proactive and block the malicious file hashes, all of the malicious IP addresses, and the public IP addresses. It should help you be proactive.

It would be helpful to have OPNsense be one of the plugins, and they should include traffic capturing. With Palo Alto, you can monitor and specify which interface you want to monitor, the source IP, or you can specify the network and see the traffic that is coming from the VLAN, the destination, and any files being transferred over the network.

If you apply security profiles you can see the signatures.

I have been using OPNsense for five months.

There are issues with stability and reliability.

I set up two different virtual machines. I used a virtual box, I installed it and configured higher visibility for both. One was a master and the other a standby. 

I had a virtual machine installed on Windows 10 and put the gateway for it as OPNsense, which was the master. 

I tested and shut down the first one, which is the master. When I check to see if the second one would take over, it failed. 

I couldn't connect to the internet or any destination.

We have not explored the scalability. We are only a small lab with two to three workstations.

I have a colleague working with me, together. We meet weekly to share the progress we have.

I use the enterprise version daily. It's scalable, stable, they have proper documentation and support. We get daily updates from the vendor.

OPNsense is a great tool but it lacks information that you need before deploying it.

I have reached out to the community for support, but they haven't seen anything like the issues that I am experiencing. 

I have not contacted OPNsense directly.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy.

It took 30 to 45 minutes to set up and deploy OPNsense.

I did not use a vendor to implement this solution, I did it myself.

OPNsense is a well known open-source tool.

I am currently evaluating and searching for open-source enterprise firewalls and doing a comparison of the features between all of them. I am assessing the pros and cons of vendors. 

I am looking for something that will give me a report on the comparison of features, capabilities, the different vendors, and the different open-source solutions that are available.

I am also doing a comparison on Palo Alto, Cisco Firepower, and Fortinet Fortigate.

I don't have any information on the bandwidth and what it can handle, or how many workstations can work with it. This information is very important, but I can't find any resources for this information.

The reporting is amazing. You can export reports, you can set the parameters, and export reports based on your needs.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I mostly rely on the solution's network intrusion detection and prevention system, along with other systems, CMs, and log management. We are currently satisfied with the solution's threat intelligence. It's a pretty much in-house developed solution because it's in a Wazuh server. We have several scripts around it, allowing us to improve our posture on threats.

SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) is integrated into some restricted service providers for OPNSense.

I pretty much like the solution's APIs, but it's somehow limited. I would like the APIs to be more mature and more developed and have more options to automate threat hunting. Also, I would like to see more drill-down possibilities.

We have to rely on specific hardware for the in-depth analysis of NetFlow. Although we have an interface on OPNsense, it's not as easy to use on the security side as other solutions.

I have been using OPNsense since 2016.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

OPNsense is an extremely scalable solution. I played on one network with CARP, and I was pretty happy with what I achieved there.

Before OPNsense, we worked with the Cisco ASA 5505 product for three years. Although it included the FirePOWER part, it was quite a poor experience.

OPNsense has helped reduce the speed of threat detection and containment from 50 minutes to 15 minutes.

I have quite a background in Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) systems. I was looking into BSD, especially for the packet filter side. While evaluating, OPNsense was the most solid solution. I was also considering pfSense as my first option, but it is not so strong on the file system side.

OPNsense is a strong and solid solution that is easy to interact with. I don't see much on the new generation of firewalls, and only a few solutions are available for OPNsense. OPNsense handles network traffic much faster during peak loads because it's on dedicated hardware. I would recommend OPNsense when no specific topic prevents me from recommending OpenSense.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

OPNsense can be deployed in the cloud and on-premises.

I have used OPNsense in many different types of companies, such as financial and metropolitan.

I have been using OPNsense for approximately six years.

OPNsense is highly stable.

The scalability of OPNsense is very good.

I have approximately 15 customer companies using this solution.

The support for OPNsense is good because we have documents available on the internet. The support could improve a little.

I rate the support from OPNsense a four out of five.

The initial setup of OPNsense is straightforward. It took us a while to deploy the solution.

I rate the initial setup of OPNsense a nine out often.

I did the implementation of OPNsense in-house.

OPNsense is an open-source solution and it does not require a license.

I recommend this solution to others because in my country we have a limitation for buying any firewall.

I rate OPNsense a nine out of ten.

The tool's integration is more like a button press. 

pfSense has better performance and quicker updates.

I have been working with the product for six months. 

The tool is more stable than pfSense because it has the drivers for my network card, Realtek. I didn't know at the time because manufacturers sometimes don't advertise what network cards they come with. I bought a computer with Realtek, and pfSense says immediately, out of the box, that it doesn't work with Realtek cards. OPNsense is the same, but it does have a way of installing the Realtek drivers, which gives you a lot more stability overall on the system.

I didn't contact the tool's technical team yet. 

The tool's deployment is easy. Apart from Cisco firewalls and Fortinet, if we talk about Untangle, pfSense, OPNsense, and so on, they are fairly quick to set up. It's not something you spend too much time on. It's a firewall, so you can spend months tweaking the system. If you know what you're doing, you can spend forever on logs, checking and tweaking the system because there's always a new update or feature coming up. Then you start playing with them, tweaking settings, checking logs, blocking or unblocking different things.

You can stay in that loop forever. But for a startup, the initial configuration is fairly easy and quick. It can be completed in 30 minutes. 

I've used the free version. My computer with two network cards at home allows me to try as many different software options as I want. I did pay for the license, but it was for the Zenarmor license, which is the packet inspection tool. They use AI for packet inspection, which integrates with OPNsense and pfSense.

I'm not using OPNsense at the moment. I work with many different technologies and keep testing various setups. Currently, I've gone fully customized. I'm using a Linux server configured as my router and firewall, and I'm using Zenarmor for packet inspection.

This setup allowed me to easily configure SSL VPN and port forwarding for specific ports, which isn't as straightforward with other systems. I've tried several, including Untangle, pfSense, and OPNsense, but found them somewhat restrictive.

OpenSense is quite good. I like it. It has many services and is somewhat similar to the WatchGuard system. I honestly have no complaints; it was a very good experience. It's easy to set up, especially if you know what you're doing. It also offers a nice library of add-ons.

However, if you have appliances with Intel network cards, I would probably go for pfSense instead. Firmware updates and other updates come a bit faster, making it a more reliable service than OPNsense. 

Everything that comes up on OPNsense appears first on pfSense. Some features are not yet available on OPNsense, and they haven't announced a release date. However, I'm confident they will eventually release these features, as they have previously done.

Ultimately, choosing between pfSense and OPNsense is more of a personal preference since they are very similar. Both are FreeBSD systems, operating in similar situations and offering comparable functionality.

Now, I'm just using a Linux server. I can monitor the system, reboot the card, install Apache, and redirect web servers within my home directly to the firewall. This eliminates the need for third-party boxes or other connected computers, allowing me to do everything in the same box. It gives me a lot more freedom.

That's the main reason I stopped using the other systems. I used OPNsense for about six months, which shows I've tried various solutions to find the best one. Despite all the good things I'm saying about OPNsense, I did stay with it longer than pfSense.

I traveled to China, so I used my home as my VPN instead of paying for one. They block VPN services in China, so I was using OpenVPN at home. OpenVPN is a known service, but it gets blocked there. The only way to do it was through SSL VPN, which worked fine. But, talking about OPNsense, everything was working fine. I had no problems. I just had to move away because I needed to use port 443 for something else on my web server, and I can't have a web server together with other stuff. It's a bit more complicated to configure because I use Nginx and Apache, too. You can install these tools on OPNsense, but I found it more complicated than just going onto the command line and doing it.

If you want to use something like OPNsense for FreeBSD, use pfSense instead. Unless, obviously, like me, the person in question has some hardware incompatibility with pfSense. Only then would I go for OPNsense. Because, I mean, they're the same systems, but pfSense is a bit better in terms of overall performance, and security updates come quicker and more often.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. 

I use OPNsense for network security.

What I like the most about OPNsense is that it offers an easy-to-use dashboard for device management and control. It also provides good security.

In terms of improvement, the performance could be enhanced.

I have been using OPNsense for a year.

Overall, I would rate OPNsense as a ten out of ten. I would recommend it to others.

I'm using it as a proxy in several scenarios.  

There are a lot of features I like. One of the most valuable features is the network checking. Additionally, the firewall and web filtering functionalities are highly useful.

There are some add-ons that need enhancements to make management easier for users, especially the reporting features. Some reports don't show the level of detail I'm looking for, and I've had trouble installing certain add-ons, especially for Internet bandwidth shaping within my company. So, this is an area of improvement for me. 

I have been using OPNsense for more than six years. I currently use the latest version.

I would rate stability a seven out of ten. I've encountered some instability after a recent update.

It just doesn't respond, so I have to restart it over and over again to try to figure out what the problem is. I haven't been able to find the problem yet.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. There is room for improvement.

In my organization, there are 400 users, and OPNsense serves as our gateway and proxy for all of them. Therefore, all the users go through the gateway. 

The initial setup is very easy. The installation just takes minutes, but setting up everything may take a couple of hours.

It's reasonably priced. It's not expensive.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I just want to say that it's the best open-source firewall. Strongly recommended.

We are using it for intrusion detection and prevention. The firewall comes with a lot of third-party modules, and we also use proxy functionalities.

In our company, we are using it as an appliance, but we are bringing companies to the cloud. We ourselves do not have an Azure layer, but we have got a contract from a customer to bring them to the cloud. So, we are installing it there and monitoring it, but it is not owned by our company. OPNsense is available on appliances, but we have made a special integration with Azure. There is a special mechanism in Azure to deploy firewalls, and we have installed three or four of them.

We always have the latest version on the firewalls. One should run the updates very frequently.

We are onboarding cloud solutions for customers. We are on Azure. Especially on Azure, when the customers start, they always have small environments. We were looking for the best firewall solution for small environments, not big environments. We needed a small firewall, and we came across OPNsense. For small customers, we will use OPNsense in the future due to cost reasons. These are small installations, and Azure Firewall is very expensive.

The IDS and IPS features are valuable. From the usability perspective, there is a lot of good documentation. As IT professionals, we found it very easy to configure the firewall. It was easy to configure and use. 

The difficult part was the integration with Azure because OPNsense, in most cases, is not used on public clouds. It is on appliances that run on-prem. 

We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much. 

Within our own company, we have been using it for three or four years as an appliance, and on Azure, we have been using it for three months.

We have run it for three months in production, and we haven't had any problems in three months. 

We run it as an NVA cluster with Azure, and it has good scalability, but when we have bigger deployments, we would use another firewall. I'm not sure if it makes sense to scale up. OPNsense has a very good niche market in comparison to FortiGate, Azure Firewall, or other firewalls. If a customer is starting in the cloud and has 100 or 200 users, I would always recommend OPNsense, but if you have a big installation, and you have a good DevOps team that deploys via source code and things like this, then I would not recommend it. So, the software itself may be scalable, but I wouldn't call it an enterprise-scale firewall.

In terms of people working with this solution, I'm an architect, and we've got two people for monitoring and setup. Its usage is increasing. It has not been that long since we started using OPNsense, and it fills a gap. Not everybody needs a full-scaled enterprise firewall. So, it will be a part of our business. We've found a niche there.

We were in touch with Microsoft support for special networking considerations. The firewall itself was easy for us, and we had no need to reach out to tech support of OPNsense. The heavy part was the Azure part, and we are specialists there.

OPNsense deploys it on the Azure marketplace. So, you can download it directly via the Azure marketplace. You do not have to be a partner. From our perspective, it's easy to configure and it's intuitive. We have a background with a lot of firewalls, and we were just looking for a small one.

We found that not many people have used it on Azure. The firewall itself is not bad, but the support around Azure in terms of documentation and the required infrastructure is not so good, but because we are Azure specialists, we found a very good solution. We would not recommend it for a beginner in Azure.

In terms of the implementation strategy, there is a cloud adaptation framework. There is a white paper from Microsoft containing best practices for deploying firewalls on Azure, and we had to provide a setup for this, which took some time because it was not easy. It took at least two weeks, but it was only a one-time job. After that, for each firewall, you only have to adapt the rules, which takes two days, but it also depends on the complexity of the infrastructure. If a customer has hundreds of endpoints, it takes longer for sure.

Its pricing is unbeatable in comparison to other firewalls. You can have a small instance that could be €80 a month with the hardware underneath. Azure Firewall and FortiGate are out of the question at this price.

If you are on a public cloud, you need the underlying infrastructure. Other than that, there is no additional cost. If you have it on-prem, you have to buy the server or the appliance. The hardware cost is replaced with the infrastructure cost in the cloud. You also have costs for the public IPs and underlying VMs, but that's not related to OPNsense. It would be the same for a FortiGate deployment on Azure. You need a FortiGate license, and you need the underlying infrastructure that scales up depending on your needs.

We use it on-prem, and we can recommend it for a standard, typical IT engineer with a networking background. We have had a good experience with it. It is good in terms of functionality and resource usage. It is easy, and we would recommend it, but for implementing it on the Azure cloud, you need good knowledge of Azure. When it comes to public clouds, you do not have your own hardware, and you need deep knowledge of the public cloud on which you are deploying it. It is a good solution if your installation is not too big. We would recommend it for small customers or companies that are starting in the cloud. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

The solution is being used for monitoring and as a firewall. 

The solution is user-friendly and easy to configure. 

You will need additional training before you can actually start to use it. You will need to gain some extensive knowledge. 

I have been using OPNsense for one year. 

It is a scalable solution. Approximately fifty people are using the solution. 

I have used FortiGate. For security reasons, we moved to OPNsense.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment took a couple of minutes. 

We are using the paid version. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.