Technical Project Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-09-11T13:55:00Z
Sep 11, 2024
I rate Netgate pfSense seven out of ten only because of the lack of ability to manage all our switching and WAP from one location. We have three locations, and two to 25 users use a combination of wired and wireless devices and a typical broadband connection. pfSense requires maintenance when new versions or patches are released. This does not happen often, but it does happen. I recommend pfSense to others. Once you overcome the learning curve, it becomes almost second nature to use. The cost is also a major factor. Every year or so, I explore alternatives to Netgate hardware, but almost everything I find is subscription-based, like Cisco Meraki or other brands. I'd struggle to justify renewing a router license every 18 months or risk it stopping working. So, using a platform like pfSense without an annual fee is a huge benefit for our budget.
Director of IT at a religious institution with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-09-06T19:59:00Z
Sep 6, 2024
I would recommend it because it is a good value in terms of the price, performance, scalability, and usability of the metrics that it gives. It is definitely what I would go with. I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten. It would be a ten if they offered free training and told me about what the free training is. There are probably a few things out there like that, but more one-on-one free training would be the main thing they can do better.
IT Supervisor at a consumer goods company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-09-05T18:03:00Z
Sep 5, 2024
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 would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten. Other than firmware updates, pfSense requires minimal maintenance. I update the firmware every two to three months for routine maintenance or immediately if a security vulnerability is discovered. For a new user, I would recommend TAC support. I've spoken with others in my industry who have had positive experiences with TAC, particularly compared to email support. They've reported being up and running within five minutes of contacting TAC. Additionally, problem resolution is also swift and effective. So, I highly recommend new users invest in TAC support. It's well worth the money.
Works at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-26T19:30:00Z
Jul 26, 2024
I rate Netgate pfSense nine out of 10. It's an excellent product. I advise new users that you don't need a Netgate product if you're deploying it at home. It's one way to go, but pfSense works on any old mini PC or PC you have lying around. You can get something off eBay and throw a 20-dollar network interface card into it and you're off to the races. It's not as expensive as you think to get started. The basic routing and firewall rules aren't too complicated. Don't be intimidated, and it's not expensive.
Data Center Administrator Network Engineer at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-26T13:14:00Z
Jul 26, 2024
I can recommend it if you are a professional or if you know what a firewall is. It is a very good solution for the home sector, for companies, and for larger companies. I would recommend it to a lot of companies. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.
I'm clearly recommending it to others. It's scalable, cost-effective, practical, and down-to-earth. It's enterprise quality. It has a reputation that even the military endorses openly. When you buy something described as indestructible, and even the military uses it for their security, it says a lot. The government also uses it, testing prototypes and various things of that nature with it. If someone looks at the website, they'll see a large naval ship where cadets are operating off that prototype, testing if they could use the step-up with the pfSense software. They were using a higher-grade appliance with pfSense software to see if it was feasible. This shows that it's practical because the price point is unbeatable for that level of quality. The solution for me is a ten. It's still a prototype, but I'm confident I can meet the needs of a medium-sized office with ten to twenty employees. However, scaling it up for something like an Airbnb with a high level of traffic is uncertain. It's not like a navy ship with a hundred military personnel. For my needs, it's perfect. It's a solution for my personal needs, and I feel confident about it. Looking into the future, scalability-wise, I think it meets my needs. But when you get to a different level of e-commerce, I'd be interested to hear their perspectives too.
I would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten. Users don't need to do anything to maintain the system, but I like to check all pfSense instances every few months, install updates, and look for any irregularities. I try to check every single pfSense system if possible. pfSense needs to be manually updated.
IT Manager at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-10T17:06:00Z
Jul 10, 2024
I would rate Netgate pfSense ten out of ten. If I could choose a product that was among the least frustrating and nearly flawless I've used, pfSense would likely be at the top of my list. In addition to initial configuration tasks like routing and applying patches, minimal maintenance is required. Once the interfaces are set up, we configure firewall rules and are ready to go. Patching will be necessary for all platforms, but no specific requirements exist beyond standard practices.
I would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten. pfSense does not have any built-in features specifically designed to prevent data loss. Instead, we must configure various functions to indirectly protect against data loss, primarily as a preventative measure against unauthorized access to our servers and equipment. I use both the paid and community versions of pfSense. Most of my appliances use the paid version. In the cloud, some virtual machines come with the free community version. Maintenance is required to open ports and create VPN users.
We use the Plus version of the solution. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd advise users to always follow tutorials which can be found online. Be prepared. That said, the interface is not overly difficult.
IT Manager at a marketing services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-08T18:08:00Z
Jul 8, 2024
I'm a pfSense customer. There are two versions of pfSense. The plus version, which is paid, and the community edition, which is free. I primarily use plus. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.
Operations Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-08T15:58:00Z
Jul 8, 2024
We're using the Plus version since we buy the Netgate hardware. That comes with pfSense, and we're typically not building our own gateways. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. My advice to new users would be to practice with the product when you get an appliance. It's always easier to start learning with an appliance directly from Netgate. Just set it up and mess around with it maybe on a network that is a test network of some kind. Something that's not in production. It's not a hard device to understand if you understand networking at all.
Works at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-08T13:49:00Z
Jul 8, 2024
There is some complexity to adding features to pfSense and configuring them. I would not say it's extremely complex, but it's got a high degree of complexity. The website is all you need to configure Netgate pfSense. If you choose to, you can use its SSH terminal interface, but that's not something that most users would do. I would think they would stick with its fully developed, mature web interface. The solution by itself does not need any maintenance. However, if you use the incursion detection plugins, you need to make sure that those are tuned properly. That involves periodic checks and possible adjustments. New users should be prepared to learn, read the manual, and utilize YouTube resources. It'll be worth it. Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.
Director of Information Technology at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-03T14:24:00Z
Jul 3, 2024
In terms of how difficult it is to add features to Netgate pfSense and configure them, if I talk about writing from scratch, it is something that I don't do. If someone has a plugin, pulling that in is ridiculously simple. If I say that I want a Tailscale plugin, then I can put it in, and it is already in the system, and as long as I know how to do networking, you can figure out how to use a plugin since it is not hard at all in regards to Netgate pfSense Community Edition and Netgate pfSense Plus. I have not used Netgate pfSense on Amazon EC2 virtual machines. One needs to realize the difference in the switched version, and to do so it is important to understand Netgate 1100 and Netgate 2100 and the individually addressable ones since it is the area that threw me when I first got Netgate 1100, I was like, what in the world am I working on currently. Managing the VLANs on the tool threw me a ton, and it took me about an hour to figure out what was going on with the solution. As the tool really needs centralized management, I rate it an eight to nine out of ten.
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.
There are no features in Netgate pfSense that help prevent data loss. One can use a DLP tool to manage data loss. The visibility in Netgate pfSense does not help me optimize performance, and I think it is because I am a pretty advanced user on the command line. I wouldn't rely on the visualization part for any advanced performance. I have never used Netgate pfSense on Amazon EC2 virtual machines. My suggestion to those who plan to use the product would be that they need to read the solution's documentation, utilize the community forums and shouldn't be afraid to fail. It is easy to recover from failure with Netgate pfSense since it has configuration change logs along with very easy rollback abilities. In the newest version, if you make a change and you reboot, it just snapshots you back to the new change, which is excellent. I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Vice President Of Engineering at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-02T17:03:00Z
Jul 2, 2024
I would say it's pretty easy to add and configure features to Netgate pfSense. However, if you add features that Netgate does not officially support, you can run into issues with your support contracts. It's easy to add features, but it's extremely difficult to support something that is not an official Netgate plug-in. We saw the benefits of Netgate pfSense pretty immediately after deploying it. We have been scaling, though. As we got to a very large deployment across different sites, we started to see additional problems, but then we also saw additional value added. Initially, there's a lot of value, which increases over time, but eventually, you hit a wall where it's just not that valuable. On the surface, it looks like pfSense Plus provides visibility that enables data-driven decisions. Unfortunately, after many back-and-forths with support, they say that it looks like the firewall has done something, but there's nothing in the log. There's no data to support their theories. On the surface, it looks like it should, but we found in practice that it was missing a lot of data that would help us make decisions that we needed to make. The solution's total cost of ownership is good for what it is. I don't think I would ever use it in an enterprise environment anymore. As a value proposition, it's really good for a small business application or a company with multiple sites that you need to be able to interconnect. You can set up an entire ecosystem for $ 5,000 to $ 6,000 with top-of-the-line hardware from Netgate. Unfortunately, with our user account, throughput, and bandwidth, we've just outgrown it and can't use it anymore. We've bought appliances for Netgate pfSense's deployment, and we've also deployed the solution on separate machines. Most recently, we used the appliances. Technically, we never got Netgate pfSense to a good solid state. For the four to six months we had it in production, it was constantly down and needed at least 20 hours of maintenance a week. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.
Depending on the specifics, adding and configuring features to pfSense could take three or four hours for a RADIUS server with a VPN or less than two minutes to set up a NAT rule. We were embedded with pfSense in 2023. It took us some time after we deployed the solution to see the benefits. I have 236 devices in production. Some of the cheaper models are more susceptible to power outages, which cause them to fail. However, some of the more robust models are expensive, but they last for many, many years, and there's very little interaction that we have to do with them. The only maintenance the solution needs is just updates to the device as required. New users should do some basic research before configuring Netgate pfSense. There's lots of information about the tool on the web, and it's very easy to get the answers to your questions because somebody's already probably run into that issue. There are tutorials on basic configuration on YouTube. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Technical Delivery Architect at Hitachi Data Systems
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-02T14:43:00Z
Jul 2, 2024
Depending on what you're trying to do, adding and configuring features to Netgate pfSense is somewhere in the middle between easy and difficult. Some things are really simple, while others are difficult. Remembering everything you have to do is challenging because sometimes you have to click somewhere, and then you don't remember where you clicked. So, it'd be nice if everything was better tied together. I initially started with the free version on third-party hardware, and then they discontinued it, so I just bought the appliance. I prefer to do manual updates myself, but the solution lets me know if there's an update. I regularly do firmware updates when they are available. The solution provides great support, articles, and a lot of documents. New users should document what they want to do upfront and then try to look at all the documents on the Netgate site. My biggest advice would be not to try to do it cold. If you're going to use the VLANs, figure out all that information for your routing. If you don't have a document, you won't be able to implement it very easily. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Founder & Principal Consultant at TreeTops Security
Consultant
Top 20
2024-07-02T12:53:00Z
Jul 2, 2024
One of the features of pfSense Plus is backup capabilities, which didn't really help us because we had our own backup solution built in for several years. We also keep additional firewalls available if something like a storm comes through so that we can restore the configuration in five to ten minutes without too much trouble. pfSense Plus doesn't provide a lot of features and benefits, but we use it because we want to see them continuing to develop the solution. Netgate pfSense gives us a single pane of glass management, but we don't live in the firewall itself. We monitor it from our single pane of glass, which we're pulling about 20 other security stack solutions into as well. We're pulling in a lot of other enterprise-level solutions, including EDR, vulnerability scans, domain filtering, etc. Since we have a few hundred clients, we have both cloud and on-premises deployments of Netgate pfSense. Any product requires some care and feeding. It goes back to our monitoring aspect. As a general rule, you have some firmware updates about every six months. You definitely have a few things to maintain here and there in Netgate pfSense, but it's minimal compared to other solutions. The solution's cost alone is well worth it. I would recommend it for its adaptability to any complex environment with added security features. You can start off by just doing a standard firewall and then grow from there and really expand on its security features. I really can't think of any reasons why you wouldn't use it. Netgate pfSense is pretty much all we use, and we use a lot of different vendors when we go to different places. Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.
Infrastructure and integration Architect at CommunityForce
Real User
Top 20
2024-07-02T11:20:00Z
Jul 2, 2024
The solution has a single web interface, which you could consider a container. Within this container, there are multiple interfaces or sections. You must navigate to different settings to manage different aspects of the system. So, while it's all contained within one web interface, you can't see or manage everything from a single screen. I recommend the tool to our clients. We help them implement and support it. I rate it an eight out of ten.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. The only shortcomings are somewhat obscure configuration issues. However, the scope of what they're trying to do is very good. While there could be more polish on some configurations, it's very capable and very flexible. If I had to do it over again, I would probably have actually gotten the hardware from NetGate. You're paying for the support, and bundling the hardware and support together might be better. I sense that you'd kick yourself up a notch in terms of the priority that they give you. Not that there's ever been a problem. Getting the hardware directly from pfSense might cut out the middleman and reduce the possibility of issues when something goes south. Other than that, I'm a pretty fairly satisfied customer.
I'm a registered reseller. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a good firewall that operates without you having to pay attention to the costs. It's really important to back up your configuration. Sometimes, you do have to reload it. It's more important to document the procedure that you take to load and configure the firewall. If you're used to WatchGuard or SonicWall, then there's more of a cut-and-dried procedure to that. With pfSense, you really have a lot of latitude and a lot of flexibility in how you want to configure it. If you just do the minimal configuration, you probably aren't getting the advantage of all the features you would want to have. That's why it pays to document that.
I'm a pfSense customer. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If users are interested in pfSense, they should try the community edition. It's free to download, and you can just get started and try it out. Moving forward, I wouldn't hesitate at taking a look at the different types of hardware that they have, and to talk to sales.
Managing Director at Ranchlands Business Group Inc.
Real User
Top 20
2024-06-28T19:40:00Z
Jun 28, 2024
I'm a customer and end-user. I'd rate pfSense eight out of ten. If a person is familiar with firewalls, they'll be fine adopting it. The interface is pretty easy.
I rate Netgate pfSense eight out of 10. I recommend it to others. It's affordable and not that difficult to set up or manage. You need to be certified to use Sophos, but we don't need any specific certifications to own or manage pfSense.
Lead Systems Architect at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-06-27T16:13:00Z
Jun 27, 2024
I rate Netgate pfSense seven out of 10. If you have an enterprise environment, I recommend having two for high availability. Make sure you purchase and keep up with the software support in case there are any issues. Those are the two biggest things that helped us out.
Director of IT at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-06-27T15:05:00Z
Jun 27, 2024
I rate Netgate pfSense eight out of 10. They could polish up a few things, especially regarding IDS/IPS rules. A few interface things are a little more complicated than necessary. If you're moving to pfSense from a random Linksys or Netgate router, you need to realize it will be more difficult, and you'll need to learn more about networking concepts than you necessarily had to do with the random router that you've got. It's more complicated like that. That's to be expected because you're either a techie kind of person who thinks building your own firewall is fun, and they're willing to spend the time and effort to learn it. Or you want an alternative to FortiGate, Juniper, or whatever, and you want to buy a commercial Netgate product. This is going to be more complicated than the Linksys router I bought for $80 dollars from Best Buy.
I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten. It is delivering on my needs. There is little room for improvement. They can just close the gap. You always want to keep closing that gap when it comes to usability, inconvenience, and meeting the workflow, but it is definitely delivering to my expectations very well.
Embedded Systems Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-06-27T08:30:00Z
Jun 27, 2024
I rate Netgate pfSense nine out of 10. I would recommend it for business use cases. It's not appropriate for someone in a home environment, but it's good for business.
Information Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-06-26T19:32:00Z
Jun 26, 2024
I would recommend the tool to others since for me, it is simple, the low cost of ownership, expandability, just the way it looks, I like the numbers, and when the data is there, you throttle how much information you want to see or collect. For somebody who likes to tinker or likes to see the numbers or wants to harden their network or has a corporate business and wants to ensure things are operating smoothly, the tool is worth it. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Chief Information Office at 1ComputerServices Inc. d/b/a 1CS
MSP
Top 20
2024-06-26T13:53:00Z
Jun 26, 2024
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.
I don't use Netgate pfSense Plus on Amazon EC2 VMs, and I haven't had a customer who wanted to deploy the tool on the cloud. Most of them purchase and install their hardware directly from Netgate. The maintenance of the tool's equipment is done once or twice a year just to blow out some dust and make sure it looks physically okay, which is nothing outside of what the regular network devices require. It doesn't require any special maintenance. I would recommend Netgate pfSense because it is one of the products that my company markets to our customers. As I have existing customers that use the solution, they serve as a reference point for my new customer. I tell others that I have deployed Netgate pfSense in a few official organizations, their use, and the problems that it has solved for them. I have case studies to speak about. If someone wants to go for a proof of concept, it is something that is doable. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
L2 Systems Administrator at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-06-26T10:32:00Z
Jun 26, 2024
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.
I would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten. Before deploying pfSense in your lab, I recommend checking the pfSense forums to learn about any potential issues or considerations other users have encountered.
I would rate Netgate pfSense seven out of ten. The only area of improvement is the web dashboard, which is currently lacking in pfSense. I use other products to control data security. Most of my clients don't have an in-house server. I work with small businesses, and that's why the Netgate pfSense device works well. For my larger clients, we go to the cloud for data storage and data security with redundancy. So, I don't use pfSense for data security at all. pfSense is a good value for some clients; it's client-specific. It depends upon other things we are deploying there, such as what kind of Wi-Fi network we use. If we are adding a VoIP phone system. It just depends on what the client's needs are, but It is the right device for the right client. A lot of our clients are small businesses. I've got one fairly large business. It is a restaurant group nationwide with 700 employees, but its main office has maybe 30 to 50 employees. So, that's probably my largest deployment of the Netgate device. The only maintenance required for the pfSense firewalls is applying the occasional firmware updates. Some MSPs are more focused on making money. I'm not. I'm focused on the right fit for the client, and the money takes care of itself. pfSense is a great device. I'm not focused on what will make me money. I'm focused on what is best for the client. In many decisions, the Netgate pfSense is the right decision for that client.
Infrastructure & network manager at a non-tech company with self employed
Real User
Top 20
2024-06-19T17:01:00Z
Jun 19, 2024
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 have not used the VPN capabilities of pfSense. We also did not have a need to integrate pfSense with any service. I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten.
I would recommend it. For personal use, it is a great way to start. For companies, it is a great add-on. Companies can get support by buying the license. I would rate pfSense a ten out of ten.
Senior Network Engineer at American School of Dubai
Real User
Top 10
2024-01-24T12:22:21Z
Jan 24, 2024
I would advise you to try to estimate your network first and do a test network just to have a proof of concept of what you want to run and check the routes you want to run against your network, making sure that your requirements are valid before deploying it. Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Director of Information Technology at MASFinancials
Real User
Top 5
2024-01-24T11:34:00Z
Jan 24, 2024
I recommend using Postgres. However, if you need a firewall without additional tools and prefer a pool of well-established services, pfSense offers suitable features." Other solutions like Postgres, Sophos, and Palo Alto are in the market. We've used firewalls for a long time, but in the last three years, I worked with pfSense, and it's efficient for all devices. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
Deputy Manager IT & OIC Head of IT Department (Infrastructure & Operation). at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
2024-01-17T04:10:00Z
Jan 17, 2024
On a scale of one to ten for pfSense overall, I would rate it a seven. In comparison with other top devices like Fortinet and UDMP, pfSense stands equal in my opinion.
If you're considering using Netgate pfSense for the first time, I would recommend giving it a try. It's relatively easy to set up and use, especially if you have some prior knowledge of network and IT work. The user manual provides helpful guidance, and the basic configuration is straightforward. Just ensure you pay attention to the hardware requirements to make the most of it. It can be rated as an eight for simplicity. However, as you progress and introduce complexities, such as enabling deep packet inspection, adding extra features, or installing multiple plugins, the configuration can become more intricate. I encountered some issues with iOS in version 2.5, but they are expected to be resolved or have been resolved.
Initially, the product was difficult. It gets easier with use. It was a good investment. I would recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.
Information Technology at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2021-12-21T12:52:00Z
Dec 21, 2021
I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I've been pretty satisfied with the product overall. We are a customer and an end-user. We don't have any business relationship with the solution.
We are a customer and an end-user. We're using either version 5.3 or 5.4 at this time. While this is a good solution, we're looking for something stronger in the future. I'd recommend others also look for something strong, that fits their security needs. I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.
Acting Manager IT at National Insurance Company Limited
Real User
2021-12-07T09:31:38Z
Dec 7, 2021
I rate pfSense six out of 10. We want a product that has at least two WANs as well as fault tolerance or load balancing features, which pfSense also has, but we don't have the hardware or support. That's why we need to switch. However, if cost is a big issue, then I recommend pfSense for customers who can't afford a paid hardware and software solution. That was our issue because we're a government company, so our assets belong to the government. We have to think about where we want to spend money because it's the taxpayers' money. If your management doesn't understand the need to invest in IT, then you can consider this alternative.
VP of Business Development at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
2021-11-16T04:08:00Z
Nov 16, 2021
If you're a junior or even a beginner engineer, jumping into the interface for pfSense could be overwhelming. There are going to be things in there you just have never heard or seen before, which isn't a bad thing. On the front end, I would take advantage of any courses that are out there, any introductions to it. It's very intuitive and there are a lot of forums out there that you can go watch and educate yourself on. If you are not that advanced of a network engineer, I think it's a great solution for you because you can go out to some peers and get a lot of direction and guidance from them to set it up in a small environment. The only other thing I would do is just compare. You always have to understand what your customers' needs are. Make sure you understand what your customer's needs are and that it's going to fit into their environment and their budget. I don't know why it wouldn't, but that'd be about the only advice I'd give is just make sure that it is definitely a fit for your customer base. I'm fairly confident, small and medium businesses should be a very good fit. I've been in the enterprise space as well. There may be some things on the enterprise level that you just can't do with pfSense and you might want to go to some other solution set, but I think it's very competitive. I'd rate this solution a nine, even if I was an experienced engineer because it's easy to have and easy to maintain.
IT consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Consultant
2021-11-07T09:39:33Z
Nov 7, 2021
My advice to those wanting to implement pfSense is to start out with the free version before going with the appliance. I rate pfSense a ten out of ten.
IT Manager at a marketing services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2021-08-16T16:30:35Z
Aug 16, 2021
A good firewall has to be easy to install, configure, use, and fit the use case. This solution for my usage is very good. I would recommend this solution to others. I rate pfSense a nine out of ten.
NOC Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2021-06-01T13:31:58Z
Jun 1, 2021
Depending on what they want their firewall to do for them. If it is for intrusion detection, and intrusion prevention I would recommend this solution. In summary, this product is good but I would like to see resources utilization (cpu, hard disk) directly on SolarWinds. A one stop shop for monitoring on SolarWinds. It would be great! I would rate pfSense a six out of ten.
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.
Senior System Administrator at Debre Markos University
Real User
2021-04-22T06:19:43Z
Apr 22, 2021
I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's been very good in terms of its overall capabilities. I would recommend this solution to other companies and users. It's very fast and very easy to use.
CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
2021-03-12T23:44:33Z
Mar 12, 2021
Before deciding to go with this solution, make sure to evaluate the features to ensure that pfSense will cover your needs. pfSense is very strong in some areas, but it has some difficulty in others. It's a good solution, but it all depends on what you expect from the firewall. If you need the firewall to implement security in your network, then pfSense is better than the competition in terms of price. It will cover all of your basic needs for far less money than similar products that cost five to ten times more money. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a rating of nine.
I rate pfSense eight out of 10. It's an open-source solution that you can deploy on data warehouses with various resources. You're not tied to specific hardware. It's easier to manage and use. Before deploying, you should find out the details about the environment where you will install pfSense. I would recommend pfSense for an enterprise environment with around 1,000 to 2,500 users.
There is a steep learning curve and you have to spend a lot of time with it to understand how you're going to use it and how you're going to customize it yourself. That's where you're going to have to spend a lot of time, but by the time you're done with everything and you have played with all the features you want, you will understand everything you need. You will always be up in minutes, even if it gets "destroyed" during the night, you can come back to it and reinstall the whole thing, and everything will be good. I would rate it a 9 out of 10. It cannot get a 10 right now because it changes every day. It might be 10 today, but in a few seconds, it won't be a 10 because the whole internet changes in a few seconds, and the whole way of serving your clients can change in a few seconds. So, it can't get that perfect 10.
I would advise others to try it and see if it is good for them. It is a very good product for me, but that might not be the case for other users. There are so many solutions, but I'm really happy with it. For my scale, it is good. If you are Amazon or a company with one million connections every minute, don't ever use this. It is not made for that. It is perfect for small-scale networks. I would rate it a nine out of 10. It needs more regular updates, so I can't rate it a 10, but it is very easy to use, stable, and solid.
I like pfSense and I have deployed a number of them. I have approximately four of them in the area that I'm using. I have replaced SonicWall with a pfSense unit. It's a more economical way of using a firewall, and the protection it provides is second to none. Lonnie Buchmann: I would say give it a serious look. And especially a lot of times when you're in a small business, this is a really good solution that doesn't kill you with all the technology overhead that you deal with nowadays. I rate pfSense a ten out of ten.
National IT Coordenator at a government with 51-200 employees
Real User
2021-11-01T19:41:01Z
Nov 1, 2021
I rate pfSense eight out of 10. I would recommend it for a small business or a startup as a starting point. It's also good for companies that are on a tight budget.
The solution can be deployed both on-cloud and on-premises. When it comes to Sophos, we have around 18 to 20 customers making use of it. I would recommend the solution to others. I rate pfSense as an eight out of ten. It is good.
Vice President - Engineering & Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2021-08-30T15:53:57Z
Aug 30, 2021
My advice to the IT manager is to do your research, and make sure that pfSense meets your needs. If you are not technical enough, then looking at other solutions. pfSenseis needs a bit more tech-savvy IT manager to manage it. It is a very important business tool for me. I rate pfSense an eight out of ten. I rated pfSense an eight because it did everything I wanted it to do which makes it an awesome solution but not a ten because of a few minor shortcomings. However, I recognize it is open-source and it is not going to have everything.
Technical Presales Consultant/ Engineer at Ingram Micro
MSP
Top 5
2021-08-03T13:24:11Z
Aug 3, 2021
I would recommend this solution, it's one of those technologies anyone should at least try out. If you want to protect your home network, and don't want to invest in a firewall, pfSense will do the job. It's good for home use and for small businesses or remote sites of large companies. It's a good strategy because it's generally more critical to invest in defending your main data centers. It's important to choose the hardware wisely, make sure it's compatible. Netgate, the company sponsoring pfSense, manufactures hardware that is really optimized towards it. For small or medium businesses it's not a big deal. But for enterprises, this is important. I rate this solution a seven out of 10.
I would recommend this solution if there are no power issues. It's stable and performs well, even on older hardware. On a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a nine.
IT Manager at a marketing services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2021-05-15T12:27:42Z
May 15, 2021
If you don't need WireGuard VPN, pfSense is better because it is easier to use than OPNsense. It is a very good platform. Its web administration interface has been working fine. I would rate pfSense an eight out of ten. A couple of months ago, I would have rated it a ten out of ten because of the WireGuard VPN feature.
We are just end-users and customers. I cannot speak to the exact version we are using. Ours may be slightly out of date. We may not be using the absolute latest version. Version 2.51 is available soon and we'll likely upgrade to that. It's good for where people have outgrown their existing broadband routers, such as the TP-link, the Dre Tech, and that sort of thing. Often, it doesn't justify putting in a full system. We tend to use a Mini ITX PC, multiple LAN network cards, and then install the opensource version and configure it appropriately. You need to be slightly more tactical than just plugging in a Dre tech or similar Nokia device. I don't think you need to be incredibly technical to set this up. I like it, I'd recommend it to most people to at least give it a try, and to spend a few hours initially to work their way around it. I'll definitely give it at least a nine out of ten for its general ease of use for me and my staff. It does pretty much everything that we ask of it and the required resources for the hardware are minimal as well.
Information Technology System Administrator / Director at Legault Joly Thiffault
Real User
2021-04-27T22:09:05Z
Apr 27, 2021
I would recommend for other people looking into implementing the solution to read the manual, go on to the videos, verify everything with the tutorials. Make sure you fully comprehend the size of the software. I rate pfSense a seven out of ten.
Software Applications Manager at a engineering company with 201-500 employees
Real User
2021-04-05T14:23:30Z
Apr 5, 2021
I'm just a home lab user. I'd advise those considering the solution for your business to get a service contract. It works great for someone with enough knowledge and time to get his head around everything. Otherwise, you need to look for a solution that offers support and can work with you on issues. It's nice to try to balance between open-source and support that costs money. In general, I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
CTO, Software Architect, founder at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2021-03-10T22:15:36Z
Mar 10, 2021
We are just customers and end-users. The solution is an open-source platform. We are a software company and we like open-source. Lots of people say open-source means that you need to install it on your own. They will see that as a limitation, however, we see that as the other way around. I'd recommend the solution to other organizations and users. It's open-source, it's flexible, and has a strong community. You can use it in many different ways, either in a small installation, laptop, PC, or on a machine, or you can buy an appliance or you can even buy your own hardware and configure it in a different way. The software as such is free and you have a lot of options as to how you want to use it. I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's been very good for us
Solution Architect, Managed Services & System Integration at Transmeet Technologies
Real User
2021-03-10T21:41:25Z
Mar 10, 2021
We are really happy with the system performance, overall, but it depends. For example, right now we have a client who is trying to switch from FortiGate to another solution that is less costly. We recommended and talked with them about pfSense, but despite it being a cheaper and really rock-solid solution with good performance, they were not comfortable using open source. We also offered them Sophos, SonicWall, and Palo Alto — they finally chose SonicWall. I don't know why. It completely depends on the client. I would absolutely recommend this solution to others. This is definitely one of the most powerful firewalls for peace of mind. The fact is, as long as you are aware of the challenges that you have to face when implementing and managing the firewall, day-to-day, then this could be the best option for you. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.
I would recommend pfSense for the simple reason that it's open-source and it's free. Anything for free is good. I personally got much more out of it than I expected. I never expected this product to be so worth the time. It's a good product. For my needs at least. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. I have not used it for thousands of users, but for our usage, for an SMB organization, I would give it a rating of eight.
Head of information Techenology at a real estate/law firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
2021-02-09T17:28:54Z
Feb 9, 2021
For those who want to implement this solution I would advise it is great for a small enterprise, it is best to get started without having any harm getting to their networks. I rate pfSense an eight out of ten.
We are just customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company. I would recommend the solution to small companies. If you are a small company, you can use pfSense without any issues due to the fact that it's a free solution. I would rate the solution seven out of ten.
I would recommend pfSense to potential users. I would tell them to just read the tutorials because they're very useful. On a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a nine.
I recommend this product, it's well-balanced, has a longer history than other solutions so it's not lacking in maturity. There is a lot of online support available via YouTube or blogs but professional support is available if required. I highly recommend taking the support because usually people look at the UTM as something which should be set up in the system and left, but that's not the case with these devices. I strongly suggest making an external agreement with a specialized company to deal with security. Users need to have decent protection, not just protection. I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.
It is important to remember that you can't just leave the device to do everything. You still have to know what you're doing. I recommend the product. It's well-balanced and one with a long history, so it doesn't have child's diseases. There is a lot of online support available online, which they can consult themselves. But, in the case that they need support, they can hire a professional support line and that is highly recommended. I say this because usually, people look at the UTM as something that should be put in the system, set up, and left alone. But, this is not the case with this type of solution. Therefore, I strongly suggest making an outside agreement with a specialized company that will take care of their security from that point on. The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this kind of product is that you can't assume that the internet is a big place and nobody will find you. There is always a good possibility that robots will search your system for holes, and they are probably doing so this instant. This means that users should be aware and have decent protection. In summary, this is a good product but there is always room for improvement. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
IT Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Consultant
2021-01-05T14:13:00Z
Jan 5, 2021
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.
Systems Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2020-12-19T10:27:54Z
Dec 19, 2020
I would advise others to go for it. I would recommend this solution. It is a good solution. No other solution can beat the price. There is so much stuff you can do with it. There are so many features, and I have not even scratched the surface on all of them. If it is something that someone doesn't feel like configuring, you can buy a prebuilt system from them and get support. I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten because of the cost and flexibility. It has been pretty good.
We're just cusomers. We don't have a business relationship with pfSense. We're using the latest stable version of the solution. I would 100% recommend the solution to others. On a scale from one to ten, I'd give it a ten.
I would recommend pfSense, but it depends on the requirements. There could be other vendors who offer more services than pfSense. For example, Fortinet is a very good brand, and it offers services in a different way. Fortinet also offers more services, but it is very expensive. If you don't need some specific services, pfSense is an excellent solution. I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten.
Defensive Security & BlueTeam at Global Research CO
Real User
2020-11-14T08:39:32Z
Nov 14, 2020
We implement the solution for our clients. I've personally implemented the solution on five projects so far. We work with the latest version of the solution, typically. Our companies are typically mid-level enterprises. This product is the very best. Overall, I would give it a rating of ten out of ten.
We're a pfSense partner. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. It's been very good to work with. I would recommend the solution. pfSense is superior in terms of defending against attacks.
Senior System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2020-11-05T18:00:00Z
Nov 5, 2020
I would continue to use pfSense if the decision was mine, but it is out of my area. It depends on the CIO. I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. pfSense will not cost you any money. It depends on your business needs. You have to address your business needs correctly. I would say to go with pfSense. If you feel that it is not compatible, you have other purchase options such as Palo Alto. I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.
System Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2020-07-22T08:17:22Z
Jul 22, 2020
We're just using this solution; we don't have a relationship with the vendor. In terms of the version of pfSense we are using, we have that basic boss, 1.0 however, that is behind the firewall. The firewall which we were using is UTM1240B. While we are satisfied with the netting features and the bandwidth controlling and routing, we find cannot expose our entire network to pfSense as there's no underlying ownership fo the product itself. We prefer a hardened firewall. Due to the fact that it is an open-source solution, no one at an enterprise-level would ever think of putting pfSense at the gateway level or even at the main level. I would definitely recommend pfSense as the second lane of action, just not on a workload. I'd rate the solution six out of ten.
Owner at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2020-07-13T06:55:46Z
Jul 13, 2020
There's a learning curve to this solution, it's not as simple to use as some of the other GUI based firewalls. You need to play around with it a bit. I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.
My only comment would be to suggest that if you wish to implement the solution read the documentation very carefully. I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.
We're just users of the product. We're not consultants or resellers. It's your basic firewall setup. However, when we looked at Sophos, we found that Sophos offered a lot more as it's a fully unified solution and had a firewall, as well as anti-virus and network monitoring capabilities. This solution really gives us a greater extensive array of modules or features than we would not necessarily see in managing the system as administrators. The solution is quite extensive in that there was a lot of material that we had to read about. It just was not user-friendly for the team. We needed a solution that can handle itself without our intervention. I'd rate the solution five out of ten.
Head of Department of operational and compliance at ACE GABON
Real User
2020-06-15T07:34:01Z
Jun 15, 2020
We're just customers. We don't have a special relationship with the solution. We just use it on a regular basis. I'm not sure if I'm using the latest version of the solution or not. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten since I've never had any major issues with it. The biggest thing a new user or company needs to be aware of, however, is that whoever the team is that's using it, they need to be very experienced Linux users. The system will be extremely difficult otherwise. New users will need patience. However, it is easy to use due to its very good web interface. It's also easy to deploy and the process can be handled quickly. There's no need to have a really big fancy long-winded deployment process. That said, especially if you are using it within a complex Linux environment, you absolutely must have high skills in both Linux and security.
Any network engineer will understand how this solution works. It's not so complex to understand and be familiar with. It will require a certain level of networking knowledge to use it but we're at an enterprise level and we're a small-medium business and it works. I would rate it a nine out of ten.
I definitely plan to increase using pfSense. I am going for a higher capacity. If power fails or one server dies, or one gateway dies, the other servers will take over seamlessly. That's the ultimate for us. I would definitely rate pfSense an eight and a half out of ten. Definitely eight and a half, not lower, could be a bit higher. Because it's stable, it's good. If the small issues I've mentioned are worked on then I would go to a 10.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. I give it this rating because of the rich features available. pfSense is free and I can do everything with it. It works as a firewall for servers also.
IT Manager & Sr. Application Programmer with 11-50 employees
Real User
2018-11-14T21:32:00Z
Nov 14, 2018
I strongly recommend giving pfSense a hard look. I've been in IT for 20+ years, and I've run the gambit on other firewalls. pfSense definitely can hold it's own against any of them.
If you don't have a policy that says "only proprietary software" in your company, there is no reason not to go for pfSense. If you are still in doubt, take the cheap (and excellent) Netgate academy course. It's only for two days, and you will learn how to manage pfSense at a comprehensive level.
Senior Systems Administrator at a non-tech company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2018-06-14T07:58:00Z
Jun 14, 2018
They need to look at all the communities, comparisons, etc. and read up about the issues and problems people are having with some of the solutions, then see if those problems might be related to what they may be experiencing. Main criteria when selecting a vendor: * How easy is it to learn. * How easy is it to implement.
I would recommend it. It is manageable and straightforward. It is not so complex. You have to know the different rules, but you can manage it easily. The performance is good.
Netgate pfSense is widely leveraged by organizations for its comprehensive capabilities in firewalls, VPN servers, and bandwidth management. It suits LAN, WAN, and DMZ networks, offering secure, scalable, and efficient networking solutions.Netgate pfSense stands out in diverse environments with its enterprise-grade features and cost-effective operations compared to competitors like Cisco. Deployed as an edge device, it optimizes routing, ad-blocking, content filtering, and traffic shaping....
I rate Netgate pfSense ten out of ten.
I rate Netgate pfSense seven out of ten only because of the lack of ability to manage all our switching and WAP from one location. We have three locations, and two to 25 users use a combination of wired and wireless devices and a typical broadband connection. pfSense requires maintenance when new versions or patches are released. This does not happen often, but it does happen. I recommend pfSense to others. Once you overcome the learning curve, it becomes almost second nature to use. The cost is also a major factor. Every year or so, I explore alternatives to Netgate hardware, but almost everything I find is subscription-based, like Cisco Meraki or other brands. I'd struggle to justify renewing a router license every 18 months or risk it stopping working. So, using a platform like pfSense without an annual fee is a huge benefit for our budget.
I would recommend it because it is a good value in terms of the price, performance, scalability, and usability of the metrics that it gives. It is definitely what I would go with. I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten. It would be a ten if they offered free training and told me about what the free training is. There are probably a few things out there like that, but more one-on-one free training would be the main thing they can do better.
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 would rate Netgate pfSense ten out of ten. Maintenance is required for software updates.
I would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten. Other than firmware updates, pfSense requires minimal maintenance. I update the firmware every two to three months for routine maintenance or immediately if a security vulnerability is discovered. For a new user, I would recommend TAC support. I've spoken with others in my industry who have had positive experiences with TAC, particularly compared to email support. They've reported being up and running within five minutes of contacting TAC. Additionally, problem resolution is also swift and effective. So, I highly recommend new users invest in TAC support. It's well worth the money.
I rate Netgate pfSense nine out of 10. It's an excellent product. I advise new users that you don't need a Netgate product if you're deploying it at home. It's one way to go, but pfSense works on any old mini PC or PC you have lying around. You can get something off eBay and throw a 20-dollar network interface card into it and you're off to the races. It's not as expensive as you think to get started. The basic routing and firewall rules aren't too complicated. Don't be intimidated, and it's not expensive.
I can recommend it if you are a professional or if you know what a firewall is. It is a very good solution for the home sector, for companies, and for larger companies. I would recommend it to a lot of companies. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.
Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.
I'm clearly recommending it to others. It's scalable, cost-effective, practical, and down-to-earth. It's enterprise quality. It has a reputation that even the military endorses openly. When you buy something described as indestructible, and even the military uses it for their security, it says a lot. The government also uses it, testing prototypes and various things of that nature with it. If someone looks at the website, they'll see a large naval ship where cadets are operating off that prototype, testing if they could use the step-up with the pfSense software. They were using a higher-grade appliance with pfSense software to see if it was feasible. This shows that it's practical because the price point is unbeatable for that level of quality. The solution for me is a ten. It's still a prototype, but I'm confident I can meet the needs of a medium-sized office with ten to twenty employees. However, scaling it up for something like an Airbnb with a high level of traffic is uncertain. It's not like a navy ship with a hundred military personnel. For my needs, it's perfect. It's a solution for my personal needs, and I feel confident about it. Looking into the future, scalability-wise, I think it meets my needs. But when you get to a different level of e-commerce, I'd be interested to hear their perspectives too.
I would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten. Users don't need to do anything to maintain the system, but I like to check all pfSense instances every few months, install updates, and look for any irregularities. I try to check every single pfSense system if possible. pfSense needs to be manually updated.
I would rate Netgate pfSense ten out of ten. If I could choose a product that was among the least frustrating and nearly flawless I've used, pfSense would likely be at the top of my list. In addition to initial configuration tasks like routing and applying patches, minimal maintenance is required. Once the interfaces are set up, we configure firewall rules and are ready to go. Patching will be necessary for all platforms, but no specific requirements exist beyond standard practices.
I would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten. pfSense does not have any built-in features specifically designed to prevent data loss. Instead, we must configure various functions to indirectly protect against data loss, primarily as a preventative measure against unauthorized access to our servers and equipment. I use both the paid and community versions of pfSense. Most of my appliances use the paid version. In the cloud, some virtual machines come with the free community version. Maintenance is required to open ports and create VPN users.
I'm an end-user. I use the Plus version of pfSense. However, I do not pay for support. I would rate the solution eight out of ten.
We use the Plus version of the solution. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd advise users to always follow tutorials which can be found online. Be prepared. That said, the interface is not overly difficult.
I'm a pfSense customer. There are two versions of pfSense. The plus version, which is paid, and the community edition, which is free. I primarily use plus. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.
We're using the Plus version since we buy the Netgate hardware. That comes with pfSense, and we're typically not building our own gateways. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. My advice to new users would be to practice with the product when you get an appliance. It's always easier to start learning with an appliance directly from Netgate. Just set it up and mess around with it maybe on a network that is a test network of some kind. Something that's not in production. It's not a hard device to understand if you understand networking at all.
There is some complexity to adding features to pfSense and configuring them. I would not say it's extremely complex, but it's got a high degree of complexity. The website is all you need to configure Netgate pfSense. If you choose to, you can use its SSH terminal interface, but that's not something that most users would do. I would think they would stick with its fully developed, mature web interface. The solution by itself does not need any maintenance. However, if you use the incursion detection plugins, you need to make sure that those are tuned properly. That involves periodic checks and possible adjustments. New users should be prepared to learn, read the manual, and utilize YouTube resources. It'll be worth it. Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.
In terms of how difficult it is to add features to Netgate pfSense and configure them, if I talk about writing from scratch, it is something that I don't do. If someone has a plugin, pulling that in is ridiculously simple. If I say that I want a Tailscale plugin, then I can put it in, and it is already in the system, and as long as I know how to do networking, you can figure out how to use a plugin since it is not hard at all in regards to Netgate pfSense Community Edition and Netgate pfSense Plus. I have not used Netgate pfSense on Amazon EC2 virtual machines. One needs to realize the difference in the switched version, and to do so it is important to understand Netgate 1100 and Netgate 2100 and the individually addressable ones since it is the area that threw me when I first got Netgate 1100, I was like, what in the world am I working on currently. Managing the VLANs on the tool threw me a ton, and it took me about an hour to figure out what was going on with the solution. As the tool really needs centralized management, I rate it an eight to nine out of ten.
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.
There are no features in Netgate pfSense that help prevent data loss. One can use a DLP tool to manage data loss. The visibility in Netgate pfSense does not help me optimize performance, and I think it is because I am a pretty advanced user on the command line. I wouldn't rely on the visualization part for any advanced performance. I have never used Netgate pfSense on Amazon EC2 virtual machines. My suggestion to those who plan to use the product would be that they need to read the solution's documentation, utilize the community forums and shouldn't be afraid to fail. It is easy to recover from failure with Netgate pfSense since it has configuration change logs along with very easy rollback abilities. In the newest version, if you make a change and you reboot, it just snapshots you back to the new change, which is excellent. I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
I would say it's pretty easy to add and configure features to Netgate pfSense. However, if you add features that Netgate does not officially support, you can run into issues with your support contracts. It's easy to add features, but it's extremely difficult to support something that is not an official Netgate plug-in. We saw the benefits of Netgate pfSense pretty immediately after deploying it. We have been scaling, though. As we got to a very large deployment across different sites, we started to see additional problems, but then we also saw additional value added. Initially, there's a lot of value, which increases over time, but eventually, you hit a wall where it's just not that valuable. On the surface, it looks like pfSense Plus provides visibility that enables data-driven decisions. Unfortunately, after many back-and-forths with support, they say that it looks like the firewall has done something, but there's nothing in the log. There's no data to support their theories. On the surface, it looks like it should, but we found in practice that it was missing a lot of data that would help us make decisions that we needed to make. The solution's total cost of ownership is good for what it is. I don't think I would ever use it in an enterprise environment anymore. As a value proposition, it's really good for a small business application or a company with multiple sites that you need to be able to interconnect. You can set up an entire ecosystem for $ 5,000 to $ 6,000 with top-of-the-line hardware from Netgate. Unfortunately, with our user account, throughput, and bandwidth, we've just outgrown it and can't use it anymore. We've bought appliances for Netgate pfSense's deployment, and we've also deployed the solution on separate machines. Most recently, we used the appliances. Technically, we never got Netgate pfSense to a good solid state. For the four to six months we had it in production, it was constantly down and needed at least 20 hours of maintenance a week. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.
Depending on the specifics, adding and configuring features to pfSense could take three or four hours for a RADIUS server with a VPN or less than two minutes to set up a NAT rule. We were embedded with pfSense in 2023. It took us some time after we deployed the solution to see the benefits. I have 236 devices in production. Some of the cheaper models are more susceptible to power outages, which cause them to fail. However, some of the more robust models are expensive, but they last for many, many years, and there's very little interaction that we have to do with them. The only maintenance the solution needs is just updates to the device as required. New users should do some basic research before configuring Netgate pfSense. There's lots of information about the tool on the web, and it's very easy to get the answers to your questions because somebody's already probably run into that issue. There are tutorials on basic configuration on YouTube. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Depending on what you're trying to do, adding and configuring features to Netgate pfSense is somewhere in the middle between easy and difficult. Some things are really simple, while others are difficult. Remembering everything you have to do is challenging because sometimes you have to click somewhere, and then you don't remember where you clicked. So, it'd be nice if everything was better tied together. I initially started with the free version on third-party hardware, and then they discontinued it, so I just bought the appliance. I prefer to do manual updates myself, but the solution lets me know if there's an update. I regularly do firmware updates when they are available. The solution provides great support, articles, and a lot of documents. New users should document what they want to do upfront and then try to look at all the documents on the Netgate site. My biggest advice would be not to try to do it cold. If you're going to use the VLANs, figure out all that information for your routing. If you don't have a document, you won't be able to implement it very easily. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
One of the features of pfSense Plus is backup capabilities, which didn't really help us because we had our own backup solution built in for several years. We also keep additional firewalls available if something like a storm comes through so that we can restore the configuration in five to ten minutes without too much trouble. pfSense Plus doesn't provide a lot of features and benefits, but we use it because we want to see them continuing to develop the solution. Netgate pfSense gives us a single pane of glass management, but we don't live in the firewall itself. We monitor it from our single pane of glass, which we're pulling about 20 other security stack solutions into as well. We're pulling in a lot of other enterprise-level solutions, including EDR, vulnerability scans, domain filtering, etc. Since we have a few hundred clients, we have both cloud and on-premises deployments of Netgate pfSense. Any product requires some care and feeding. It goes back to our monitoring aspect. As a general rule, you have some firmware updates about every six months. You definitely have a few things to maintain here and there in Netgate pfSense, but it's minimal compared to other solutions. The solution's cost alone is well worth it. I would recommend it for its adaptability to any complex environment with added security features. You can start off by just doing a standard firewall and then grow from there and really expand on its security features. I really can't think of any reasons why you wouldn't use it. Netgate pfSense is pretty much all we use, and we use a lot of different vendors when we go to different places. Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.
The solution has a single web interface, which you could consider a container. Within this container, there are multiple interfaces or sections. You must navigate to different settings to manage different aspects of the system. So, while it's all contained within one web interface, you can't see or manage everything from a single screen. I recommend the tool to our clients. We help them implement and support it. I rate it an eight out of ten.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. The only shortcomings are somewhat obscure configuration issues. However, the scope of what they're trying to do is very good. While there could be more polish on some configurations, it's very capable and very flexible. If I had to do it over again, I would probably have actually gotten the hardware from NetGate. You're paying for the support, and bundling the hardware and support together might be better. I sense that you'd kick yourself up a notch in terms of the priority that they give you. Not that there's ever been a problem. Getting the hardware directly from pfSense might cut out the middleman and reduce the possibility of issues when something goes south. Other than that, I'm a pretty fairly satisfied customer.
I'm a registered reseller. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a good firewall that operates without you having to pay attention to the costs. It's really important to back up your configuration. Sometimes, you do have to reload it. It's more important to document the procedure that you take to load and configure the firewall. If you're used to WatchGuard or SonicWall, then there's more of a cut-and-dried procedure to that. With pfSense, you really have a lot of latitude and a lot of flexibility in how you want to configure it. If you just do the minimal configuration, you probably aren't getting the advantage of all the features you would want to have. That's why it pays to document that.
I'm a pfSense customer. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If users are interested in pfSense, they should try the community edition. It's free to download, and you can just get started and try it out. Moving forward, I wouldn't hesitate at taking a look at the different types of hardware that they have, and to talk to sales.
I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate it ten out of ten.
I'm a customer and end-user. I'd rate pfSense eight out of ten. If a person is familiar with firewalls, they'll be fine adopting it. The interface is pretty easy.
I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. I'm a customer and end-user.
I rate Netgate pfSense 10 out of 10.
I rate Netgate pfSense eight out of 10.
I rate Netgate pfSense eight out of 10.
I rate Netgate pfSense eight out of 10. I recommend it to others. It's affordable and not that difficult to set up or manage. You need to be certified to use Sophos, but we don't need any specific certifications to own or manage pfSense.
I rate Netgate pfSense eight out of 10.
I rate Netgate pfSense seven out of 10. If you have an enterprise environment, I recommend having two for high availability. Make sure you purchase and keep up with the software support in case there are any issues. Those are the two biggest things that helped us out.
I rate Netgate pfSense eight out of 10. They could polish up a few things, especially regarding IDS/IPS rules. A few interface things are a little more complicated than necessary. If you're moving to pfSense from a random Linksys or Netgate router, you need to realize it will be more difficult, and you'll need to learn more about networking concepts than you necessarily had to do with the random router that you've got. It's more complicated like that. That's to be expected because you're either a techie kind of person who thinks building your own firewall is fun, and they're willing to spend the time and effort to learn it. Or you want an alternative to FortiGate, Juniper, or whatever, and you want to buy a commercial Netgate product. This is going to be more complicated than the Linksys router I bought for $80 dollars from Best Buy.
I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten. It is delivering on my needs. There is little room for improvement. They can just close the gap. You always want to keep closing that gap when it comes to usability, inconvenience, and meeting the workflow, but it is definitely delivering to my expectations very well.
I rate Netgate pfSense nine out of 10. I would recommend it for business use cases. It's not appropriate for someone in a home environment, but it's good for business.
I would recommend the tool to others since for me, it is simple, the low cost of ownership, expandability, just the way it looks, I like the numbers, and when the data is there, you throttle how much information you want to see or collect. For somebody who likes to tinker or likes to see the numbers or wants to harden their network or has a corporate business and wants to ensure things are operating smoothly, the tool is worth it. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
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.
I don't use Netgate pfSense Plus on Amazon EC2 VMs, and I haven't had a customer who wanted to deploy the tool on the cloud. Most of them purchase and install their hardware directly from Netgate. The maintenance of the tool's equipment is done once or twice a year just to blow out some dust and make sure it looks physically okay, which is nothing outside of what the regular network devices require. It doesn't require any special maintenance. I would recommend Netgate pfSense because it is one of the products that my company markets to our customers. As I have existing customers that use the solution, they serve as a reference point for my new customer. I tell others that I have deployed Netgate pfSense in a few official organizations, their use, and the problems that it has solved for them. I have case studies to speak about. If someone wants to go for a proof of concept, it is something that is doable. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
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.
I rate Netgate pfSense seven out of 10. I would recommend it to others.
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 would rate Netgate pfSense nine out of ten. Before deploying pfSense in your lab, I recommend checking the pfSense forums to learn about any potential issues or considerations other users have encountered.
I would rate Netgate pfSense seven out of ten. The only area of improvement is the web dashboard, which is currently lacking in pfSense. I use other products to control data security. Most of my clients don't have an in-house server. I work with small businesses, and that's why the Netgate pfSense device works well. For my larger clients, we go to the cloud for data storage and data security with redundancy. So, I don't use pfSense for data security at all. pfSense is a good value for some clients; it's client-specific. It depends upon other things we are deploying there, such as what kind of Wi-Fi network we use. If we are adding a VoIP phone system. It just depends on what the client's needs are, but It is the right device for the right client. A lot of our clients are small businesses. I've got one fairly large business. It is a restaurant group nationwide with 700 employees, but its main office has maybe 30 to 50 employees. So, that's probably my largest deployment of the Netgate device. The only maintenance required for the pfSense firewalls is applying the occasional firmware updates. Some MSPs are more focused on making money. I'm not. I'm focused on the right fit for the client, and the money takes care of itself. pfSense is a great device. I'm not focused on what will make me money. I'm focused on what is best for the client. In many decisions, the Netgate pfSense is the right decision for that client.
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 have not used the VPN capabilities of pfSense. We also did not have a need to integrate pfSense with any service. I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten.
I would recommend it. For personal use, it is a great way to start. For companies, it is a great add-on. Companies can get support by buying the license. I would rate pfSense a ten out of ten.
I would advise you to try to estimate your network first and do a test network just to have a proof of concept of what you want to run and check the routes you want to run against your network, making sure that your requirements are valid before deploying it. Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.
I recommend using Postgres. However, if you need a firewall without additional tools and prefer a pool of well-established services, pfSense offers suitable features." Other solutions like Postgres, Sophos, and Palo Alto are in the market. We've used firewalls for a long time, but in the last three years, I worked with pfSense, and it's efficient for all devices. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
On a scale of one to ten for pfSense overall, I would rate it a seven. In comparison with other top devices like Fortinet and UDMP, pfSense stands equal in my opinion.
If you're considering using Netgate pfSense for the first time, I would recommend giving it a try. It's relatively easy to set up and use, especially if you have some prior knowledge of network and IT work. The user manual provides helpful guidance, and the basic configuration is straightforward. Just ensure you pay attention to the hardware requirements to make the most of it. It can be rated as an eight for simplicity. However, as you progress and introduce complexities, such as enabling deep packet inspection, adding extra features, or installing multiple plugins, the configuration can become more intricate. I encountered some issues with iOS in version 2.5, but they are expected to be resolved or have been resolved.
Initially, the product was difficult. It gets easier with use. It was a good investment. I would recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.
Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.
The solution has solved many of our use cases. I rate pfSense an eight out of ten.
I would absolutely recommend this solution. I would rate it a nine out of 10.
I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I've been pretty satisfied with the product overall. We are a customer and an end-user. We don't have any business relationship with the solution.
We are a customer and an end-user. We're using either version 5.3 or 5.4 at this time. While this is a good solution, we're looking for something stronger in the future. I'd recommend others also look for something strong, that fits their security needs. I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.
I rate pfSense six out of 10. We want a product that has at least two WANs as well as fault tolerance or load balancing features, which pfSense also has, but we don't have the hardware or support. That's why we need to switch. However, if cost is a big issue, then I recommend pfSense for customers who can't afford a paid hardware and software solution. That was our issue because we're a government company, so our assets belong to the government. We have to think about where we want to spend money because it's the taxpayers' money. If your management doesn't understand the need to invest in IT, then you can consider this alternative.
If you're a junior or even a beginner engineer, jumping into the interface for pfSense could be overwhelming. There are going to be things in there you just have never heard or seen before, which isn't a bad thing. On the front end, I would take advantage of any courses that are out there, any introductions to it. It's very intuitive and there are a lot of forums out there that you can go watch and educate yourself on. If you are not that advanced of a network engineer, I think it's a great solution for you because you can go out to some peers and get a lot of direction and guidance from them to set it up in a small environment. The only other thing I would do is just compare. You always have to understand what your customers' needs are. Make sure you understand what your customer's needs are and that it's going to fit into their environment and their budget. I don't know why it wouldn't, but that'd be about the only advice I'd give is just make sure that it is definitely a fit for your customer base. I'm fairly confident, small and medium businesses should be a very good fit. I've been in the enterprise space as well. There may be some things on the enterprise level that you just can't do with pfSense and you might want to go to some other solution set, but I think it's very competitive. I'd rate this solution a nine, even if I was an experienced engineer because it's easy to have and easy to maintain.
My advice to those wanting to implement pfSense is to start out with the free version before going with the appliance. I rate pfSense a ten out of ten.
I would rate pfSense a nine out of 10. It is a very good product.
Eight out of 10
I rate pfSense 10 out of 10. The appliance is inexpensive, and the software costs nothing. You plug it in and it works.
A good firewall has to be easy to install, configure, use, and fit the use case. This solution for my usage is very good. I would recommend this solution to others. I rate pfSense a nine out of ten.
I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten.
It's worth giving this product a shot and testing it out because it's free and community based. I would rate the community version a 10 out of 10.
Depending on what they want their firewall to do for them. If it is for intrusion detection, and intrusion prevention I would recommend this solution. In summary, this product is good but I would like to see resources utilization (cpu, hard disk) directly on SolarWinds. A one stop shop for monitoring on SolarWinds. It would be great! I would rate pfSense a six out of ten.
I rate pfSense a five out of ten.
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.
I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's been very good in terms of its overall capabilities. I would recommend this solution to other companies and users. It's very fast and very easy to use.
Before deciding to go with this solution, make sure to evaluate the features to ensure that pfSense will cover your needs. pfSense is very strong in some areas, but it has some difficulty in others. It's a good solution, but it all depends on what you expect from the firewall. If you need the firewall to implement security in your network, then pfSense is better than the competition in terms of price. It will cover all of your basic needs for far less money than similar products that cost five to ten times more money. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a rating of nine.
I rate pfSense eight out of 10. It's an open-source solution that you can deploy on data warehouses with various resources. You're not tied to specific hardware. It's easier to manage and use. Before deploying, you should find out the details about the environment where you will install pfSense. I would recommend pfSense for an enterprise environment with around 1,000 to 2,500 users.
There is a steep learning curve and you have to spend a lot of time with it to understand how you're going to use it and how you're going to customize it yourself. That's where you're going to have to spend a lot of time, but by the time you're done with everything and you have played with all the features you want, you will understand everything you need. You will always be up in minutes, even if it gets "destroyed" during the night, you can come back to it and reinstall the whole thing, and everything will be good. I would rate it a 9 out of 10. It cannot get a 10 right now because it changes every day. It might be 10 today, but in a few seconds, it won't be a 10 because the whole internet changes in a few seconds, and the whole way of serving your clients can change in a few seconds. So, it can't get that perfect 10.
I would recommend pfSense to others who are interested in using it. I would rate pfSense an eight out of ten.
I would rate this solution as eight out of ten because it's a central solution.
I would advise others to try it and see if it is good for them. It is a very good product for me, but that might not be the case for other users. There are so many solutions, but I'm really happy with it. For my scale, it is good. If you are Amazon or a company with one million connections every minute, don't ever use this. It is not made for that. It is perfect for small-scale networks. I would rate it a nine out of 10. It needs more regular updates, so I can't rate it a 10, but it is very easy to use, stable, and solid.
I like pfSense and I have deployed a number of them. I have approximately four of them in the area that I'm using. I have replaced SonicWall with a pfSense unit. It's a more economical way of using a firewall, and the protection it provides is second to none. Lonnie Buchmann: I would say give it a serious look. And especially a lot of times when you're in a small business, this is a really good solution that doesn't kill you with all the technology overhead that you deal with nowadays. I rate pfSense a ten out of ten.
I rate pfSense eight out of 10. I would recommend it for a small business or a startup as a starting point. It's also good for companies that are on a tight budget.
The solution can be deployed both on-cloud and on-premises. When it comes to Sophos, we have around 18 to 20 customers making use of it. I would recommend the solution to others. I rate pfSense as an eight out of ten. It is good.
I would recommend this solution to others. I have been 100% satisfied with the solution. I rate pfSense an eight out of ten.
My advice to the IT manager is to do your research, and make sure that pfSense meets your needs. If you are not technical enough, then looking at other solutions. pfSenseis needs a bit more tech-savvy IT manager to manage it. It is a very important business tool for me. I rate pfSense an eight out of ten. I rated pfSense an eight because it did everything I wanted it to do which makes it an awesome solution but not a ten because of a few minor shortcomings. However, I recognize it is open-source and it is not going to have everything.
I would recommend this solution, it's one of those technologies anyone should at least try out. If you want to protect your home network, and don't want to invest in a firewall, pfSense will do the job. It's good for home use and for small businesses or remote sites of large companies. It's a good strategy because it's generally more critical to invest in defending your main data centers. It's important to choose the hardware wisely, make sure it's compatible. Netgate, the company sponsoring pfSense, manufactures hardware that is really optimized towards it. For small or medium businesses it's not a big deal. But for enterprises, this is important. I rate this solution a seven out of 10.
I develop the solution on behalf of my company. With my scant knowledge of networking and the firewall I would rate pfSense as an eight out of ten.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a seven.
We have fifty users in our organization, and I can recommend pfSense. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at eight.
I would recommend this solution if there are no power issues. It's stable and performs well, even on older hardware. On a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a nine.
If you don't need WireGuard VPN, pfSense is better because it is easier to use than OPNsense. It is a very good platform. Its web administration interface has been working fine. I would rate pfSense an eight out of ten. A couple of months ago, I would have rated it a ten out of ten because of the WireGuard VPN feature.
We are just end-users and customers. I cannot speak to the exact version we are using. Ours may be slightly out of date. We may not be using the absolute latest version. Version 2.51 is available soon and we'll likely upgrade to that. It's good for where people have outgrown their existing broadband routers, such as the TP-link, the Dre Tech, and that sort of thing. Often, it doesn't justify putting in a full system. We tend to use a Mini ITX PC, multiple LAN network cards, and then install the opensource version and configure it appropriately. You need to be slightly more tactical than just plugging in a Dre tech or similar Nokia device. I don't think you need to be incredibly technical to set this up. I like it, I'd recommend it to most people to at least give it a try, and to spend a few hours initially to work their way around it. I'll definitely give it at least a nine out of ten for its general ease of use for me and my staff. It does pretty much everything that we ask of it and the required resources for the hardware are minimal as well.
I would recommend for other people looking into implementing the solution to read the manual, go on to the videos, verify everything with the tutorials. Make sure you fully comprehend the size of the software. I rate pfSense a seven out of ten.
I'm just a home lab user. I'd advise those considering the solution for your business to get a service contract. It works great for someone with enough knowledge and time to get his head around everything. Otherwise, you need to look for a solution that offers support and can work with you on issues. It's nice to try to balance between open-source and support that costs money. In general, I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
We are just customers and end-users. The solution is an open-source platform. We are a software company and we like open-source. Lots of people say open-source means that you need to install it on your own. They will see that as a limitation, however, we see that as the other way around. I'd recommend the solution to other organizations and users. It's open-source, it's flexible, and has a strong community. You can use it in many different ways, either in a small installation, laptop, PC, or on a machine, or you can buy an appliance or you can even buy your own hardware and configure it in a different way. The software as such is free and you have a lot of options as to how you want to use it. I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's been very good for us
We are really happy with the system performance, overall, but it depends. For example, right now we have a client who is trying to switch from FortiGate to another solution that is less costly. We recommended and talked with them about pfSense, but despite it being a cheaper and really rock-solid solution with good performance, they were not comfortable using open source. We also offered them Sophos, SonicWall, and Palo Alto — they finally chose SonicWall. I don't know why. It completely depends on the client. I would absolutely recommend this solution to others. This is definitely one of the most powerful firewalls for peace of mind. The fact is, as long as you are aware of the challenges that you have to face when implementing and managing the firewall, day-to-day, then this could be the best option for you. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.
I would recommend pfSense for the simple reason that it's open-source and it's free. Anything for free is good. I personally got much more out of it than I expected. I never expected this product to be so worth the time. It's a good product. For my needs at least. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. I have not used it for thousands of users, but for our usage, for an SMB organization, I would give it a rating of eight.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a nine.
For those who want to implement this solution I would advise it is great for a small enterprise, it is best to get started without having any harm getting to their networks. I rate pfSense an eight out of ten.
We are just customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company. I would recommend the solution to small companies. If you are a small company, you can use pfSense without any issues due to the fact that it's a free solution. I would rate the solution seven out of ten.
I would recommend pfSense to potential users. I would tell them to just read the tutorials because they're very useful. On a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a nine.
I recommend this product, it's well-balanced, has a longer history than other solutions so it's not lacking in maturity. There is a lot of online support available via YouTube or blogs but professional support is available if required. I highly recommend taking the support because usually people look at the UTM as something which should be set up in the system and left, but that's not the case with these devices. I strongly suggest making an external agreement with a specialized company to deal with security. Users need to have decent protection, not just protection. I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.
It is important to remember that you can't just leave the device to do everything. You still have to know what you're doing. I recommend the product. It's well-balanced and one with a long history, so it doesn't have child's diseases. There is a lot of online support available online, which they can consult themselves. But, in the case that they need support, they can hire a professional support line and that is highly recommended. I say this because usually, people look at the UTM as something that should be put in the system, set up, and left alone. But, this is not the case with this type of solution. Therefore, I strongly suggest making an outside agreement with a specialized company that will take care of their security from that point on. The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this kind of product is that you can't assume that the internet is a big place and nobody will find you. There is always a good possibility that robots will search your system for holes, and they are probably doing so this instant. This means that users should be aware and have decent protection. In summary, this is a good product but there is always room for improvement. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
I would recommend the solution to others. I rate pfSense an eight out of ten.
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.
I would advise others to go for it. I would recommend this solution. It is a good solution. No other solution can beat the price. There is so much stuff you can do with it. There are so many features, and I have not even scratched the surface on all of them. If it is something that someone doesn't feel like configuring, you can buy a prebuilt system from them and get support. I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten because of the cost and flexibility. It has been pretty good.
We're just cusomers. We don't have a business relationship with pfSense. We're using the latest stable version of the solution. I would 100% recommend the solution to others. On a scale from one to ten, I'd give it a ten.
I would recommend pfSense, but it depends on the requirements. There could be other vendors who offer more services than pfSense. For example, Fortinet is a very good brand, and it offers services in a different way. Fortinet also offers more services, but it is very expensive. If you don't need some specific services, pfSense is an excellent solution. I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten.
I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten.
It is just great. Give it a try. It just works. I would rate pfSense a ten out of ten.
We implement the solution for our clients. I've personally implemented the solution on five projects so far. We work with the latest version of the solution, typically. Our companies are typically mid-level enterprises. This product is the very best. Overall, I would give it a rating of ten out of ten.
We're a pfSense partner. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. It's been very good to work with. I would recommend the solution. pfSense is superior in terms of defending against attacks.
I would continue to use pfSense if the decision was mine, but it is out of my area. It depends on the CIO. I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. pfSense will not cost you any money. It depends on your business needs. You have to address your business needs correctly. I would say to go with pfSense. If you feel that it is not compatible, you have other purchase options such as Palo Alto. I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.
We're just using this solution; we don't have a relationship with the vendor. In terms of the version of pfSense we are using, we have that basic boss, 1.0 however, that is behind the firewall. The firewall which we were using is UTM1240B. While we are satisfied with the netting features and the bandwidth controlling and routing, we find cannot expose our entire network to pfSense as there's no underlying ownership fo the product itself. We prefer a hardened firewall. Due to the fact that it is an open-source solution, no one at an enterprise-level would ever think of putting pfSense at the gateway level or even at the main level. I would definitely recommend pfSense as the second lane of action, just not on a workload. I'd rate the solution six out of ten.
There's a learning curve to this solution, it's not as simple to use as some of the other GUI based firewalls. You need to play around with it a bit. I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.
My only comment would be to suggest that if you wish to implement the solution read the documentation very carefully. I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.
We're just users of the product. We're not consultants or resellers. It's your basic firewall setup. However, when we looked at Sophos, we found that Sophos offered a lot more as it's a fully unified solution and had a firewall, as well as anti-virus and network monitoring capabilities. This solution really gives us a greater extensive array of modules or features than we would not necessarily see in managing the system as administrators. The solution is quite extensive in that there was a lot of material that we had to read about. It just was not user-friendly for the team. We needed a solution that can handle itself without our intervention. I'd rate the solution five out of ten.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
We're just customers. We don't have a special relationship with the solution. We just use it on a regular basis. I'm not sure if I'm using the latest version of the solution or not. I'd rate the solution ten out of ten since I've never had any major issues with it. The biggest thing a new user or company needs to be aware of, however, is that whoever the team is that's using it, they need to be very experienced Linux users. The system will be extremely difficult otherwise. New users will need patience. However, it is easy to use due to its very good web interface. It's also easy to deploy and the process can be handled quickly. There's no need to have a really big fancy long-winded deployment process. That said, especially if you are using it within a complex Linux environment, you absolutely must have high skills in both Linux and security.
You should try it.
Any network engineer will understand how this solution works. It's not so complex to understand and be familiar with. It will require a certain level of networking knowledge to use it but we're at an enterprise level and we're a small-medium business and it works. I would rate it a nine out of ten.
I definitely plan to increase using pfSense. I am going for a higher capacity. If power fails or one server dies, or one gateway dies, the other servers will take over seamlessly. That's the ultimate for us. I would definitely rate pfSense an eight and a half out of ten. Definitely eight and a half, not lower, could be a bit higher. Because it's stable, it's good. If the small issues I've mentioned are worked on then I would go to a 10.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. I give it this rating because of the rich features available. pfSense is free and I can do everything with it. It works as a firewall for servers also.
I strongly recommend giving pfSense a hard look. I've been in IT for 20+ years, and I've run the gambit on other firewalls. pfSense definitely can hold it's own against any of them.
If you don't have a policy that says "only proprietary software" in your company, there is no reason not to go for pfSense. If you are still in doubt, take the cheap (and excellent) Netgate academy course. It's only for two days, and you will learn how to manage pfSense at a comprehensive level.
They need to look at all the communities, comparisons, etc. and read up about the issues and problems people are having with some of the solutions, then see if those problems might be related to what they may be experiencing. Main criteria when selecting a vendor: * How easy is it to learn. * How easy is it to implement.
I would recommend it. It is manageable and straightforward. It is not so complex. You have to know the different rules, but you can manage it easily. The performance is good.