Netgate pfSense Reviews

We use pfSense to protect our customers using IPS and IDS.

We are a government agency and we manage the government network. 

We complete the setup and we are protecting our customers.

The most valuable feature is that it's robust.

In terms of resources, utilization assets, CPU utilization, and a lot of memory, it's very good. 

The concurrent users are perfect for us.

The router monitoring needs improvement when compared with Sonicwall.

I would like an API that can sync to SolarWinds because we use SolarWinds for our monitoring platform. It would be great to be able to do all of the monitoring from SolarWinds instead of logging into the application to monitor it. It would be a nice feature to have.

I have been using pfSense for less than two years.

In the last two weeks, we moved a few resources to the pfSense and it's been stable. 

When compared to SonicWall there were some issues but it could be that SonicWall was doing too much. It was doing almost everything. It was doing IDS, IPS, and contextual training. It may be that it was overwhelmed.

We were using the software base, and then we bought the hardware device. We moved 12 users onto it and we are monitoring it.

Based on the documentation it would not require much to scale up or upgrade. There is no doubt that it is scalable.

Most of the support is online.

We do a lot of reading, and if there is any support or suggestions we quickly do it. 

We have not contacted them directly.  

They have a lot of resources available on the internet that will guide you in finding your way around.

We use a few different firewalls. We use SonicWall and Huawei firewall along with pfSense.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy.

We did not use an integrator. I completed it with one of my colleagues.

Looking at what it does, I think that it is fairly priced.

When we compare to SonicWall, we feel that we are getting the best with pfSense.

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.

We are using the solution for a firewall and other operations, such as traffic shaping.

The features I have found best are ease of use, GUI, and performance.

The hotspot and the portal feature in this solution are not stable for WiFi access. We use it at least once or twice every day and it crashes. Some modules can be better by improving detection and having new updates. Additionally, we have some issues with clustering and load balancing that could improve.

In a future release, they could redesign the policies because we need to write inbound and outbound simultaneous policies. They could change it to one policy, such as in FortiGate, Sophos, and Cyberoam. In these firewalls, we add rules in one way, and they add rules automatically. However, in this solution, we need to write every policy manually. 

They can improve in site-to-site tunnels with other devices, such as Cisco or FortiGate. It is not very easy to set up VPNs for site-to-site tunnels.

There have been some problems we have been facing with BGP routing that needs to be improved.

I have been using the solution for approximately two years.

The stability could improve.

Since this solution is software-based it is easy to scale. We can extend the UIs by adding some hardware, such as CPUs and memory discs. We would not be able to match this type of scalability with a hardware-based solution, for example as FortiGate.

This solution is best suited for small to midsize networks. When there is heavy traffic in larger-scale businesses it becomes less reliable.

I have used FortiGate previously and this solution is cheaper and more reliable.

The solution is easy to deploy.

The solution is free. However, you need to pay for support.

I rate pfSense a five out of ten.

It has a very nice web interface, and it is very simple to use. The way policies are working is also good.

I have been using WireGuard VPN because it is a lot faster and more secure than an open VPN. However, in the latest version of pfSense, they have removed this feature, which is one of the main features that I need. They should include this feature.

I have been using this solution for probably ten years. As the head of IT, I have used pfSense for the French infrastructure for around ten years.

It is working fine for me. I never had any problem with this firewall.

I never had to contact their support because everything has been working fine.

I have a lot of experience with pfSense but not much with OPNsense. Both OPNsense and pfSense are very easy, but pfSense is a bit more friendly. pfSense is simple to use with a nice web interface. OPNsense is more tricky.

OPNsense has the remote access functionality, which is the main functionality that I need. OPNsense is very easy to set up and very easy to manage. It is also very fast.

Its initial setup is very easy. 

In France, we have less than five engineers. That's why we try to do everything by ourselves. We chose pfSense because it is user-friendly.

Its price is pretty fair.

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.

I tested it for firewall, networks, and network stability and as a VPN access point.

I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm.

I tried pfSense, and it has a big issue with file system consistency, and this is what drove me to OPNsense. The file system stability is quite a big issue for us. We have a lot of outages related to power issues, and OPNsense is much more stable on this side.

I would like it to be more stable on the file system part. It also has an issue with the ARP publishing, but it's common to BSD, and some providers experience issues with Layer 2 connectivity.

I tested pfSense for six months, but it had quite a lot of networking issues related to latency and ARP publishing. So, I immediately switched to OPNsense.

I'd like to see its stability improved. I know the BSD Kernel is more capable than what pfSense provides at this time.

It's scalable. It implements specific protocols for scalability.

The initial setup is straightforward. It took me about ten to 15 minutes to install it and maybe half an hour for configuration.

I implemented this solution.

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.

We have solutions from 10 to 5,000 users. One person alone can manage the firewall.

The VPN is my favorite feature. pfSense is very easy to use. The interface and configuration capabilities are great.

The main problem with pfSense is that we have to use proxy solutions. They don't have features like Layer 7 filtration. We can't filter based on applications. For this reason, we need to work with solutions from Cisco like OpenAPPID that help pfSense understand similar applications. For example, if I have to block WhatsApp, I need to use a third-party solution like OpenAPPID to help it understand what WhatsApp is. This capability is not native to pfSense, so I have to use another solution, like an add-on. I think that the proxy is the main problem with pfSense.

pfSense doesn't implement SD-WAN solutions. Competitors have this feature. If pfSense began doing this, it would be a big improvement.

Stability is great. That's a strong point.

Scalability-wise, it's great. Often, we need to research and assess the size of an appliance in order to understand what kind of environment the firewall is going to protect. From here, we have the possibility to do an upgrade depending on the type of model.

There is the option to have a firewall that is entry-level or a firewall that supports a huge internet service provider. We have many solutions that we can apply to our customer's environments, but first, we need to do these assessments in order to help us choose the right appliance. One appliance simply can't be upgraded to cover this entire spectrum of needs or the size of demand. This is why we must perform these special assessments.

Although it's not quite pre-configured, it is ready to use, straight away. It's so easy to put it to work. We had to do some configurations, mainly related to security issues. Configuring rules for monitoring had to be done, but otherwise, it's ready to go, out of the box.

Only one person is required to deploy this solution. 

pfSense is a free solution.

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.

We primarily use the solution for security. It's a firewall.

The solution is an excellent open-source product. It has a big community around it as well. Out of those few points, you'll come up to a situation whereby you can avoid the vendor lock-in. Since there is a big community, you can count on reliability. There are lots of installations and lots of people who understand how everything works. 

The solution offers excellent flexibility. You can either install pfSense just on a machine, on your local PC, or you can buy an appliance. You can even buy your own hardware and install it on your own. Of course, if you choose that route, you need to have a technical expert on your team. For us, as a software company, that's not a problem.

There are plugins you can add to the product if you want even more useability. You can even add more security functionality.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We did have a strange issue with an update at one point, however, that was resolved quickly.

If you want to take advantage of all of the solution's options, you need to have a bit of a technical background. It's not for a layperson.

You do get a good solution for free. However, the trade-off is you need to be technical to really take advantage of it.

The installation could potentially be faster.

I haven't been using the solution for very long at this point. It may be somewhere around three to five months. It hasn't been long.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's excellent.

The scalability is excellent. We don't have any issues as far as that is concerned.

Prior to pfSense, we used Cisco.

The implementation is not complex. It's very straightforward to initiate. A company should have no problems with the process.

As an open-source solution, it is free to use as you see fit.

I didn't evaluate the solution against other more expensive commercial tools.

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 use the solution for blocking websites, banking, and malware.

I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection.

I have been using the solution for approximately four months.

This solution is good for small businesses but it is not as stable as other competitors such as Fortinet.

We currently have approximately 45 people using the solution.

The support is good when comparing to other solutions.

We have used FortiGate in the past and they tend to be more stable, but lacking in other areas.

The installation was not too complicated. We did have some issues with the port forwarding,  some of the server application were not getting through the firewall but we managed to get it to work.

The whole network deployment took approximately three days.

We are using the open-source version which is free. We are testing the solution to see if we are going to go to the enterprise version which requires a license and is not free.

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.

I was working for a firm that has 70 employees. They are mostly working from home, so I needed a very well-structured VPN for remote working. We put it on Supermicro, and it worked fine, and it was above their needs.

I like the connectivity to the open VPN. It's very smooth. All the encryption in the open VPN is very good. The structure of the pfSense software works out very well. The PF work cuts and the snorts and whatever we put on the console for spyware and attack prevention seem to work very nicely. 

They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside. Determining the IPs that are outside would be another way to identifying potential threats. We can treat it or identify and then block it or determine the rules to work with that IPs from the outside and inside the network. 

I have been using pfSense for the past three years. 

Back in the day, I was using Fortinet, and it was very tricky to get it working without spending more money. pfSense is exactly what we paid for, and it's still working very well. We've been working with it for two or three years, and it's a very good solution, and I didn't have to spend any more money on it.

Cisco VSL and Fortinet are tricky when it comes to improving the firewall rules or creating rules above older rules. In pfSense, it's very logical. It's simple.

The initial setup is very linear and very smooth.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give pfSense a nine.