Netgate pfSense Reviews

The primary use case of this solution is to protect our business network.

I like the fact that it is open-source.

The Surakarta and the web blocking functionality seems to be quite good. It's not perfect, but none of them are.

The interface is straightforward and easy to use.

I would like to see the dashboard modernized.

If you look at some of the other providers, their dashboard is more modern looking.

Also, simplifying the rules for the GeoIP. Making it simpler to understand would be an improvement.

I have been using pfSense for approximately one year.

It seems to be relatively stable. I haven't had very many issues.

If I do have any issues, it is more to do with the way that I have configured it. Other than that, it works fine.

It's a scalable solution. We have 14 computers with more powerful hardware that allows us to deal with larger networks.

Apart from what you see on the interface, you can also use the command line to create a cluster if you need to.

The initial setup is straightforward once you read the manual.

I did evaluate another solution but felt that the cost was too high for what it was. Based on the consumer market, I didn't feel that it was at the enterprise level.

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 use pfSense for the security of my company.

With pfSense we have low balances for the internet and the internet is always available. When our service provider fails, it takes communication to another service. The employees always have access to the servers that they need. They always have an abundant flow or they always switch to the lead when the internet fails.

It has a good web cache. I used to use a DHCP server and DNS server. For my company, I use pfSense as a load balancing application.

The HA proxy is the main feature that it's used for. 

Many people have problems setting up the web cache for the web system.

They should put an anti-spam in a web application firewall.

I have been using pfSense since 2006. 

The stability is rock-solid. 

I think scalability is good enough. 

I do the maintenance for pfSense.

There is a lot of information in the online forums. 

I have used other solutions but I chose pfSense because it's easy to use and configure.

The initial setup was very easy.

Before I set up, I wrote down all the levels on a paper and I drew the plan I wanted to protect. After that, I deployed it pfSense. I filtered the access to the users and to the servers. Everyone has the access that they need.

The deployment took less than an hour.

It's open-source. You can pay for support if you need. 

I would rate pfSense a nine out of ten. 

We use it for small businesses, and most of my clients are using pfSense.

It works. I put pfSense in, and it works. I can't think of any trouble I ever had with it. It runs on heat-sensitive appliances. They don't need a fan, so they don't overheat. 

It is affordable, fast, and very high-speed. It is built on BSD Unix, and it pretty much runs on any Intel processor. 

I've never tried it in large environments. All my clients are small businesses with a handful of employees, so I am not sure how it works in large environments. I keep up with recent versions, and there's nothing I'm waiting for, and nothing breaks when I get a new version.

I have been using this solution for maybe five years.

It just works.

I've never challenged it. All of my clients are small businesses. It is open-source software, and it runs on whatever appliance you run it on, so whatever computer you run it on, it'll scale up pretty high.

Their technical support is excellent. They do have good support service. I don't use it because I've never had any problems with it, but the people I know who use it in bigger environments love it. You can even search their knowledge base and learn anything you want to know pretty quickly. 

Some of my businesses just use the built-in firewall in the ISP modem. I replaced an old SonicWall that couldn't keep up with a faster internet service. I've replaced a couple of Cisco solutions that were just getting old to run modern software, but the hardware was working. They just died of old age, and I replaced them with pfSense. It has been great. I'm sure a lot of people know how to configure Cisco solutions, but I don't. pfSense is very easy to configure.

It was very simple. You download and boot a USB stick or a CD to install it. From then on, it is managed by its own webpage. The deployment takes a few minutes.

It has almost zero cost, and it is open to us. It runs on a small appliance just for a couple of 100 bucks, and I've never had an appliance burn out on me yet. 

It is just great. Give it a try. It just works.

I would rate pfSense a ten out of ten.

We have a hosted platform with our client. We've built a VPN site and the solution is deployed as a VM. The client connects to it and it protects anything that's behind it like a regular firewall. Everything we have there is hosted in a data center, all our servers and things that clients connect to. So we're using it as our gateway device. We are customers of pfSense and I'm the owner of our company. 

I like the site-to-site VPN and the basic firewall features.

Right now we have to use a lot of third party plugins with other providers that have their own built-in features so I'd like to see layer 7 advanced firewall features included in the solution. It would definitely improve the product. 

We've used pfSense over the past three years. 

The stability is very good, it's just that it's not as easy to use as SonicWall. There are limits as to who we can put to work on the solution, a limited number of our engineers work with it.

The solution is very scalable. We don't sell pfSense to the end users, we use it ourselves. Our clients have SonicWall but the whole company benefits from the firewall. 

We've never used technical support but we're looking into it now and I think it's very comparable to SonicWall.

It's harder to set up pfSense than SonicWall. Only a couple of people in our company can do that. 

We are currently using the open source solution so it's free. 

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. 

We use pfSense for our firewall protection.

The most valuable features are ease of installation and support.

The domain blocking lists need to be improved. The supported list for domain blocking is community-maintained, and I would like to see something from the manufacturers of pfSense that is a little more global.

I would like to see different graphs available in the reporting.

We have been using pfSense for two months.

pfSense is quite stable. It is one of the pros.

The scalability is very good, where you can do an HA configuration and then bring in another box, if necessary. We have ten users in the organization.

We get very little usage and have no plans to increase it.

The technical support is A+, pretty good.

The initial setup was straightforward.

This solution provides enterprise-level features at a fraction of the cost of an enterprise firewall.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use this solution as our firewall, proxy, IDS, IPS, and VPN.

This solution has increased the level of security, given us more control, provided a deep insight into network traffic, and is a great VPN solution.

The most valuable features are the Proxy IPS and VPN.

We would like to see ready-made profiles to cover most users' needs. 

Our primary uses for this solution are as a network firewall and a VPN Server. 

This solution has helped our organization by protecting our network from attacks.

The most valuable feature is the proactive network protection.

We also find the following components valuable:

1. pFBlocker
2. Squid
3. SquidGuard
4. Firewall

This product needs improvements with respect to reporting and auditing.

My primary use case for pfSense is as a firewall. We also use it for intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, website filtering, and quality of service (QoS).

My company mainly works in the health and educational domain, schools and universities. I prevent the improper use of content from schools and universities. I defend the medical records for the patients in our hospitals. That is the main use case for me for the firewall.

One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it's almost entirely free and I can do everything with it.

It has everything I need, but the main drawback of pfSense is that it's not user-friendly. I hope to have something to make the interfaces more user-friendly. I would also like to see some documentation that can help with use cases or that has advice and tips. I have found some documentation available but it's usually from an earlier version. If they develop this, pfSense will be the best. The only thing that Fortigate is better than pfSense is that they have 24/7 support. pfSense also needs improvements in the intrusion detection area.

I depend on and use VMware ESXi with vSphere in my deployment, virtualization. pfSense is more stable and reliable if you install it directly on the server, i.e. not being installed as a virtual machine. That makes it very stable.

The scalability is good. You can integrate some nodes of pfSense but it's not very user friendly.

I would be more relieved and more happy to have support. You need to have some people who can help you in any use case.

Lots of reading and trial and error. It's tough for the network engineer, but it is magnificent in performance from my point of view.

We implemented in-house. Not user friendly, but if you want to do anything you can do it with pfSense.

Free. Would purchase for better customer support.

It is completely free.

We also evaluated Fortigate.

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.