Netgate pfSense Reviews

• Load balancer
• Multi-WAN

Network security and speed have both improved.

I've been using it since 2010. I have used both the free version (5/10) and as a gold member (9/10).

No issues encountered.

When they make an update available, the problem is that pfSense service packages are not updated, it's just the OS. The pfSense OS is stable, but if the service packages are not updated to their new version when the OS is updated, we can't use those features.

No issues encountered.

5/10.

5/10.

We used -

• Debian IPtables
• Squid
• I7 Patch

• Captive Portal 
• DHCP

pfSense made my life easier for controlling users and their bandwidth. My internet is not misused anymore.

RadiusServer needs some work done.

I've been using it for five years.

I've never had any problems.

Yes I did.

Since it's open source, the only support is available in public forums.

I used different routers, but because I wasn’t happy, I was trying different solutions and I found this one which was the most effective of all those I tried.

It was very straightforward.

I did it on my own.

It was free.

I looked at many hardware solutions.

Go ahead and just implement it.

• Firewall
• DHCP
• VPN

The organization relies on pfSense for DHCP, and remote users may access it on a local network via VPN.

I was satisfied with the overall features of the product, considering the limited capacity of our hardware at the time. It's probable that an improvement can be made to the user friendliness of the interface.

I've used it for over three years.

I believe that the issue of stability that we encountered was linked to our hardware limitation. For example, we would need to soft reboot the system manually after a power failure to get the DHCP functioning again.

This is linked to our hardware limitation as well, however it has been working fine for company with 30-40 users.

8/10.

9/10,

It was done by external technical support.

It was implemented by a vendor who were 10/10.

I don't know the setup costs but the day-to-day maintenance is done by myself, and I occasionally need to engage the vendor for technical issues.

pfSense is good for a company that is looking for a solution with a reasonable cost for implementation.

pfSense is very valuable as previously I had to use Microsoft's TMG solution. After some research, when I got stuck configuring a physical machine with many VMs, I noticed that pfSense, as a firewall, uses less resources. I started to test it on a simple PC, and I have now seen how I can benefit from open source software. So therefore, the most valuable feature is that it uses less resources than a physical machine.

It is free of charge. I am living in country where this is not so important yet, as no one controls the licenses of software. However, our company tries to look forward and prevent issues that may happen in the future. So it being free, and easy to configure, are the benefits for us.

I think that areas for improvement are not closely related with the work of pfSense but with its components, meaning the packages. I am faced with little problems when I install none-recommended (beta) versions. But, I also understand that these versions are mostly for developers, who are trying to contribute their best efforts for open source.

I have been using pfSense as a firewall solution for approximately eight months.

When I started to test it in a real environment, it was on a physical machine and I was faced with problems. It was that the freeBSD wouldn't detect my USB keyboard, but after waiting a while, it eventually worked. In a virtual environment, I had no problems.

Just once. One of our customers had an issue with their electrical stability. The electrical supply was jumping, and playing about, and when it was happening pfSense stopped.

It depends actually, and to be honest, I have never used all the available features of this product, but I believe that there should not be any issues with the scalability.

I have never used the customer service for pfSense. I have read the manuals, but have never contacted customer service.

I have never used it.

I previously used Microsoft's TMG solution. I switched because after some research when I got stuck configuring a physical machine with many VMs, I decided to use pfSense.

• Load balancing multi-WAN (High latency)
• Queues with CBQ algorithm
• Traffic shaper (limiter)
• Aliases for grouping anything 
• VPN (OpenVPN)
• DHCP server (with ARP reservation)
• DNS forwarder
• Firewall 
• Graphs for monitoring
• NAT

Before using pfSense:

• I always had problems with internet connection for users
• I had no idea what users were downloading and, therefore, what was killing the internet connection
• I did not have not statistics on the quality and stability of the internet
• To get a VPN I had use a pay software that offered lower performance than I have now

I always need to open different graphs on different windows of the web browser to have an overview,  Therefore, it would be good, if it is possible, to have a customizable, large dashboard.  At the moment though, the others options are good because I am a beginner with the pfSense.

I've used it for six months.

No issues encountered.

There was an issue with the Layer 7 filters on an old PC.

No issues encountered.

No previous solution was used.

It's very straightforward, even for beginners.  There is documentation and different tutorials and videos available in different languages.

I implemented it myself.

The only cost to set up is the hardware for a standard PC and any ethernet card extensions.

No, as I asked a friend they told me to get pfSense without doing other research.

Don't install pfSense on a machine with only the minimal recommended hardware configuration, but on a better machine.

• Port routing policies
• Load balancing
• Clustering

We've been able to get call center traffic optimisation over multiple WAN and Point2Point Connections with a failover policy. The call center has different types of traffic (VoIP, Internet, Stream etc.) and every kind of traffic has its own policy. For example VoIP needs to be have high availability & a priority to maintain a non-stop custom service, while that of internet traffic can be lowered in priority and even cut when some WANs are unavailable to prioritize VoIP. I think that having this kind of complex configuration & tunning with a robust open solution, is a good value.

• v0.x for three years
• v1.x for two years
• v2.x for three years

There have been no deployment issues since v0.x.

Yes, sometimes there are issues if there are some complex configurations. When working with load balancing ADSL modems, I've noticed that pfSense "fools" the modem and it becomes unresponsive until it is restarted. This issue doesn't affect pfSense, but it is the root cause of a hung ADSL modem.

No issues encountered.

I've never used them.

I've never used them.

No previous solution was used.

The initial setup is easy. This is because the pfSense setup is like a Windows installation (wizards, choose option, click next etc.) unlike some others.

We implemented it in-house.

First of all scalability of this solution. It's an all-in-one solution useful for every kind of company. It's also very easy to set up rules and NAT, and it has several modules like transparent proxy, VPN, and traffic shaping which are the daily modules for me.

pfSense software was designed to be a customizable platform that can be hardware agnostic. This allows the engineer to meet the needs of a project with a device that's got the right I/O and specifications, and then customize the pfSense settings to their needs.
So power consumption and less hardware requirement can save our money!

Compatibility with virtualization system (like VMWare, Proxmox and so on and so forth); in some cases, it can create conflicts with virtualized hardware, and configuration export (sometimes the XML file creates a conflict with the hardware network MAC address).

I've been using it for three years.

• Compatibility with some virtualized system
• Configuration export in some cases
• Sometimes updates can mess up the running configuration

Never had any issues. In fact, I've had a pfSense firewall with the uptime of a year.

No, and it doesn't matter how many rules or not that you have. It can manage different network interfaces (virtual and physical) without a problem.

We never use it, but it has a large community so you can find whatever you need in the pfSense forum.

We never use it, but it has a large community so you can find whatever you need in the pfSense forum.

Previously we've used hardware firewalling solutions like SonicWall, Zyxel and others but they're not powerful like this solution. Also, they are hardware so the cost is much higher than software. I've also used IPtables which is a software Linux solution but it's complicated to setup when you need to manage several rules.

It's easy to setup the solution because there's a wizard that guides you through it, and therefore, you cannot make mistakes. Then, you can configure the different aspects to fit your needs.

We have become experts in this solution. We installed it in our lab and tested the solution. After that we implemented it throughout our company, and then began using the solution with our customers.

We've a strong know how, and we've use this solution with our customers so we can be more competitive than hardware solutions.

It's a software solution, and also open source, so it's cost is zero!

We tested IPCop, Smoothwall, IPTables and others. When we have an OS project, we want to test so we can compare it to our technology, and if it's better, we build it!

Test, test, test and...test! It's powerful but only with testing will you realize what you need.

The Captive Portal (pass through MAC) feature.

We have been able to gain control of our bandwidth and improve our web security.

VPN ability needs to be improved.

I've used it for one year.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

9/10.

8/10.

Before pfSense I was using a different solution, but I like this product due to the low cost of hardware, its stability, web interface, and the fact its open source etc.

it's a straightforward setup.

I implemented this, in our office, myself.

There was no cost.

We didn't look at any other options.

I would recommend that you use and implement this product. I say that because it is open source, has a low hardware cost, its fabulous web interface, the backup and restore feature, the pass through MAC, and many other features etc.