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Netgate pfSense pros and cons

Vendor: Netgate
4.3 out of 5
Badge Leader

Pros & Cons summary

Buyer's Guide

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Netgate pfSense provides robust security features with seamless integration across multiple platforms.
Users appreciate the ease of setup, especially for VPN connections and flexible network management.
Netgate pfSense offers high customizability, allowing various configurations and add-ons.
The open-source nature ensures affordability and elimination of ongoing licensing fees.
The platform is stable, reliable, and provides comprehensive documentation and community support.

CONS

Netgate pfSense lacks centralized management and a unified interface for managing multiple devices.
Integration with third-party tools is necessary for functionalities like reporting and real-time monitoring.
Reporting capabilities need improvement for better user experience and detailed insights.
The use of third-party plugins highlights limitations in out-of-the-box features like intrusion detection and web filtering.
Technical support and documentation require enhancements for better customer assistance and understanding.
 

Netgate pfSense Pros review quotes

JA
Principal Cloud Architect - Software Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Dec 22, 2025
What I appreciate the most about Netgate pfSense is the ease and straightforward nature of the platform; I can set up a new office in less than 10 minutes.
MC
Chief information security officer at Center for Information Management, Inc.
Jul 8, 2024
If you have full logging turned on you can get a pretty good idea of what kind of traffic is going in from where to where.
DR
Entrepreneur at Drive Bye Auto Rentals
Jul 11, 2024
I can have an enterprise-grade VPN for the business without spending too much.
Learn what your peers think about Netgate pfSense. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2026.
892,943 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Vincent Hamm - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO and President at Aim High! Inc.
Jan 1, 2026
I appreciate the depth of what you can do with pfSense and the simplicity of the initial setup. One thing we've done is create an image, and when we get a new customer who needs a device, we can put that image on there. The image gets them up to 90 percent of what we need them to have, and we only have to customize the remaining 10 percent.
JM
Director of IT at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Jun 27, 2024
I like that there's a community edition that I can install on my own virtual machines or hardware. I can test things without messing with them in production, which is incredibly useful. If you have a Juniper or Cisco, you can typically only afford one. You're forced to make changes in production and hope they don't break anything because there's no easy way to have a testing environment. The free version of pfSense offers load balancing or failover WAN, which is also helpful. Most commercial firewalls don't have that in the cheapest iteration of the hardware.
Jean-Pierre DAREYS - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Latin America at Bradmark Technologies, Inc.
Feb 7, 2025
The support is excellent quality.
Alexander Aguilar - PeerSpot reviewer
Workday Reporting & Analytics Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Dec 30, 2025
I really enjoy the flexibility of the interface setup configuration for my network VLANs; it is very easy to configure and set, and when I am doing multi-inputs with internet providers coming in, it is very easy to manage and set up with very little effort.
RajWurttemberg - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at Logix Computer Services
Dec 23, 2025
The stability of Netgate pfSense is rock solid; I have never had any problems with stability.
AB
Information Technology Infrastructure Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
May 14, 2025
From my perspective, the best feature of Netgate pfSense is the load balancer, as I usually take multiple internet connections. I can use both internet providers' bandwidth as a single network bandwidth, which helps in a very smooth network traffic flow.
RG
Works at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Jul 26, 2024
Deploying pfSense is easy. I'm not a network administrator, but I'm familiar with computers. I can install it on a USB and set it up like any other operating system. The documentation is excellent. I can configure it based on that, and many YouTubers cover it.
 

Netgate pfSense Cons review quotes

JA
Principal Cloud Architect - Software Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Dec 22, 2025
Something that I do not appreciate about Netgate pfSense and I wish they would change would be the feature limitations.
MC
Chief information security officer at Center for Information Management, Inc.
Jul 8, 2024
It’s difficult to configure and use add-on features.
DR
Entrepreneur at Drive Bye Auto Rentals
Jul 11, 2024
I would like to see a subscription-based tech support option.
Learn what your peers think about Netgate pfSense. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2026.
892,943 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Vincent Hamm - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO and President at Aim High! Inc.
Jan 1, 2026
We do a lot of managed services and are currently trying to get people off of L2TP VPN. Apparently, we can download a mobile config file from a configured NetGate device, and we're primarily Apple. We've experimented with it on a device that's not a production device, and we can't seem to get the phase one IPSec set correctly so that the Apple config will accept it.
JM
Director of IT at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Jun 27, 2024
Snort or Suricata don't block things they should out of the box. It's always been a pain point of pfSense. If you turn on Snort or Suricata for IPS or IDS, no setting is effectively set and forget. Turning any commercial firewall to the lowest setting will provide you with a decent amount of security with almost zero false positives, but pfSense is not that way. You've got a babysit Snort and Suricata to the point where sometimes you turn it off.
Jean-Pierre DAREYS - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Latin America at Bradmark Technologies, Inc.
Feb 7, 2025
The dashboard is a little bit slow and the reporting isn't always current or immediate.
Alexander Aguilar - PeerSpot reviewer
Workday Reporting & Analytics Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Dec 30, 2025
I think the package management and the updating process in Netgate pfSense could be better.
RajWurttemberg - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at Logix Computer Services
Dec 23, 2025
The downsides of Netgate pfSense include a lack of graphics to show a customer.
AB
Information Technology Infrastructure Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
May 14, 2025
AI would always be a plus point, and if pfSense could change its framework from FreeBSD and PHP to a different language and Linux OS, that could enhance security.
RG
Works at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Jul 26, 2024
I would like them to have more security platforms. The pfBlocker is nice, but they don't have anything native for CrowdSec or Fail2Ban. I'm running CrowdSec on a web server instance on my server instead, but I'd like to move more of these services to the edge and put them in pfSense. I think that's something that's coming. I don't know if Failed2BAN is, but I'm sure CrowdSec is a popular platform, so it would be nice to have a package that's native to the platform.