pfSense Reviews

We're using pfSense as a firewall and for web filtering.

The firewall sensor is highly effective, and it's easy to deploy. You can deploy pfSense with limited hardware resources. It's not necessary to have an appliance with much RAM to make it work. It's cost-effective and performs well.

The solution could be more user-friendly, and the graphical interface needs some work so that someone without an IT background can use the application. I would like the ability to manage the on-premise appliance from the cloud. When I'm not in the office, it would be great to connect to the pfSense server and administer the network remotely.

I've used pfSense for two and a half years.

pfSense is stable. 

You can scale up pfSense with multiple clusters for higher availability. It has that capability. It gives you that flexibility to set up a hybrid with part of the deployment in the cloud and a mural copy or to grow your network. 

At my previous company, we used a Cisco firewall and a router, but they kept having issues with the firewall and the device.  When I joined this company,  we introduced pfSense and haven't had any issues since. 

Setting up pfSense is easy, but it depends on your experience level. The average person with an IT background who is grounded in ICT can do install and configure pfSense in 15 to 30 minutes. 

PfSense is an open-source product, but you need to buy a license to get some features. 

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.

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.

We use the solution for a Firewall and a VPN.

We have found that this solution is better at keeping our business safe by having improved intrusion prevention than competitors.

I have found the firewall portion for the blocking most valuable.

The VPN feature of the solution could improve by adding better functionality and providing easier configure ability.

I have been using the solution for approximately six months.

The solution is very stable.

I have found the solution to be unlimited when it comes to scalability. The more memory and power you give it, it will use it all.

I found the technical support of the solution to be not very good at all.

I have used Fortinet previously and the installation took a lot less time to install. Additionally, I have also used SonicWall before but I switched to the current solution because it was getting too expensive. 

The initial installation was very difficult, it took approximately one week.

We did the implementation and maintenance of the solution ourselves.

The solution software does not require a license, it is free. The support contract is about $600 dollars. 

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.

We are an MSP. We have some customers who have on-prem networks, and they want to have their networks protected by a firewall. They are quite small customers with 10 to 50 users. We use pfSense in order to protect our customers' network, to make some network automation, and especially to make VPNs to some remote branches to enable remote users to get access to the enterprise network.

It is deployed on a private cloud and on-prem.

My technicians find the pfSense's web interface very useful. It is very easy to use. 

pfSense is very reliable and stable. We like the OpenVPN clients that can be deployed using pfSense very much.

I'd like to find something in pfSense that is more specific to URL filtering. We have customers who would like to filter their web traffic. They would like to be able to say to their employees, "You can surf the web, but you cannot get access to Facebook or other social media," or "You can surf the web, but you're not allowed to gamble or watch porn on the web." My technicians say that doing this kind of stuff with pfSense nowadays is not easy. They can implement some filters using IP addresses but not by using the names of the domains and categories. So, we are not able to exclude some categories from the allowed traffic, such as porn, gambling, etc. To do that, we have to use another product and another web filter that uses DNS. I know that there are some third-party products that could work with pfSense, but I'd like the native pfSense solution to do that.

I have been using this solution for five years.

I would rate pfSense a nine out of 10. It is a very good product.

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 are using pfSense as a personal firewall for our systems and network protection.

The solution is very easy to use and configure.

I have been using pfSense for approximately five years.

The solution is stable.

I am only using the solution for personal use and have not tried to scale it.

I have not been in contact with the technical support because everything has been easy with the solution and there is clear documentation available.

I have used other firewalls, such as Cisco and Netgate.

The initial setup is very simple and the configuration is user-friendly. It took me one day for the whole process.

I did the implementation of pfSense myself. The solution does not require much maintenance, we require sometimes to reboot the system.

I am using the community version of the solution and it is priced well. There is a cost of learning how to use the solution, if it was free it would be better.

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.

pfSense is a nice product, and I find that there's a lot of information out there. There are some good tutorials on YouTube and other websites with helpful information.

pfSense could improve by having a sandboxing feature that I have seen in SonicWall. However, maybe it is available I am not aware of it.

I have been using pfSense for approximately three years.

I have used the SonicWall solution. 

Sometimes firewalls can get a little complicated. I think some of the things about the setup could be a little bit clearer. Maybe something like a configuration wizard or something that would guide you on more in-depth projects.

I'm running pfSense on old hardware, it takes all of 10 minutes to install.

I did the implementation of the solution, it is not difficult.

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.