Bitdefender GravityZone vs. pfSense

Bitdefender had been a great replacement for our previous product - it was painless to make the switch with very few issues. We tested in a VM lab a few different offerings, but Bitdefender was the one that covered everything we required at the time and allowed us to be able to expand the offering simply.

Incentivized

I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

• Once installed, Bitdefender [GravityZone] runs silently in the background with little to no need for user interaction.
• The cloud-based console provides for easy computer management and deployment.
• Bitdefender [GravityZone] is extremely flexible, with a policy-based system wherein different profiles can be created (i.e. a policy to deactivate the firewall, a policy to allow for admin control on a machine, etc.) and pushed out to individual computers.
• Computers can be grouped into different categories, with different policies automatically deployed to each category.
• Bitdefender [GravityZone] is relatively resource-light and runs well even on lower-end computers.

Incentivized

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

• Who do I ask? This is my chief complaint is once the initial licenses were purchased through Bit Defender, there was no one to contact that could help navigate some of the initial questions I had with regard to specific policies to implement for our file server. The parent web site is, well, hard to navigate when one is trying to "learn" the system.
• The second issue is in increasing the licenses. It took several days for the parent company (by contact and phone) to inform me that they could not increase the licenses and I would have to go through a private vendor. There was no intent to connect me to a vendor or provide a vendor list until I asked specifically. YET I continue to get email from the parent company reminding me to pay an annual fee for the licenses purchase through the private vendor. The parent company can see the number of licenses yet did not sell them to me.
• Gravity Zone Dashboard, while excellent for those who have experience, is not particularly intuitive for those who have never used it. There does not seem to be a lot of documentation for those responsible for implementation.

Incentivized

• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

Incentivized

It works. I rely heavily on my vendors to provide a product that works, is easy to implement, and that they support. As well as be a decent value for the money

Incentivized

On the whole I find the product very easy to use but some features need me to do some digging about in the console menus to find everything. I think if the interface used a bit less jargon and more clear plain language, it would be easier to find how to do things within the console.

Incentivized

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

Incentivized

Yes its very available. The software continues to protect you even if you are offline. It constantly runs in the background and will check for updates again once back online.

Incentivized

The console is quite fast and responsive, and once you start to get used to it, it is easy to use and you can see the main dashboard status at a glance. You can then dig deeper into the individual Companies / Endpoint clients and check the status of each. The software itself is not heavy on system resources in each PC.

Incentivized

Support is an area Bitdefender has always struggled with. While their products work great, the GravityZone dashboard is very technical in nature. If you aren't IT inclined, it could be difficult to setup. While most times support is helpful, we tend to work with them over email because of their very thick accent, they are hard to understand over the phone.

Incentivized

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

The trainer went through everything in the console an showed me what each setting did. If I had any questions on how to do something, he showed me where to go and how to do it. The trainer was very helpful and knowledgeable, and also professional and patient. Highly recommended.

Incentivized

The trainer went through everything in the console an showed me what each setting did. If I had any questions on how to do something, he showed me where to go and how to do it. The trainer was very helpful and knowledgeable, and also professional and patient. Highly recommended.

Incentivized

We were a Kaspersky shop for years. Kaspersky was a resource hog and it didn't even block half of what was thrown at it. We had more outbreaks and more end-user complaints in a year of Kaspersky then we have had in almost three years of Bitdefender.

Incentivized

Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

I give it this rating because one you have the console running, you can add or remove whole companies, add computer endpoints (and remove them), and easily create and deploy endpoint packages to the machines that need the software. Once installed, the software starts to report back to the Bitdefender servers and the number of active licences is then seen and billed.

Incentivized

• The ROI for Bitdefender is hard to quantify except that it requires very little maintenance time from our staff.
• We've spent no time troubleshooting user complaints or issues from users, so it has been a big time-saver over our previously used anti-malware software.
• Bitdefender's customer service is usually pretty good and also very responsive, so I don't have to wait by the phone or to keep checking email to resolve a problem--although our issues have been mostly informational and not a problem with functionality.

Incentivized

• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

Incentivized