What users are saying about
23 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.5 out of 100
Based on 23 reviews and ratings
59 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.9 out of 100
Based on 59 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
- pfSense ranks higher in 1 feature set: Firewall
Firewall
8.4
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
84%

8.5
pfSense
85%
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series ranks higher in 6/11 features
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series ranks higher in 6/11 features
Identification Technologies
7.0
70%
1 Rating

8.7
87%
8 Ratings
Content Inspection
9.0
90%
1 Rating

7.3
73%
9 Ratings
Policy-based Controls
9.0
90%
1 Rating

8.4
84%
9 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP
6.0
60%
1 Rating

7.9
79%
8 Ratings
Firewall Management Console
10.0
100%
1 Rating

9.7
97%
8 Ratings
Reporting and Logging
9.0
90%
1 Rating

8.6
86%
9 Ratings
VPN
10.0
100%
1 Rating

8.8
88%
9 Ratings
High Availability
10.0
100%
1 Rating

8.9
89%
9 Ratings
Stateful Inspection
8.0
80%
1 Rating

8.9
89%
9 Ratings
Proxy Server
6.0
60%
1 Rating

8.2
82%
9 Ratings
Visualization Tools
N/A
0 Ratings

7.8
78%
7 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- pfSense is rated higher in 1 area: Likelihood to Recommend
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
90%
1 Rating

9.1
pfSense
91%
22 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
The Cisco [Firepower] 2100 [Series] is an easy sell for anyone looking. You already know Cisco excels in the security department, but now that firepower lives right on the box and inline with the rest of the firewall data flow you can save yourself a lot of time and headaches. Unless you cant quite afford Cisco's 2100 line, there's not much reason to go with the competition.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employeespfSense
For fast-growing or SME companies, pfSense is quite suitable because pfSense already had many advanced features such as VPN and multiple WAN / LAN. As a result, we just need to pay for expensive router frequently to upgrade our infrastructure.
IT & T Manager
Madison (Hong Kong) LimitedRetail, 51-200 employees
Pros
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
- Nice HTML5 web interface instead of the old java client
- Many added features over the ASA
- Firepower built in and faster than before

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employeespfSense
- pfSense is an excellent firewall - It logs all of your traffic. It has packages you can install to snort bad traffic.
- pfSense has a tool called "p0f" which allows you to see what type of OS is trying to connect to you. You can filter these results and you can also block a specific OS from connecting to you.
- pfSense is an excellent load-balancer: (Multi-WAN and Server Load Balancing) The fail-over/aggregation works very well. This is perfect if your business uses multiple ISP's to ensure your customers are always able to access their data. Also helps with bandwidth distribution as well.
- VPN's - I am not entirely sure if this package was free with pfSense, but it does offer the ability to use OpenVPN which is what I am familiar with.
- They also have IPsec in the settings as well, but I am not familiar with that enough to go into any detail with it.
- As I mentioned I do use OpenVPN the only thing I don't care for with it is I can create OpenVPN configs for each user I want to be able to VPN into the network and I assumed each one would be "unique" but this does not seem to be the case. I could be doing it wrong, but if I create a config for a specific employee I would expect only that employee should be able to use that config, but I have been able to login to everyone that I made using my credentials.
- I mentioned earlier that pfSense had a GUI.
- I personally really think it is cool because it has a bunch of reporting graphs for monitoring your networks. I think when I become the full-time admin at the company I am going to try to talk them into getting me a TV I can mount on the wall and display all the graphs and real-time info pfSense shows so I can monitor what is going on with the network(s) at all times. Plus I think it would look rad.
Technical Support Specialist
TimeTrak Systems, Inc.Computer Software, 11-50 employees
Cons
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
- Cisco patches bugs quickly but patches are slow to install and reboot
- Smart licensing is getting better but still can be troublesome
- Some weird visual interface glitches that require clicking the same options a few extra times

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employeespfSense
- There is no API for making changes. This can be a hindrance in environments where auto-deploying something needs firewall rules or HAProxy configs updated. Since all settings are stored in an XML file and then configs are generated from that, even manually updating config files cannot be done.
- Beware that some network cards can have issues. pfSense is based on FreeBSD, so it's best to look on their compatibility list before deploying.
Information Technology Manager
TimeTrak Systems, Inc.Computer Software, 11-50 employees
Pricing Details
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$0 per appliance
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series Editions & Modules
Edition
Firepower 2100 | 3,000-20,0001 |
---|
- per appliance
Additional Pricing Details
—pfSense
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$179 per appliance
pfSense Editions & Modules
Edition
SG-1100 | $1791 |
---|---|
SG-2100 | $2291 |
SG-3100 | $3991 |
SG-5100 | $6991 |
XG-7100-DT | $8991 |
XG-7100-1U | $9991 |
XG-1537 | $1,9491 |
XG-1541 | $2,6491 |
- per appliance
Additional Pricing Details
—Alternatives Considered
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
No answers on this topic
pfSense
Before pfSense we were using consumer and small business rated network appliances from Linksys, Cisco, Buffalo and Netgear. We were replacing them on average of every 6-12 months because they'd fail or would offer poor wifi availability.Switching to pfSense allowed us to use professional grade switches and wifi access points, offloading all of the services that the consumer grade products took care of, onto pfSense (DHCP, DNS, routing, firewall, VPN, etc).
Chief Technology Officer
LoudDoor, LLCMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees
Return on Investment
Cisco Firepower 2100 Series
- Simplifying our lives by reducing our time spent in a console
- Being comfortable knowing the full might of Cisco is safeguarding your network
- A good excuse to bump up the IT budget in the next fiscal year!

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employeespfSense
- Moving to a FWaaS solution installed on a decent computer the initial investment was moderate to cover 50 to 250 users, but still being cheaper that a Fortinet, Cisco ASA, or a Sophos UTM.
- Paying only for support can be a double edge knife, cause you need to identify what's the goal of the request, or your drown into a an endless list of requirements.
- To stay in the top with the half of a regular investment pFSense gives a wide variety of plugins that will give you a deep knowledge of your security flaws and strong points.
IT Manager
Stoneleaf Construction LLCConstruction, 51-200 employees