Likelihood to Recommend We have both scenarios where we can describe that. For example, in the HQ, where we have about 3,000 users, Cisco IronPort Web Security Appliance is the ideal solution, because we can consolidate all the Internet access, policies, rules, etc. in the same box. However, if you have small offices with a few users, it's hard to justify one big and expensive box that could cost more than the whole office infrastructure.
Read full review Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
Because pfSense is built around open source software, it is very convenient to be able to deploy in the event of hardware failure. We once had a client with a proprietary router that failed. While the router was under warranty, the expected time for the new router to arrive was about 2 weeks. We decided to implement pfSense for the client as a stop gap and ultimately ended up deploying the full enterprise appliance. Being able to get up and running using commodity hardware was a huge win for the client. We've also had a great amount of success deploying pfSense hardware at apartment complexes. The DNS resolver works great and we've had no issues handling multiple VLANs with various DHCP scopes on it. Finally, we've had clients that require having a failover cluster. Utilizing the built in CARP capabilities, we've been able to provide a very robust failover system that requires little maintenance and no downtime in the event of equipment failure.
Read full review Pros SMA gave us central control over multiple servers, simplifying management. Performance of the Appliance VM exceeded that of our old physical appliance-based solution. Convenient licensing for virtualized environments that allows easy scaling. Read full review Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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. Read full review Cons I think that the interface could need updates to adapt it to a much more current system, achieve quick access to necessary tools and adapt the platform to a much more customizable and comfortable system to work with. It is undoubtedly a platform that is worth having, however, the license costs could be better adjusted to small businesses so that it can be accessed more easily. It could be a bit complex to use, the use of codes is quite extensive, it could be adjusted to something much more practical but just as efficient. Read full review Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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. Read full review Usability Because it's one of those products you almost don't realize it exists from the end user. From the administrator perspective, you can do everything on its web interface and it's very intuitive to manage, once you know the concepts behind identities, acls, etc. Also, once you build the control structure, I mean, you link 'local' groups with your own Active Directory groups, as we did here, you don't need to be managing those things on the appliance itself.
Read full review Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
The interface is simple, has sane defaults, and is consistent throughout.
Read full review Support Rating Our experience with Cisco's support was terrible. Other than the fact that they don't respond to service-related emails with urgency, they also keep on changing the policies that affected us. Recently, they came up with a new look for the same software, which was insanely slow. Renewal of keys for the old interface took months. Overall, the support was not very friendly from the users' point of view.
Read full review Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
Alternatives Considered At home I have a McAfee service that does similar tasks and helps manage the users of my internet. McAfee seems more user friendly and easier to set exceptions.
Read full review Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
While you can get the performance out of other products, pfSense offers the unique ability to put other services on the same device. Products such as Untagle's NG Firewall and SonicWall's TZ series offer cost effective options for firewall and VPN services, having incoming load balancing and connection proxies on the same device as the firewall offers extremely easy configuration and day to day management of network services
Read full review Return on Investment Security! Security! Security! We are financial company that work with very sensitive information. A lot of unsafe traffic was blocked on the Cisco IronPort WSA over years of using it. We did not earn on it but absolutely sure that we did not lose 'gazillion' of dollars being infected or scammed. Easy to configure and use, no need to teach new personnel how work with this product (hopefully saving time = saving money). Unfortunately the price of license subscription made financial managers push IT dept. to look for something cheaper. Read full review Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
Using pfSense has allowed us to build a professional network in our small office without needing a lot of proprietary hardware, saving thousands of dollars in IT infrastructure investment. The cost for using pfSense is free, so it's a great option for those who don't have a large IT budget pfSense utilizes all of the industry standard services to provide all of it's functionality, so support for service-level issues is readily available Because of how much work has been put into pfSense to make it rock solid and reliable, we're able to support our network with minimal IT staffing, saving us thousands of dollars/year in personnel alone. Read full review ScreenShots