ExpressVPN vs. Norton VPN vs. pfSense

a colleague using it in china wrote up a detailed report of how he was unable to get out of china with it. he included screenshots and write-ups on his many trials and tribulations of dealing with tech support, trying to get thru the gfw, and he ultimately ended up using another solution altogether which DID work.

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When looking up the networks I can plug into there was only about 29 countries available whereas other VPN's I've used had quite a few more countries availble to use. This was bit of a bummer but not too cumbersome. Next in the area of not recording my browser history I believe that this is were the software excels.

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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.

• ExpressVPN was easy to install, and simple to connect to a VPN network.
• ExpressVPN is available for multiple platforms and multiple browsers.
• The price is reasonable for the added level of security it provides.

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• Protects personal data
• Secures information
• Allows testing of software in other regions

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• 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.

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• A better price point - it's not prohibitively expensive, but I'm not buying it again at that price point without a pressing need.

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• There are no clear instructions on how to use Wireguard
• Weak P2P support
• The network is quite small

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• 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.

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It's efficient and useful at what it does.

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Engineering team members can work from remote locations which helps companies to reduce their operational costs. It is easy to use so team members don't have to spend any extra time to use this. It helps team members access web pages which are otherwise not available due to location restrictions.

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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.

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More or less above average

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Never used the support

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

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nord was a player, too, but we buy both nord and expressvpn now. we have tried sort of a hodge-podge of all the typical commercial vendors out there. If I Was to compare them all, they'd all be approximately a rating of "meh", 50-50. I'm not a fan of any. We also tried self-hosting vpn's but that requires local tech staff we don't want to have to focus on having.

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Norton is more affordable and easier to use.

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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.

Excellently well engineered.

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• My customers are happy that I am using every security measure available. Increased sales.
• Productivity has not decreased, while security level has increased.
• The initial cost was reasonable.

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• I have recorded no hard numbers
• Business impact is notably privacy which is a positive
• Return on investment is negligable

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• 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.

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