ExpressVPN vs. pfSense

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ExpressVPN
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
ExpressVPN headquartered in the British Virgin Islands offers privacy and security apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and routers.
$8.32
per month
pfSense
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs. As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent…
$179
per appliance
Pricing
ExpressVPNpfSense
Editions & Modules
12 Months
$8.32
per month
6 Months
$9.99
per month
1 Month
$12.95
per month
SG-1100
$179
per appliance
SG-2100
$229
per appliance
SG-3100
$399
per appliance
SG-5100
$699
per appliance
XG-7100-DT
$899
per appliance
XG-7100-1U
$999
per appliance
XG-1537
$1,949
per appliance
XG-1541
$2,649
per appliance
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ExpressVPNpfSense
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll plans include all ExpressVPN apps, 24/7 customer support, and high-speed unlimited bandwidth. All plans are covered by a 100% money-back guarantee for the first 30 days of service.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ExpressVPNpfSense
Considered Both Products
ExpressVPN
Chose ExpressVPN
Its multi-platform support allowed it to be installed and run on TVs, projectors, laptops, phones, and tablets with relative ease. The account login and management system could've been better, but it worked.
Chose ExpressVPN
I took a look at NordVPN, but the ratings for ExpressVPN were higher. More servers and faster transfer times made it a simple decision. I am glad I made the right choice.
pfSense
Chose pfSense
Both products listed above, are very great solutions, but payed ones. If you are looking for open source firewall solution, pfSense is the one. Based on FreeBSD, it has strong security features and is very easy to deploy, configure and manage. pfSense also plays network simple …
Chose pfSense
PFSense is not a fully featured and supported enterprise-grade solution; however, it does offer a lot of similar functionality at a fraction of the cost for more minor requirements.
Chose pfSense
Fortigate offers an extensive set of features including the Unified Threat Management and a lot of FortiGuard services . pfSense is extremely modular, probably because of its open source "flavour"m but relies on community support. Fortinet ROI depends on the reduced …
Chose pfSense
pfSense always wins in the licensing realm. It requires little or no licensing to run and run forever. No ids/ips licensing, no advanced feature license, no remote access licensing. Download the community edition or buy the Netgate hardware and you are set going forward. There …
Chose pfSense
PfSense beats all other solutions at its price point, hands-down. You can get more features with far less performance, or same performance for much higher cost.
Chose pfSense
pfSense does almost all what the other brands do and the CE Edition is free even if complete.
Chose pfSense
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 …
Chose pfSense
Overall, pfSense is the most complete solution in terms of features included even though it currently lack of a centralised management interface.The Ubiquiti firewall offering is often appealing being well integrated within the Ubiquiti dashboard and it is often a solution of …
Chose pfSense
We were using Sophos XG Firewall in our environment before but we need a product that is customizable & provides low cost high security features. pfSense provided us high security features with customizable options as it's kernel is based on freeBSD.
Chose pfSense
We were using Sophos XG firewall in our environment but when it comes to cost it's more expensive with limited features. After using [pfSense] we are getting more security features at less cost. After pfSense provides a bundle of security features such as anti-spamming, …
Chose pfSense
pfSense offers more options and scales very easily.
Chose pfSense
pfSense is just a more flexible, lower-cost solution—it can be installed (if you wish) on just about any x86 hardware or even virtual machines - the community edition is free and so enables rapid prototyping and low-cost prototyping and lab build out—something that isn't …
Chose pfSense
pfSense is a lot cheaper and has higher firewall throughput per dollar than "enterprise" network appliances. It's also significantly easier to configure and learn. It may not have some of the "enterprise" features or the support level that someone like Cisco has, but for small …
Chose pfSense
pfSense itself is free and can be installed on just about any hardware so from a hardware cost perspective it can beat out anybody. In terms of features it's above many pro-sumer/small business solutions like Ubiquiti. It can't really stand against high-end gear like Cisco but …
Chose pfSense
First of all, I don't need to be a Cisco professional to manage VPN, load balance, multiple WAN/LAN, Firewall and etc. pfSense has an easy-to-use web interface and I can do everything and add packaged add-on services. Moreover, for Small & Medium Enterprise, IT budget is …
Chose pfSense
Pfsense seemed to always be cheaper and just as good as its competitors.
Chose pfSense
I have not seen a single thing that these other products do that pfSense does not. In fact, the performance/throughput of pfSense is better in my opinion.
Chose pfSense
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 …
Chose pfSense
pfSense is a new and innovative platform that has learned from the errors of older systems, which helps it cover the needs that aren't covered by Smoothwall.

Chose 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 …
Chose pfSense
It's an open source solution can support from 50 to 700 user without sweating and with the half of the standard bundle investment that will take to deploy a Fortigate UTM, or a Cisco ASA, also a Sophos UTM that are quite remarkable units but to pFSense saves you money and will …
Chose pfSense
Real competition was between Pfsense and OpnSense that integrates first the bootstrap Twitter framework. But with OpSense there are configurations that create some problems with a specific client (we've experienced that by creating an IPSec tunnel both with OpSense and …
Chose pfSense
I've used a number of routers like Cisco, Sonicwall, Juniper, Home based routers, etc. pfSense is like most routers but with the benefit of load balancing and multi-wan. Well many support multi-wan but load balancing is usually a separate device like an BIGiP F5 or Cisco CSS.
Features
ExpressVPNpfSense
Virtual Private Network
Comparison of Virtual Private Network features of Product A and Product B
ExpressVPN
8.4
Ratings
6% below category average
pfSense
-
Ratings
AES 256-bit Encryption8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Kill Switch10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Platform Support10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Split Tunneling8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
IP Address Masking6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
No-Logs Policy10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Server Locations9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic Wi-Fi Protection9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Simultaneous Connections7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer Support Services6.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
ExpressVPN
-
Ratings
pfSense
8.9
Ratings
3% above category average
Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ExpressVPNpfSense
Small Businesses
Norton 360
Norton 360
Score 7.3 out of 10
Sophos UTM
Sophos UTM
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.1 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.1 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ExpressVPNpfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.7
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ExpressVPNpfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
ExpressVPN is well suited to access APIs or web pages which are restricted to certain locations. This enables teams in other locations to connect using a VPN and access these resources for testing purposes. ExpressVPN is also supported on mobile so you can access these resources from a mobile when you are away from your desk.
Read full review
pfSense is incredibly budget friendly and capable for organizations of all sizes. My specific scenario, working for a non-profit organization, requires budget consciences decisions without compromising security and function. pfSense has helped tremendously in accomplishing this. It specifically tackles advanced routing, static routing, remote access, intrusion prevention, in a single platform, mostly available for free.
Read full review
Pros
  • 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.
Read full review
  • 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 would like the disconnect to be instantaneous. It is not.
Read full review
  • 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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
It's efficient and useful at what it does.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Usability
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.
Read full review
pfSense can be a very elementary firewall but can also be as comples as you want, according your needs. I'd always reccomend a HA solution when used in a company and, for bigger companies, commercial license is recommended. It's also very adptable to everyone's needs.
Read full review
Performance
More or less above average
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Never used the support
Read full review
pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
I took a look at NordVPN, but the ratings for ExpressVPN were higher. More servers and faster transfer times made it a simple decision. I am glad I made the right choice.
Read full review
PFSense is not a fully featured and supported enterprise-grade solution; however, it does offer a lot of similar functionality at a fraction of the cost for more minor requirements.
Read full review
Scalability
Excellently well engineered.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • 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.
Read full review
  • pfSense has only had positive impacts on our company. We are not a huge company so not having to buy licenses to get all these features have been excellent.
  • I was not around when our current sysadmin decided to use pfSense, but I am assuming from day one it was probably a 100% return on investment since it does everything we need it to and it was open source software.
Read full review
ScreenShots