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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Juniper MX Series

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/AJuniper Networks describes their MX series as a robust portfolio of SDN-enabled routing platforms that provide system capacity, density, security, and performance with longevity. MX Series routers support digital transformation for service providers, cloud operators, and enterprises.N/A

    pfSense

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ApfSense 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
    Juniper MX SeriespfSense
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Juniper MX SeriespfSense
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Juniper MX SeriespfSense
    Considered Both Products
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answer on this topic
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Would buy again
    16 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    17 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    16 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    16 Answers
    Features
    Juniper MX SeriespfSense
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Juniper MX Series and pfSense
    Feature
    Juniper MX Series
    -
    Ratings
    pfSense
    8.9
    17 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.714 Ratings
    Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.714 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings9.216 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.717 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.913 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings9.516 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.417 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings9.117 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings9.416 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings10.015 Ratings
    Proxy Server00 Ratings8.415 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Juniper MX SeriespfSense
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cisco Routers
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Routers
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Juniper MX SeriespfSense
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.5
    (4 ratings)
    9.3
    (30 ratings)
    Usability
    7.9
    (3 ratings)
    9.7
    (8 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Juniper MX SeriespfSense
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    I think the Juniper MX series is a fantastic option for data center connectivity and places that aren't very high touch, but need good reliability and uptime. These switches are a bit more difficult to use day to day, but their reliability and robustness make them a great fit for data centers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    • It's a robust platform, very resilient. It handles large traffic flows well.
    • It's a flexible architecture, it can be configured with provider or enterprise options (or both!)
    • It has an excellent versioning system, simple commit/confirm/rollback procedures!
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    • Storm Control needs to have a way to see what going on in the CLI in a more straight forward fashion
    • They need a GUI interface much like the old Nortel Network equipment.
    • Not the routers fault but support costs have increased.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    after deployment i rarely get fault tickets only work for hardware upgrades.
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    No answers on this topic
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    We preferred Juniper over Cisco for our WAN/Internet routing needs for a number of reasons. First was the price, the Juniper offering was much more competitive than Cisco's. Secondly, was feature set, Juniper's implementation of routing protocols, routing tables, and forwarding options are better thought-out than Cisco's (not to mention Juniper's longstanding use of commit/confirm/rollback features, which Cisco has only started to use recently, and only on some of their products).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
    • We were able to run Juniper MX switches for much longer without updates than Cisco switches.
    • Less vulnerabilities mean more uptime and less upgrading, which is great for data center use cases.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    • 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
    Read full review
    ScreenShots