Malwarebytes vs. pfSense

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Malwarebytes
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Malwarebytes is a antimalware application for home and small businesses, which blocks viruses, malware, hackers, viruses, and malicious websites.
$39.96
Annually
pfSense
Score 9.5 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
MalwarebytespfSense
Editions & Modules
Premium (1 device)
$39.96
Annually
Premium (5 devices)
$80.04
Annually
Premium + Privacy
$99.96
Annually
Malwarebytes For Teams
$119.97
Annually
Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection
$699
Annually
Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection and Response
$849
Annually
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
MalwarebytespfSense
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
Features
MalwarebytespfSense
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Malwarebytes
-
Ratings
pfSense
7.6
11 Ratings
11% below category average
Identification Technologies00 Ratings5.010 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings7.08 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings4.011 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.09 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings9.510 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.011 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings7.011 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings6.011 Ratings
Best Alternatives
MalwarebytespfSense
Small Businesses
AVG AntiVirus Business Edition
AVG AntiVirus Business Edition
Score 7.6 out of 10
Sophos UTM
Sophos UTM
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.2 out of 10
Sophos UTM
Sophos UTM
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.2 out of 10
Sophos UTM
Sophos UTM
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
MalwarebytespfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
1.2
(51 ratings)
9.7
(24 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
MalwarebytespfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
Malwarebytes
Malwarebytes is definitely one of the top contenders in its field. As with any corporate software, there are headaches all along the way -- from implementation to daily use and support. And cost is also a factor. Although not inexpensive, Malwarebytes is comparable to its close competitors. Overall, the quality of the product shines through, and it does what it's intended to do...protect!
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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.
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Pros
Malwarebytes
  • Low system resources, it does not slow down the whole computer when scanning or when real-time protection is enabled
  • Quick and frequent updates, usually people hate updating, but for malware/viruses, you want to be updated as possible. It takes less than 15 seconds and usually does it automatically. They usually send a few updates a day as they find more.
  • Protection features actually work when visiting known bad websites. The page will be blocked and nothing will be downloaded. It may not be what the user wants, but it's what the user needs (as the user can't know every bad website)
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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.
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Cons
Malwarebytes
  • One of the main things that malwarebytes is missing as a company, is phone support for its clients. All support questions has to go thru email only. This is not acceptable for issues that needs to be resolved quickly.
  • There is an issue when installing the client on a machine, it has a set amount of time where the software can register with the management server. The issue with this is, with machines that are over a wide area network, slow connection speeds can cause the software not to register. When that happens, it never re attempts to register in the future.
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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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Malwarebytes
The last time we renewed Malwarebytes, we renewed for a 3 year renewal. That should describe the confidence we have in the product. Plus the cost savings impact year after year.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Usability
Malwarebytes
When you have a product that does the job that it describes or advertises, you have to love it. While the malware posture is always changing, we depend on products that we pay for year after year to protect us from threats, both known and unknown. I give this rating because Malwarebytes just works and you don't have to worry whether it is going to beat up other programs on your systems.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
The interface is simple, has sane defaults, and is consistent throughout.
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Support Rating
Malwarebytes
I honestly haven't needed support for Malwarebytes because I haven't had any problems with it, whatsoever. I am giving it a 9 rating because I haven't actually had an encounter or experience with customer service or support, so it's hard to rate the actual support team since I've never had the privilege of coming into contact with them.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Malwarebytes
Avast and Norton's products were part of the testing for us but the cost was very high for them and the products were not light on the machine. They took up a lot of memory and slowed the computers down. Malwarebytes although may lack some feature, is a very light software.
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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
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Return on Investment
Malwarebytes
  • All of our donor and clients' information is now online and we can now show that we are really trying to keep their information safe.
  • We are now more comfortable entering donations through our website.
  • Donors are now comfortable entering their charge card information on our website.
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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.
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ScreenShots