pfSense vs. RackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
pfSense
Score 8.8 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
RackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Score 1.4 out of 10
N/A
RackFoundry was a firewall solution with VPN, SIEM, automated vulnerability scanning and log management features scaled for SME’s. It has been discontinued and is no longer available.N/A
Pricing
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
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
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
pfSense
8.6
9 Ratings
1% above category average
RackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies8.88 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection7.69 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls8.59 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console9.78 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging8.89 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN8.89 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability9.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.99 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server8.29 Ratings00 Ratings
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Comparison of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features of Product A and Product B
pfSense
-
Ratings
RackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
1.0
3 Ratings
155% below category average
Centralized event and log data collection00 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Correlation00 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Event and log normalization/management00 Ratings1.06 Ratings
Deployment flexibility00 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools00 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Custom dashboards and workspaces00 Ratings1.06 Ratings
Host and network-based intrusion detection00 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Best Alternatives
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Small Businesses
WatchGuard Network Security
WatchGuard Network Security
Score 9.3 out of 10
AlienVault USM
AlienVault USM
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WatchGuard Network Security
WatchGuard Network Security
Score 9.3 out of 10
Splunk Enterprise
Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.2 out of 10
Microsoft Sentinel
Microsoft Sentinel
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(21 ratings)
1.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
For fast-growing or SME companies, pfSense is quite suitable because pfSense already had many advanced features such as VPN and multiple WAN / LAN. As a result, we just need to pay for expensive router frequently to upgrade our infrastructure.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
RackFoundry Total Security Management (TSM) is suited for most companies that have the same challenge as my team had. If you are looking to purchase one security tool and spend most of your allocated budget then I would not recommend this for you. However, if you are looking for something close to a single pane of glass, (granted there is no such thing) this solution does come close as they have the main components built in such as their FW/IPS/IDS/SIEM. Before selecting RackFoundry we had two options which were: 1) Upgrade our current solution and spend an overbearing amount 2) Search for new vendors and maybe procure 1-3 devices and then manually integrate them. Because this was a unified console and integration between devices was simple, we were able to obtain 4-6 security functions and we even had some sense of security visibility via the SIEM. It's not as powerful as Splunk or LogRhythm, but it definitely does the job
Read full review
Pros
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • pfSense is an excellent firewall - It logs all of your traffic. It has packages you can install to snort bad traffic.
  • pfSense has a tool called "p0f" which allows you to see what type of OS is trying to connect to you. You can filter these results and you can also block a specific OS from connecting to you.
  • pfSense is an excellent load-balancer: (Multi-WAN and Server Load Balancing) The fail-over/aggregation works very well. This is perfect if your business uses multiple ISP's to ensure your customers are always able to access their data. Also helps with bandwidth distribution as well.
  • VPN's - I am not entirely sure if this package was free with pfSense, but it does offer the ability to use OpenVPN which is what I am familiar with.
  • They also have IPsec in the settings as well, but I am not familiar with that enough to go into any detail with it.
  • As I mentioned I do use OpenVPN the only thing I don't care for with it is I can create OpenVPN configs for each user I want to be able to VPN into the network and I assumed each one would be "unique" but this does not seem to be the case. I could be doing it wrong, but if I create a config for a specific employee I would expect only that employee should be able to use that config, but I have been able to login to everyone that I made using my credentials.
  • I mentioned earlier that pfSense had a GUI.
  • I personally really think it is cool because it has a bunch of reporting graphs for monitoring your networks. I think when I become the full-time admin at the company I am going to try to talk them into getting me a TV I can mount on the wall and display all the graphs and real-time info pfSense shows so I can monitor what is going on with the network(s) at all times. Plus I think it would look rad.
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Discontinued Products
  • Making promises about a service and product.
  • Advertising a good price and offering great services.
  • Supposedly offer 24/7 365 level 1 threat triaging.
Read full review
Cons
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • 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
Discontinued Products
  • It has been my first year with Rack Foundry and at this point I have to say everything has been smooth, from implementation to support.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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 professional grade switches and wifi access points, offloading all of the services that the consumer grade products took care of, onto pfSense (DHCP, DNS, routing, firewall, VPN, etc).
Read full review
Discontinued Products
Well I have experience with the big names: SecureWorks, IBM and Splunk. Individually their logging tools are much better than RackFoundry's Total Security Management. This is great for large corporations and urban cities, however not so great for municipalities, mid size businesses and companies who fluctuate between 1-7 members on their IT staff. Why? Because it takes too much of their resources and integration with other products gets a little rough as you will need to configure your preferences to theirs. When a company has stability it is great to have a name brand product, however renewals and upgrade costs can be taxing to an organization.
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Return on Investment
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • Moving to a FWaaS solution installed on a decent computer the initial investment was moderate to cover 50 to 250 users, but still being cheaper that a Fortinet, Cisco ASA, or a Sophos UTM.
  • Paying only for support can be a double edge knife, cause you need to identify what's the goal of the request, or your drown into a an endless list of requirements.
  • To stay in the top with the half of a regular investment pFSense gives a wide variety of plugins that will give you a deep knowledge of your security flaws and strong points.
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Discontinued Products
  • Overall the product has had a negative impact. Not necessarily on our environment but in the amount of time it has taken to deploy.
Read full review
ScreenShots