pfSense vs. RackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
pfSense
Score 9.4 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
7.6
13 Ratings
12% below category average
RackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies6.311 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.410 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection5.712 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls7.913 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP5.511 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console9.512 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.413 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN8.813 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability9.713 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.312 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server6.613 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 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Deployment flexibility00 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools00 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Custom dashboards and workspaces00 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Host and network-based intrusion detection00 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Best Alternatives
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Small Businesses
SonicWall NSA Series
SonicWall NSA Series
Score 9.0 out of 10
AlienVault USM
AlienVault USM
Score 7.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
InsightIDR
InsightIDR
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
InsightIDR
InsightIDR
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.4
(25 ratings)
1.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
pfSenseRackFoundry Total Security Management (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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.
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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
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Pros
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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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.
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Cons
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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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.
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Usability
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.
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Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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.
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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)
  • 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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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.
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ScreenShots