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
SonicWall TZ
Score8.4 out of 10
N/A
SonicWall TZ is an entry to mid-tier NGFW for small to mid-sized companies. It is a Unified Threat Management solution, with additional native decryption and deep-packet inspection capabilities.
IT Consultant in Information Technology at A24.io (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees)
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 …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
CIO in Information Technology at The National Beta Club (Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees)
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Information Technology Manager in Information Technology at TimeTrak Systems, Inc. (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)
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 …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior Systems Engineer in Information Technology at Real Estate Digital (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees)
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
SonicWall
Verified User
Chose SonicWall TZ
SonicWall TZ was a no brainer to choose over FortiGate or pfSense. We had used FortiGate units in the past and, in our experience, the interface is terrible, both on the device and the cloud side. There are constant updates that require you to jump through hoops to upgrade and …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
Based on my experience, this is a solid platform for a small to mid sized company, especially when there is someone who has IT experience, or can get outsourced IT help. I would not recommend for someone who is a technology novice. Also, this is a competent device for someone who is looking to add VPN services for remote workers.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
There are Service Bundles in SonicWall TZ that are Unlicensed and do not know why they have not be Activated - would need help to further understand benefits
Do not know why Standard Support is Unlicensed
WiFi range of TZ270W is very limited - need to add Access Points or Extended to obtain adequate coverage
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Overall the new interface is very logical and easy to navigate. We did struggle at first coming from the older interface and finding our way around the new. But our new users found it very simple to find what they were looking for. One negative we do all struggle with is packet cpature not always being clear how its set/what is being monitored. this could do with more information on teh intial page instead of having to look for it
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Once you get to a competent technician the support experience is better. But I have found that the lower tiers of support are very slow to respond (like 1 email per day) and you typically have to re-explain yourself a couple times before they get it. I have not used Phone support, and that may be a better experience.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
SonicWall and WatchGuard are both fine appliances, but I am accustomed to the Barracuda NG. The Barracuda Control Center is so powerful and useful that it beats out the other two. SonicWall does a great job of dividing up firewall rules and NAT policies, but this is a preference among engineers.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
