pfSense vs. Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
pfSense
Score 9.2 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
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Stonesoft firewalls were acquired and rebranded as McAfee Firewall Enterprise (MFE), then divested by McAfee and acquired by Forcepoint in 2016, and have reached end of life (EOL).N/A
Pricing
pfSenseStonesoft Firewall (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
pfSenseStonesoft Firewall (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
pfSenseStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
pfSenseStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
pfSense
7.6
11 Ratings
11% below category average
Stonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Identification Technologies5.110 Ratings00 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Inspection4.111 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy-based Controls10.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP7.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall Management Console9.510 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting and Logging8.011 Ratings00 Ratings
VPN10.011 Ratings00 Ratings
High Availability10.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Stateful Inspection7.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Proxy Server6.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
pfSenseStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Small Businesses
WatchGuard Network Security
WatchGuard Network Security
Score 8.9 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
pfSenseStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.7
(24 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
pfSenseStonesoft Firewall (Discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Discontinued Products
Any scenario where a dedicated firewall administrator is on staff and a secure firewall solution that requires high availability is needed will be a good solution for the McAfee Firewall Enterprise product. The McAfee Firewall Enterprise however comes with some of its own parlance that is different from other vendors and does require some comfort on the administrators side when it comes to working in the command line. Added knowledge of protocols and how they interact is a must for any firewall admin but particularly for the McAfee Firewall Enterprise product due to its flexible nature. If the environment is to be mostly hands off where a very limited rule set is to be configured and not likely to change often, I would defer to a different product
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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
  • Based on the SecureComputing Sidewinder firewalls, the McAfee Firewall Enterprise does similar backend containerization of each service which provides for added security in the unlikely event of failures or breeches.
  • Tie in reporting services (if used by the admin) provide very granular details on rules accessed and the firewalls response to the requests.
  • Configurable options are plentiful. Unbound DNS can be configured on each "burb" (SecureComputing/McAfee parlance for interface), similar options for sendmail while rulesets can be configured at the application level down to simple IP-filter making options for enhancing security as well as troubleshooting equally as useful.
  • Full control over shell for scripting and/or scheduling (cron) purposes.
  • Solid HA and patching architecture.
  • Support was always helpful, knowledgeable and insightful (especially the staff that migrated from SecureComputing).
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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
  • For an application-layer firewall the applications supported (at the time I managed them) were too few and would need to be expanded and the application ruleset needed to be expanded as well.
  • The remote access VPN client configuration was overly complex for the average user and would need to be supplemented with a configuration file that had already been generated. Other solutions from CheckPoint or Cisco ASA are not as complex for end user remote access.
  • Enhancing the GUI with a builtin "packet capture" feature would be useful for administrators not familiar with tcpdump.
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Usability
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
The interface is simple, has sane defaults, and is consistent throughout.
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Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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
Read full review
Discontinued Products
Compared to other firewalls I've managed (Palo Alto, Cisco ASA & CheckPoint) I would say that McAfee Firewall Enterprise was probably at the time not the leader in its field however it is a product that proved its reliability and flexibility over the other vendors. The addition of many new features usually comes as a detriment to some other area (restricted CLI, decreased logging etc.). In my experience this product gave the flexibility and options that the organization needed.
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Return on Investment
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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Discontinued Products
  • In its highly available configuration the impact on any business objective has been positive given the fact that any downtime of the firewall would negatively impact all business objectives.
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