pfSense vs. Surfshark

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.

At the price point this product sits at, it's well worth the additional layer of security. Surf shark isnt a security silver bullet, more of a additional security weapon to add to the arsenal and used properly, can augment and compliment your overall security posture. Using the search function when searching on sensitive subjects is helpful, using the site checker to ascertain for breaches is a valuble tool and the VPN is always on and is solid

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• VPN works very well
• Checks sites that have been breached in real time
• Allows you to search (like google) in privacy

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• It can sometimes not play well with some websites
• updates sometimes a little buggy

Incentivized

Because we have renewed and it is constantly improved

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Product is great, but occasional issues with some sites. The user interface is clean and simple to navigate and work through. Making it fairly idiot proof is welcome for a techno novice like myself! All of the key tools are listed on the lefthand side and are easy to click through and activate/use

Incentivized

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

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.

Surfshark's VPN (Virtual Private Network) is simply better in every way than any of the competitors that we have used every time. This is the jewel in the crown of the product. With the tools such as the search function, site breach detection and other tools such as antivirus etc it makes it a compelling suite

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• It allows us to bolster our security posture
• secures our wifi when travelling
• allows us to make sure sites haven't suffered recent breaches and if they have to take remediation action

Incentivized