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
Untangle NG Firewall
Score7 out of 10
N/A
Untangle NG Firewall is an open-source firewall and gateway security platform. It offers a free core firewall platform with paid add-ons, and a cloud-based management platform with a variety of deployment options for smaller teams.
Director in Information Technology at IT AND GENERAL (Computer Networking, 1-10 employees)
Chose pfSense
Overall, pfSense is the most complete solution in terms of features included even though it currently lack of a centralised management interface.The Ubiquiti firewall offering is often appealing being well integrated within the Ubiquiti dashboard and it is often a solution of …
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
Owner in Information Technology at Ingram Computer Services (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees)
Chose Untangle NG Firewall
Untangle NG Firewall has a partnership with third parties to provide an amazing suite of applications. You pay for those. With free software, you have to wait for it to be updated. With Unifi, the hardware was too underpowered to do anything meaningful. I don't mind the monthly …
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
Verified User
Chose Untangle NG Firewall
We selected untangle NG due to the flexibility, and the rack based architecture. Period.
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
PfSense and Untangle NG are competing firewall solutions with options for SMBs, remote workers and home offices, as well as larger campuses, designed to help users manage and protect their networks against attacks (e.g. phishing, malware). PfSense software is available through an open source Community Edition, or the pfSense Plus licensed edition. These can be bundled with relatively low priced Netgate pfSense security gateway appliances, priced and oriented around the needs of small to medium sized businesses and branch offices. Untangle, also catering to small businesses, offers a collection of NG Firewall Apps to give users custom, a la carte protection, that provides the user just what his small businesses needs, without undue cost and bloat. Untangle also offers their z series appliances that come pre-loaded with NG Firewall, packaged and ready for small businesses. There is also a higher tier edition for corporate campuses and data centers.
Features
PfSense and Untangle NG Firewall support core network security features such as spam or GeoIP blocking, VPN functionality, WAN balancing, etc. but users describe a few standout features that distinguish them from each other, though bear in mind these are similar entry level network security options, equally well regarded.
PfSense has a strong and helpful open-source community, with plenty of documentation and expertise available online to get users started. The open-source Community Edition of the product is serviceable, and with it companies with niche security needs can customize a solution to fit their distinct requirements at little cost, low resource usage, and on commodity hardware if desired. PfSense has libraries of free and purchasable add-ons that add new features and extend on basic functionality. Its VPN and load balancing are favored.
Untangle NG Firewall apps share a UI that is easy to work with, and notably Untangle apps also work well with the user’s choice of hardware, from commodity to enterprise (e.g. Cisco) appliances, or Untangle’s own budget friendly z series. Implementing Untangle is easy. Particularly, Untangle NG Firewall’s web filtering feature is very well regarded, and allows administrators to selectively block portions of a website without blocking the entire site. Users report helpful, responsive support from Untangle’s customer assistance team.
Limitations
PfSense and Untangle NG Firewall have much in common as full featured open source firewall solutions with free options and are highly rated, but they have limitations to consider before choosing one over the other.
PfSense’s wide array of open-source add-ons can be a strength and a weakness. Administrators using PfSense add-ons must continually check for updates to maintain their system. Since add-on developers are under no obligation to continue development, critical add-ons may be deprecated without warning and with no guarantee that others will continue development. Some users find PfSense’s UI dated, hard to navigate, and difficult to learn for new users. Implementing PfSense as a free solution may require more technical knowledge than some users have, removing the free option for businesses without the expertise.
Untangle NG Firewall offers limited documentation in comparison to PfSense, and a few have said Untangle apps can be resource-intensive. Finally, Untangle NG Firewall hasn’t offered a wide variety of VPN features in the past. However, recent updates to the software have added new, streamlined VPN options and improved existing VPN functionality to give users faster, more stable VPN connections. While available at lower cost than strictly enterprise-focused security options, Untangle pricing can increase steeply for the user on a budget.
Pricing
PfSense is open-source and available for free download. The vendor also offers a wide variety of pre-configured hardware, ranging from $179.00 to $5,298.00. Additionally, PfSense is available in a cloud-based service, starting at $0.08 per hour. Cloud-based pricing varies depending on whether you use AWS or Microsoft Azure. Contact the vendor for a customized quote.
Untangle NG Firewall offers a free 14-day trial. Their Complete package starts at $25.00 per month and includes all of the product’s features and functionality for up to 12 licensed devices. Pricing for the Complete package varies depending on the number of licensed devices. The z series appliances are available from $299 for the branch office z4, and range to z20 campus edition, coming in at $3499.
Features
pfSense
Untangle NG Firewall
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of pfSense and Untangle NG Firewall
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.
Untangle is very strong in the "traditional" sense of security. That means an edge appliance that either works with an existing router or is the router itself (recommended). This approach has also been adapted well to cloud environments in order to protect virtual servers and VDI workstations. As mentioned earlier, many schools are using cloud-based filtering for their 1:1 solutions for their students. This is an area where Untangle is unable to serve. Some have used an instance of Untangle in the cloud with VPN to serve their remote needs, but it is not the same as solutions that are designed for cloud-based filtering of devices without VPN.
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
Web Filtering is strong, and can also do application fingerprinting to allow Facebook, but not Facebook games. Secondly, a separate partition called a "rack" can be set up to give one subnet or group of users different web filtering policies than another. For example, teachers would get more freedom to browse the web than students at a school.
Built-in SD-WAN connectivity as part of your license. IPSEC tunnel creation is also amazingly easy.
Will install on any x86 hardware created in the last 5-10 years. Ram and processor requirements per user are very low.
Reporting is phenomenal, however you can get death by details very easily.
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
The full suite can be expensive for business but will be powerful enough.
The full suite for home or small office isn't that bad of a price but may be out of reach for most home users but remember the basics are FREE so anyone can get started with it.
I would like to see it promoted for mid to large businesses as I think it can handle 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
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
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
The phone support reps are highly competent and native-English speakers. big plus vs some other vendors with difficult to understand or less knowledgable support engineers.
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.
Untangle NG Firewall has a partnership with third parties to provide an amazing suite of applications. You pay for those. With free software, you have to wait for it to be updated. With Unifi, the hardware was too underpowered to do anything meaningful. I don't mind the monthly fees because these companies update quickly; they have a reputation to maintain.
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
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
