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pfSense

pfSense

Overview

What is pfSense?

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…

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Recent Reviews

pfSense

9 out of 10
January 17, 2024
Incentivized
pfSense is used to route internal development networks, either tagged or untagged, manage the ACLs between those networks, and forward …
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TrustRadius Insights

pfSense has proven to be a versatile and reliable network solution, addressing various use cases for organizations of different sizes and …
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Popular Features

View all 11 features
  • VPN (11)
    10.0
    100%
  • Policy-based Controls (11)
    10.0
    100%
  • Reporting and Logging (11)
    8.0
    80%
  • Content Inspection (11)
    4.1
    41%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Video Reviews

2 videos

pfSense Review: With Over 10 Years of Service, pfSense Proves To Be A Reliable Firewall For Business
02:15
User Benefits From Open Source Nature of pfSense When Limitations Are Solved By Others: User Review
03:33
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Pricing

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SG-1100

$179

On Premise
per appliance

SG-2100

$229

On Premise
per appliance

SG-3100

$399

On Premise
per appliance

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.netgate.com/pricing-pfsense…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

PFSense 2.4.4 with LCDproc on Broadband9 Firewall appliance! Tested with 100Mbit leased line

YouTube

Introduction of PFSense Open Source Firewall and Router

YouTube

pfSense installation and setup demo (VirtualBox)

YouTube

Building cloud firewall-router appliances for free: Installing Pfsense in Hyper-V

YouTube

pfSense Tutorial - How to enforce Google Safe Search using PfSense - Guide and Demo

YouTube

1. How to Install and Configure BGP in GNS3 using pfSense

YouTube
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Features

Firewall

A firewall is a filter that stands between a computer or computer network and the Internet. Each firewall can be programmed to keep specific traffic in or out

7.6
Avg 8.5
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Product Details

What is pfSense?

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 IPv4 and IPv6 support, and intrusion prevention. Within its VPN capabilities, it provides SSL encryption, automatic or custom routing, and multiple tunneling options. pfSense also supports optional clustering and load-balancing, along with proxying and content filtering services. The product can also monitor and report on network traffic.

pfSense Videos

Pfsense vs Ubiquiti - Which is better for you?
In this video, TrustRadius goes over the pricing, top features, and user sentiment of pfSense.

pfSense Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(70)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

pfSense has proven to be a versatile and reliable network solution, addressing various use cases for organizations of different sizes and industries. Users have successfully managed multiple ISPs and performed load balancing, ensuring efficient internet connectivity and reducing downtime. The ability to quickly backup and restore configurations has been appreciated by customers, providing peace of mind and minimizing disruptions. The stability and ease of management have been particularly important for small IT teams, allowing them to efficiently handle network operations.

Many organizations rely on pfSense as their primary firewall, utilizing its features for load balancing, failover, and hosting software and services. The support for multi-WAN and load balancing at both the WAN and load distributing levels has been highly beneficial for users. pfSense has also been successfully used to establish multiple IPsec tunnels for site-to-site VPN connections, enabling secure communication between different locations.

The scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of pfSense have made it a great solution for small to medium-sized businesses. It can be easily customized and integrated into existing infrastructures, including the implementation of VLANs and time-based rules. The GUI and CLI versions of pfSense have streamlined management tasks, making it accessible to users with varying technical expertise.

Furthermore, the extensive online manual and community support have received praise from users, providing valuable resources for troubleshooting and guidance. The community-supported nature of pfSense ensures that it stays up-to-date with the latest security measures.

Overall, pfSense serves as a reliable network backbone, handling routing, VPN connections, security features, failover scenarios, and inter-VLAN routing. Its versatility eliminates the need for multiple servers in smaller environments while providing essential security functions. Users appreciate its basic security measures and routing features which make it a cost-effective solution for those with limited budgets. With its proven reliability and enterprise-grade features, pfSense continues to be a trusted choice for organizations seeking a powerful network solution.

Intuitive User Interface: Users have consistently praised the intuitive and user-friendly interface of pfSense. Many reviewers have expressed that the well-thought-out web interface makes it easy to configure firewall rules and set up VPNs, allowing them to perform tasks quickly and efficiently.

Informative Dashboard: The extensive dashboard of pfSense has received widespread praise from users. Reviewers have mentioned that the traffic graphics on the dashboard are wonderful and provide all the necessary information at a glance, making it easy to monitor network activity and performance.

Low Hardware Requirements: Users appreciate that pfSense can run smoothly even on older PCs or router devices with lower-end specifications. This is seen as a significant advantage by many reviewers as it allows them to implement pfSense without the need for expensive hardware upgrades.

Inconvenient integration with modems: Several users have expressed frustration that integrating modem functionality into pfSense is not possible, which can be inconvenient for those looking for a more comprehensive solution.

Challenging web GUI setup and management: Non-expert users may find it challenging to set up and manage the web GUI, particularly when it comes to assigning WAN and LAN interfaces.

Limited API and scripting capabilities: Some reviewers have highlighted the lack of an API for making changes in pfSense. This limitation can be a hindrance in environments where frequent updates to firewall rules or HAProxy configs are required.

Users have made several recommendations based on their experiences with pfSense. The most common recommendations are:

  • Users recommend reading the documentation and taking official training for pfSense. This suggestion highlights the importance of familiarizing oneself with the product and its features. By investing time in understanding the documentation and receiving official training, users can maximize their proficiency in network administration using pfSense.

  • Users suggest making the switch to pfSense and using reliable hardware. This recommendation emphasizes the benefits of utilizing pfSense as a comprehensive solution for routing and firewall requirements in network administration. By switching to pfSense and ensuring the use of reliable hardware, users can optimize their network resource management.

  • Users advise doing test builds and hardening before going live with pfSense. This recommendation underscores the importance of thorough testing and securing the system before implementing it in a live environment. By conducting test builds and hardening processes, users can identify potential issues or vulnerabilities, ensuring a smoother transition to pfSense.

These recommendations reflect user opinions on how to effectively utilize pfSense for routing and firewall requirements while optimizing network resource management.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-24 of 24)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
January 17, 2024

pfSense

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
pfSense is used to route internal development networks, either tagged or untagged, manage the ACLs between those networks, and forward specific protocols and ports from the outside to a DMZ. pfSense has been deployed in a HA configuration and IDS/IPS has also been set up by using snort. Snort is also used to prioritize some traffic over others.
  • Filtering and NAT forwarding.
  • Routing
  • IDS/IPS
  • IDS/IPS requires tuning and is sometimes too aggressive.
  • Filtering acts only by specifying ips. Even if less performing and secure, allowing the user also to insert DNS names would be a nice option.
IPS/IDS, sniffer appliance, router/firewall, and VPN appliance are all well suited. I would not use it as a caching proxy (squid) and rely on different products.
Daniel Fisher | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use it as my primary firewall and router to manage my WAN and multiple LAN/VLANS for my home office. I have been able to use it at low cost, since I am running pfSense on a custom PC build with an extra 4 port NIC installed. It has allowed me to easily segment my home network for better security, as well as host need services (e.g. remote access over VPN).
  • Firewall rule management
  • Remote access over VPN
  • NAT for needed services
  • HAproxy for reverse proxy hosting
  • Communication regarding product roadmap
  • Affordable support for smaller companies/users
pfSense is great for homelab, home office, and small business deployments. Once you are able to justify their support package, support is very good. For my own use case, the software has been very reliable and updates were smooth.

For very large deployments, you will likely need to go with a larger and more expensive vendor requiring licensing.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use pfSense both for ourselves and for our clients as a perimeter firewall and router. We've implemented it as a virtual machine, physical equipment, and in failover clusters. The deployments include everything from apartment complexes with between 1500-4500 devices to financial institutions, to businesses.

We've needed a solution that is easily managed, secure by default, and offers a wide enough feature set to handle unique requirements.
  • Site to Site VPN
  • VPN Client to Office connections
  • Firewall
  • Routing
  • IDS Ease of use
  • Layer 2 Filtering
  • Multidevice management from one interface
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.
Mario Matinelli | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
We are one of the only Authorised Netgate Partner in the UK offering access to the Netgate range of products as well as expert support and solutions for complex requirements. We sell Netgate appliances because they run pfSense® that we love and trust. It is reliable and tested specifically on Netgate appliances. We use pfSense® in all our projects and our pfSense® certified staff would be excited to work together with you on your pfSense® project and to help you support your pfSense® setup.
  • Firewall
  • VPN
  • IDS/IPS
  • Centralised management interface
  • Web Filters
pfSense is the most complete solution in terms of features included even though it currently lack of a centralised management interface. pfSense is the most secure System because it is open source. Its code can be reviewed by anyone so any bugs and especially back doors would not go unnoticed. When it comes to security transparency and openness has been proven to be the most effective model. Many large and well known names in the market have been caught several times using poor security practices. The use of back door or poorly written code was discovered when it was already too late due to the lack of transparency.
June 28, 2021

Review for pfSense

Pardeep Sharma | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
pfSense is mainly open source firewall but if you want enterprise level hardware firewall then you have to pay the money.. pfSense really very good firewall. We are using this from last 3 years..there are lots of features which helps us to fulfill our goals and protect from external cyber attacks
  • pfSense blocker NG
  • Ips
  • Ad blocker
  • Ha proxy
  • QOS
  • Country wise block
  • Lots of issue with fresh configure [in my experience]
  • [I feel] Gui not user-friendly
  • Not advanced level security features available [in my experience]
[I feel] pfSense is good only for small scale organizations and low security required organizations. If you need deep level packets scanning and other various advanced features then [I believe] this firewall is not good for you.. this features provides you very basic firewall features. In current world you have to protect your organization from various types of malware attacks but this firewall fails on that [in my experience].
Pretty Varughese | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using pfSense in our environment for routing & remote VPN feature. It provides a reliable security solution with a number of security features. pfSense provides customizable kernel solution & advanced routing features. We are using it across all the departments. It provides compliance security for CIS as well as for PCI-DSS System.
  • High Availability
  • Sandboxing
  • Easy to Integrate
  • Technical Support
  • Web console interface needs improvement
pfSense is well suited for medium & large scale infrastructure that needs high security & custom kernel so that they can integrate & develop there own system as it's based on FreeBSD. It also provides features such as remote VPN & custom rules.
Chirag Deol | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using [pfSense] for routing & security feature implementation on our infrastructure. It provides a custom kernel & based on FreeBSD open source solution that is easy to customize & integrate. We are using it across all the departments & implementation VLANs for allowing the specific data. It also provides a Geo-blocking feature & time-based rule feature that we are using as of now.
  • VPN Server
  • Load Balancing Feature
  • It also provides Reverse proxy
  • It support IPv6
  • Wake-on-lan feature is also available with [pfSense]
  • Less Documentation available
  • Difficult to upgrade the firmware
  • Software Bugs
[pfSense] is well suited for Medium & Small scale enterprises as it's cost-effective & provides a number of features. It provides security features such as anti-spoofing, Sandboxing, content filtering. Also, it is easy to manage with the web GUI Console. [pfSense] is less suited for large-scale data center environments as it has not that many advanced security features.
June 22, 2021

Pfsense review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[pfSense] is [a] combination of firewall and router features. This is very good product [compared] to others open source firewall. If you [lack a] budget for firewall then you should go with this firewall. [pfSense] provides you basic security as well as routing features. I [have been] working on this device [for the] last 20 months and [it] helped my client to achieve their goal with no security budget..
  • Vpn server
  • Load balancing
  • Traffic shaping
  • Dns and dhcp server
  • Intrusion Detection System and Intrusion Prevention System
  • Packet Inspection
  • No advanced security features
  • No sandbox features available
  • Complicated configuration
[pfSense] provides you basic security and routing features. This firewall is well suited for ngo and very small organizations and startups. [In these] type of organizations there [is] less budget for security so this device provides you all basic features [without the cost.]
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use pfSense to protect and route network traffic for ourselves as well as our business clients. It provides a highly reliable network solution with a huge range of enterprise grade features. It has complex firewall rules to allow us to complete PCIDSS compliance for card payment terminals. It also allows for seamless failover of multiple WAN internet connections to ensure that our staff and customers are never without internet access.
  • Firewall rules
  • Multiple WAN failover & balancing
  • Statistics and reporting of internet connection use
  • Automated configuration backup
  • More support for PPOE connection drops/errors
  • Central management console for multiple devices
It is well suited where you need to create complex firewall rules either between WAN connections or between internal VLANs. It also is very scalable to allow you to have multiple WAN connections of different types and either prioritize or load balance the connections to different pools of users.

It is less appropriate for a home network environment.
James Freeman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
pfSense is core to our network architecture, both for ourselves, and for our clients. Its robust appliance style architecture lends itself extremely well to all manner of edge firewall applications, whilst the x86 architecture means we can run it on just about anything from physical tin to virtual machines on a variety of hypervisors. It provides a solid feature set and its pluggable application architecture and a rich VPN server and client functionality means we are able to use it to create secure mesh networks across both the internet and private circuits to ensure our clients are always on, and always securely connected.
  • Robust appliance that is easy to install, manage and update.
  • XML-based configuration backup and restore lends itself well to automation and pre-built configurations.
  • Open-source platform means the availability of a wide array of third-party packages providing integration with everything from monitoring servers to backup.
  • First releases are often buggy. For example, 2.5.0 broke fundamental routing features in some environments.
  • Lack of API for automated configuration.
  • Lack of CLI for scripting and automation purposes.
Whilst I would love to see the addition of features like an API and/or CLI (both would be ideal), I love pfSense and would recommend it highly. I use it on my home network as well as in business settings, and it is robust, reliable, and easy to set up. The CARP or high availability functionality is quite easy to set up and works flawlessly. I can reboot my primary firewall and maybe drop 1 ping. It integrates well with my infrastructure including my UPS and has built-in Zabbix monitoring integration.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use pfSense on our campus as our primary firewall/internet gateway as well as DNS, DHCP, time, and VPN server/gateway. It also handles internal routing across our VLANs. The versatility/feature set is helpful as it avoids the need for running multiple other servers for a small-business environment.
  • OpenVPN is very easy to set up and administer.
  • The web UI makes it very easy to configure.
  • The feature set is broad and powerful.
  • No official central management system (cloud or otherwise).
  • Support for WireGuard VPN is limited.
pfSense is an excellent all-in-one solution for firewall/routing/VPN and other network-related roles that a small to medium business would need (or even advanced home users). It's extremely powerful and relatively easy to use.

It may be less suited for larger businesses where having an all-in-one product could be a disadvantage where a spread infrastructure is desired, very high scalability is necessary, or specific enterprise features aren't available.
Christian Shaheen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
pfSense is currently the backbone of our company's network. We have five of them deployed handling VPN and routing. One is on a Dell R210II in the office handling the inter-vlan 10Gbps routing and 3 WAN failover. The second is a Hyper-V VM in our colo facility handling the NATing and forwarding there. The third is a Lenovo SFF PC in an office far away that we can selectively route through for geo purposes. The forth is a VM in a datacenter, again, just to selectively route out. The fifth is acting as a VPN server for the other four to connect to and route between each other as well as for clients outside the office to connect to.
  • OpenVPN
  • Inter-Vlan Routing
  • Firewalling
  • CLI Commands
  • Hardware Support
pfSense is great for companies with medium budgets and advanced networking needs. It is very versatile and can be installed on any x86 platform with as little as 16GB of disk and 1GB of RAM. This makes it great for applications such as hosted environments where you only have VMs. It also supports many kinds of hardware so it can be spun up in a hurry without specific hardware.
Allan Leung | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use pfSense across several countries office such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai & Beijing and served over 150 staff. We use pfSense to build site-to-site VPN to link up our office network. pfSense is quite stable and easy to manage that is very important because our IT teams are small. Handled over 4 years, pfSense has not given me any big issue so I will recommend it to my friends.
  • 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.
  • Need to assign WAN, LAN interface in "text" console but not in web interface when you first install in a new network.
  • I need to configure everything and send a pfSense device to my colleague in other countries, they are not IT professionals so they have difficulty assigning interfaces when they first boot.
For fast-growing or SME companies, pfSense is quite suitable because pfSense already had many advanced features such as VPN and multiple WAN / LAN. As a result, we just need to pay for expensive router frequently to upgrade our infrastructure.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used PfSense mainly as a firewall and an OpenVPN solution company-wide. It's very easy to manage and has a lot of features. I've also used Pfsense to load balance multiple internet connections as well as segregate multiple VLAN networks. It's been very reliable and is a great system overall.
  • OpenVPN solution: straight forward and very easy to manage. It's easy to setup clients through the OpenVPN export wizard.
  • Load Balancing Internet Connections: I was able to use a single pfSense machine to load balance two internet connections. Basically, if one connection is losing too many packets or drops out, all internet traffic is automatically routed through the other internet service gateway. Users didn't even notice whenever there were internet outages.
  • Sometimes when there was an internet outage pfsense would start running really slow. I'm assuming because all the clients trying to access the internet creates a load. There should probably be a timeout feature where all traffic pauses and stops trying to access the internet if the internet is obviously down. The simple fix for this is to just disconnect the switch with all clients.
  • There are numerous packages that try to act as middle-man web traffic filters. They are a little complex and don't always work. This pfsense isn't to blame but it just might be nice to see a more standardized solution that's easy to set up.
Works great as a VPN solution and a firewall. Does not work well in a virtual environment. PfSense needs to be a dedicated physical box.
March 07, 2019

pfSense is rock solid

Jay Moore | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
pfSense is used as our firewall, VPN server, DNS forwarder, and NTP server. We also have two other pfSense devices installed at remote locations to provide VPN connections to our headquarters.
  • Great firewall. It has all the capabilities of very expensive firewalls. I have never had to restart the device in 10 years due to an issue.
  • DHCP always works without any issues.
  • OpenVPN has been rock solid, I like that OpenVPN has clients for all Linux, Mac and MS Windows.
  • Reporting
  • Viewing log files
Great for small to midsize businesses that need a rock solid platform.
Charles R. Coggins III | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The company I currently work for uses pfSense mainly for load balancing and also as a firewall. We have a lot of cloud customers and this software comes in real handy to ensure that if one of our services go down our customers will not experience any outages as pfSense will automatically make our second connection the primary one. I am currently just getting into the system administrator role and I am working under our current sysadmin who is going into development so I have been trying to learn a lot of this software on the fly.

One of the coolest features of pfSense for someone like me who is learning on the fly is the fact it has a GUI version as well as the CLI version. So you can manage your pfSense instances very easily by using drop-down menus.

I can see this being really useful for small to medium size businesses. The software is very scalable and very flexible. It is also open source so there is not a bunch of licenses to purchase. There are a bunch of addon/packages you can install to add features and they also have "commercial" packages which do cost money but can add features some of the really expensive solutions have.

The support for pfSense is pretty great too - they have a huge online manual you can look things up in and the forums/community support is incredible. I had a question a long while back and I remember having an answer just a couple of hours after I asked it. pfSense runs on FreeBSD - The install was straight forward and once it was installed it is really easy to set up so you don't need to know a bunch of commands. The interface is pretty much "press: 1 to set this up."

I would highly recommend giving this software a try even for personal use. I have been considering trying to make a pfSense based router for my own home use.
  • pfSense is an excellent firewall - It logs all of your traffic. It has packages you can install to snort bad traffic.
  • pfSense has a tool called "p0f" which allows you to see what type of OS is trying to connect to you. You can filter these results and you can also block a specific OS from connecting to you.
  • pfSense is an excellent load-balancer: (Multi-WAN and Server Load Balancing) The fail-over/aggregation works very well. This is perfect if your business uses multiple ISP's to ensure your customers are always able to access their data. Also helps with bandwidth distribution as well.
  • VPN's - I am not entirely sure if this package was free with pfSense, but it does offer the ability to use OpenVPN which is what I am familiar with.
  • They also have IPsec in the settings as well, but I am not familiar with that enough to go into any detail with it.
  • As I mentioned I do use OpenVPN the only thing I don't care for with it is I can create OpenVPN configs for each user I want to be able to VPN into the network and I assumed each one would be "unique" but this does not seem to be the case. I could be doing it wrong, but if I create a config for a specific employee I would expect only that employee should be able to use that config, but I have been able to login to everyone that I made using my credentials.
  • I mentioned earlier that pfSense had a GUI.
  • I personally really think it is cool because it has a bunch of reporting graphs for monitoring your networks. I think when I become the full-time admin at the company I am going to try to talk them into getting me a TV I can mount on the wall and display all the graphs and real-time info pfSense shows so I can monitor what is going on with the network(s) at all times. Plus I think it would look rad.
  • 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.
pfSense is perfect for small-medium businesses (IMO). I also believe it would be a great tool for a home user/IT enthusiast who wants a great high-end firewall solution or someone who just wants to learn, but does not want to buy a bunch of hardware or licenses.

I installed pfSense on my Hyper-V with 5GB of space and 2GB of RAM.

I personally think pfSense is flexible enough for a large business and can probably do most things Cisco hardware and software can do, but I guess depending on how big you are you are probably looking for something more "known" like Cisco so if something goes wrong you can throw someone under the bus lol!

pfSense is open source and your support comes from a community of people who use the software where with Cisco if something goes wrong you are contacting another large business.
Aaron Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use pfSense as our primary firewalls on two fiber connections into our organization. We also utilize pfSense for load balancing and fail over of incoming requests for our software and service hosting.

We needed something easy to setup and manage on a day to day basis that didn't come with expensive fees or recurring costs to reduce our financial exposure. As time marches on, we've definitely made the best choice in choosing pfSense as it fits our needs extremely well.
  • Easily configure firewall rules through a well thought out web interface.
  • Easy to configure VPN setups and if using OpenVPN, easy to deploy client setups.
  • Many additional packages and features can be installed on the fly, including things like OpenBGPD, freeradius3, and lightsquid.
  • Load Balancing and connection proxies built in and the ability to HAProxy easily.
  • Backup and restore in minutes, not hours. A online (free) service is also offered to backup each and every change made to their cloud.
  • There is no API for making changes. This can be a hindrance in environments where auto-deploying something needs firewall rules or HAProxy configs updated. Since all settings are stored in an XML file and then configs are generated from that, even manually updating config files cannot be done.
  • Beware that some network cards can have issues. pfSense is based on FreeBSD, so it's best to look on their compatibility list before deploying.
pfSense is well suited for many environments as a primary firewall, VPN server, and proxy server. For small to medium offices, it offers dead simple configuration and management. Large corporate environments may look to other big name providers, however pfSense can easily compete with those in performance and reliability. Hardware devices can also be purchased making pfSense an all-in-one solution for even the largest of environments.

pfSense is less well suited for home or home-office environments as it's a little over kill and with high bandwidth home connections, a larger device will be needed for throughput.
germary zambrano | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my company we also manage a network of large numbers of users who need a stable server on which they can count at the time of sending a request. This software has helped me to have a Network Address Translation with which I get security in my sub network such that at the time of an attack, it can not reach our servers. It also has helped me to be able to place some services on the network through the property of the server DNS. It also offers the VPN connection so that I can connect from anywhere to check how my services are on the network
  • stable vpn connection through your web application and easy to use
  • load balancer that allows me to distribute the bandwidth to the ip that I need with more power at the request of the user and less power to users who have fewer requirements
  • dns server that allows me to give a domain name to several applications that I have hosted in my network so that it has a connection from the outside and can be seen by the user
  • they should improve in creating more manuals of procedures or processes that can be done with this systems since the documentation obtained from this system is small, which makes it difficult to use 100 percent of this system
The scenarios where this software can be used are where companies have a large number of users in the network, to create reliable network structures for services. It's also well suited in companies that create applications or systems that have to launch them to the internet and this system can be managed DNS server to be assigned to these applications.
In short, this system is very complete and can be used in large, medium or small companies. It is only necessary to have a vision of what is required and this software will cover your needs.
Victor Arana | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pfsense is our layer 2 software firewall that allows us a better control over the overrides for the internet navigation; give us an accurate integration with a ton of plugins you can build your on appliance using a decent desktop; to manage with ease two ISPs, make the load balancing, set the VPN for your external users, reduce the downtime's, backup your config, and restore it in matter of seconds. Pfsense work together with the IPS sensor from the basic to the hard case. It's a 10 in our organization.
  • Open Source (free). Pay only for support.
  • Plugins are the crown of the product.
  • An extensive dashboard gives you all that you need to have on the first look.
  • Traffic graphics are wonderful.
  • You can't integrate modem functionality into a pFSense box.
  • I don't want to go completely open source if downtime is a risk factor that could lose more income that supported products would cost.
  • Can be an expensive configuration if you choose to build your own pFsense box for several ISP.
  • For non expertise users is a pain in the neck to manage the web GUI.
Pfsense will perfectly fit in to branch offices, mid size companies and will fulfill all the goals to merge all the ISP and have a less exposed web navigation. For those companies that need load balancing, VPN connections with less effort and reducing the cost of licenses Pfsense lets you control the traffic with accurate insight.
Jim Rubenstein | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a small business, so we use pfSense to manage our office network.

I support ~15 network users, which represent something more like 30-40 devices (after notebooks, mobile phones, tablets, etc are accounted for).

pfSense is used as the primary router to our internet connection, as well as our VPN connect endpoint, local DNS resolution, and internet connection failover. Having all of these services bundled in one powerful, well supported, and robust software configuration platform saves a ton of time and makes managing our internal office network very easy.
  • Point and click configuration for nearly any network infrastructure service you could need
  • Centralized configuration, with documentation, of all firewall rules, dhcp lease rules, vlan routes, etc
  • Fast security updates when vulnerabilities (and patches) are found in any of the software that pfSense uses out of the box
  • Super simple to deploy
  • Light-weight, doesn't need a high end system to run
  • Some services can be clunky to configure if you're not 100% familiar with the technology
  • Service configuration is bound to the pfSense interface, so if the UI doesn't expose configuration for a feature you need (and the service supports it), it's a significant challenge to configure the service outside of the pfSense system. (Note: this has rarely been an issue for us, once or twice in the entire time we've used the software)
pfSense is great for us, in a small business environment. It offers all the features and capabilities that we need, at the right price.

I'm not sure how pfSense would fare in a larger network environment (multiple hundreds - thousands of users) as I've never supported a network with that many users.

For small - medium sized businesses, with a part time network administrator available, pfSense is perfect.
Paolo Daniele | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pfsense is used in our whole organization. Our main firewall has been made by using Pfsense. Recently we've bought two appliances with pfsense preinstalled. Pfsense is crucial for our enviroment because we're a small company so we cannot buy expensive firewall. After some research and local tests, we've decided to use pfsense.
  • Web User Interface: With new web UI, based on Bootstrap framework, you can control your Pfsense from everywhere.
  • Scalable: It's an all-in-one solution useful for every kind of company. It's also very easy to set up rules and NAT, and it has several modules like transparent proxy, VPN, and traffic shaping.
  • Community: There's a large community behind Pfsense so you can find a lot of documentation, tutorials, and howtos and also support from the official forum.
  • Virtualization: We use virtualization on our systems based on KVM enviroment so they could improve Virtualization integration.
  • Export/Import: You cannot import/export all of pfsense modules configuration. And also sometimes pfsense export/import creates conflicts with s Mac address.
Great scenario is to use pfsense as a router to protect your network from unwanted access. It is possible to integrate some modules like pfBlocker to deny/allow inbound from specific country or to prevent some spam from an IP address in public spam list databases.
It's useful in a SOHO infrastructure but for a very large company with a high constant bandwidth traffic, there are more powerful tools.
July 27, 2016

pfSense - Review

Rikia Kosaka | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I first learned of PFSense when searching for custom routers. Started from DD-WRT among other products such as zeroshell and pfSense. Some requirements were Dual WAN redundancy, failover and load balancing. In my particular experience I have setup/migrated pfSense in a Dual WAN redundant setup. pfSense was perfect as you can scrape up any old computer with 3 NICS (WAN1, OPT1, LAN). The setup is rather easy. If you are familiar with the setup of Linux, it should be a breeze. You setup a bootable USB stick and boot to USB and install pfSense. The initial setup of the NICs is also easy but you do need some networking experience. Once you get the initial setup completed and connected to the Web UI, you can pretty much go through each option and set to your needs.

pfSense supports Multiwan, load balancing both at the WAN level and load distributing level, VPN (IPSEC, OPENVPN), among many other features. I have a client who is using pfSense with Multi-Wan, three separate ipsec tunnels (Datacenter to HQ, HQ to Azure, HQ to another cloud provider). We have basic ACLs rules in place and host a number of servers behind the pfSense. We do not use the load balancing as pfSense is used in Headquarters where we do not host many services that require load balancing behind the router. In anycase for an office it works out well as my client has intermittent ISP issues so the mult-wan comes in really handy.

We've had hardware failures where I simply setup a new pfSense box and copied the configs over and was up and running in no time.

I would highly recommend pfSense for small to medium size businesses, maybe even large but I have yet to test loads at such high scales. I also have not setup pfSense in a production environment with high load so I cannot comment on that part. Overall, I think pfSense is great! I also used pfSense in a VMware environment for test labs and that worked out great fulfilling all my needs as well!
  • Great Multi-Wan redundancy.
  • Great control of ACLs
  • Perfect for VPN connections
  • The tools that come with pfsense are great but I've seen better tools from home based routers like the ASUS routers. Wish we had more pretty graphs, traffic use by user or hostname, etc.
  • The UI is good but seems a little outdated. The graphs and reporting looks more like cacti versus the look of something pretty like Kibana.
I would totally be fine with putting pfSense in an operations/office space. I would be hesitant to put pfSense in a production environment. Likely reasoning being hardware, however I've seen many new pfSense hardware coming out in the recent days though I have yet to use them.
Jim Nitterauer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
pfSense is used as a security appliance for numerous applications and addresses the problems it was designed to address. (Providing specifics relating to the implementation of security in a public forum is a really bad idea. Asking people to disclose details relating to the deployment of security devices on the network is a really bad idea.)
  • It secures things!
  • It blocks bad things.
  • It is easy to configure.
  • Nothing really. The developers fix thing pretty quickly. They might want to run some vulnerability scanners against a device and fix those minor issues.
It's a great feature rich solution for securing networks.
Richard Kiernan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It's a firewall that will compete with any "enterprise" firewall solution and often kicks the paid-for competition into touch. The fact that it is community supported is a big advantage as it is always at the cutting edge of security and support. It's a firewall for technologists first but once installed even the non-technically minded can take advantage of an outstanding network security solution. The latest version of pfSense provides a much improved GUI that will appeal to the less technically minded but it still retains the same level of rich functionality.
  • Easy and quick to change firewall rules - no painful re-loads or reboots (!) like some firewall solutions
  • VPN support is excellent and so fast as hardware acceleration is supported
  • Large set of free add-on tools
  • Multiple hardware platforms supported
  • Quality of service and traffic shaping setup could be better but the answers are usually on the pfSense forums if you look
  • Non-technically minded will lose patience but it's designed to be a fully-fledged firewall so it's not surprising
pfSense may be deemed too risky an investment for larger organisations as their perceptions that they need to purchase an "enterprise appliance" will carry more gravitas with a CTO or IT head but it's important that potential users understand that most firewall solutions are built off the same Unix derived core code and as such you're paying over the odds for the name not better technology.
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